Lloyd George becomes Secretary of State for War

At the beginning of July 1916 David Lloyd George, until then Minister of Munitions, became British Secretary of State for War. He took over an office that had been vacant for a month, since Lord Kitchener was killed aboard the cruiser Hampshire on his way to Russia. The appointment was announced on 6 July, and the British chronology of the war gives 7 July as the day on which Lloyd George succeeded Kitchener. The change coincided with the first week of the Battle of the Somme, which on its very first day had brought the British Army the heaviest losses in its history.

A month without a minister

After Kitchener’s death the War Office was temporarily run by the prime minister, Herbert Henry Asquith. Lloyd George was then busy with another matter. At the end of May the prime minister had entrusted him with seeking a settlement in Ireland after the suppression of the Easter Rising, and throughout June he conducted difficult talks with the leaders of the Irish nationalists and the Ulster Unionists.

The Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law could also have claimed Kitchener’s inheritance. According to the account of the Canadian-born MP and future press baron Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, it was Bonar Law who, after a conversation with Lloyd George, backed his candidacy with the prime minister. Lloyd George himself hesitated for a long time. The War Office was no longer the same department that Kitchener had taken over in 1914.

A minister without power over strategy

In December 1915 General William Robertson became Chief of the Imperial General Staff and laid down his conditions. Under his agreement with Kitchener, confirmed in January 1916 by an Order in Council, the chief of staff was the government’s sole adviser on strategy and the orders to the troops in the field came from him. The Secretary of State for War was responsible for recruiting, equipping and supplying the army. Kitchener, who enjoyed immense prestige, could accept this. Lloyd George, who had been criticising the generals for months and wanted a say in the conduct of the war, was taking on an office largely shorn of its powers.

Robertson did what he could to keep Lloyd George out of the War Office. When that failed, he at least retained his special powers. Lord Derby, until then in charge of recruiting and regarded as an ally of the military, became Under-Secretary of State at the War Office. Even so, Robertson wrote to General Launcelot Kiggell, chief of staff to Douglas Haig, the commander of the British forces in France, that “this d—d L.G.” was turning up at the War Office and that terrible times lay ahead.

Cabinet reshuffle

The appointment led to further changes. The Ministry of Munitions, hitherto run by Lloyd George, which within a year had become one of the largest departments in the country, was taken over by Edwin Samuel Montagu, until then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and before that Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He was succeeded at the Duchy of Lancaster by Thomas McKinnon Wood, who also became Financial Secretary to the Treasury, while Harold Tennant, until then Under-Secretary at the War Office, became Secretary for Scotland. Lord Curzon became a permanent member of the War Committee, the most important body directing the war. The Times announced some of these appointments only on 10 July.

Lloyd George ran the War Office for only five months. In that time he managed to bring civilian experts into the army, among them Eric Geddes, who took charge of the overburdened transport behind the front in France. On matters of strategy, however, he clashed more and more often with Robertson and Haig, and his powerlessness in the face of the mounting losses on the Somme strengthened his conviction that the war was being badly run. At the end of September, in an interview with an American journalist, he declared that Great Britain would fight to a knock-out. In December 1916 he succeeded Asquith as prime minister.