CHAPTER 22

The Ministry of Munitions

David Lloyd George became Prime Minister of a coalition government in December 1916. Churchill grew closer to him in the spring of 1917 and began to act as his unofficial adviser, visiting the front with his support at the end of May. General Haig, the commander-in-chief, offered no objections but made sure that the visit was carefully orchestrated. ‘We saw the devastated regions, the battlefield of Verdun and the Fille Morte sector in the Argonne in three successive days. There was no danger – and hardly the sound of a gun.’ He dined with various generals and was perhaps a little jealous of his old friend Fayolle who had given him the casque – he now commanded a force of 41 divisions. He dined with General Pétain, a hero in this war and a villain in the next, who ‘did not enter into any serious subjects’ except the Salonika Campaign, on which they differed.¹

The question of Churchill’s return to government arose and Lord Esher believed that Lloyd George wanted him ‘because he can strike ideas into colour’.² There was now the possibility of founding an air ministry and Churchill’s friend, the South African General Smuts, recommended he accept it, as it ‘offered great scope to his constructive ability and initiative, and that with help from America our aerial effort might yet become of decisive importance not only in the anti-submarine campaign but also on the Western Front in the next twelve months’.³ As soon as rumours of return began to circulate, there was fierce opposition especially from Conservatives. Admiral Lord Beresford, Fisher’s most prominent opponent, wrote to Andrew Bonar Law: ‘I need not enumerate to you the failure of Antwerp, Gallipoli, for which he is mainly responsible, the failure in administration of all his previous offices, the manner in which he turned the navy upside-down by his autocratic methods, and, with Fisher, ruled it with favouritism and espionage.’⁴ Churchill was slightly shocked and told Hankey that he had ‘no idea of the depth of public opinion against his return to public life’, though he admitted he had been ‘a bit above himself’.⁵ On 17 July he took office as Minster of Munitions with a seat in the cabinet, but not in the crucial War Cabinet. Lord Derby, the Director General of Recruiting, believed that ‘Winston Churchill is the great danger, because I cannot believe in his being content to simply run his own show and I am sure he will have a try to have a finger in the Admiralty and War Office pies.’⁶ He was not far wrong.

Early in the war business leaders had initiated the slogan ‘business as usual’ for their commercial policy, though it was sometimes suggested that Churchill himself had coined it.⁷ In any case it was soon obsolete as the war did not end by Christmas and a greater and greater proportion of national resources was sucked in. This came to a head in the spring of 1915 with the ‘Shell scandal’, a campaign orchestrated by the Northcliffe press which appeared to demonstrate that the troops at the front were being let down by lack of supplies. It was a parallel crisis to Fisher’s resignation, and it helped force Asquith to accept a coalition with the Conservatives and Labour. The most dynamic figure still in a senior position in the government, Churchill’s old ally David Lloyd George, founded the Ministry of Munitions and brought in businessmen to help run it. Initially it was mainly concerned with shell production and trench warfare supplies but soon it began to take over other military needs. It controlled the iron and steel, electrical and engineering industries and eventually had more than 250 government factories under its control. It had responsibilities for labour relations and preventing excessive profits. In December 1917 Churchill was convinced that the agitation for higher wages was due to the belief that enormous profits were being made, and suggested that the government took all of the excess profits, instead of just 80 per cent.⁸ It employed more civilians than any other government department, with 65,000 in the ministry and a quarter of a million industrial workers. Nationalised industry, state control and limitations of profits might be seen as tendencies towards socialism, which was anathema to Gladstonian Liberals and especially the Conservatives, but it was defended on the grounds that the measures ‘owed their inception not to any definite plan or policy of state monopoly but to the immediate stress of practical necessity’.⁹

According to Smuts, Munitions had become ‘a somewhat routine department’, but Churchill soon found scope for his energy and began to reform the unwieldy ministry.¹⁰ ‘The Minister of Munitions should be aided and advised by a council formally established. The time has come to interpose between more than fifty separate departments on one hand and the minster on the other, an organism which in the main will play a similar part and serve similar needs as the Board of Admiralty or Army Council.’ In addition the ministry was to be divided into ten groups, ‘classified as far as possible by kindred conditions’. He felt the need for a body of administrators to back up the businessmen. ‘Experience shows the value for these purposes of a strong element of trained civil servants, thoroughly acquainted with official methods and inter-departmental relations.’¹¹ He ordered that ‘A regular system of leave for the staff of the Munitions Ministry, and especially the higher branches, should be brought into existence.’¹² He suggested ‘a luncheon club should be formed for the senior 60 or 70 officers of the Ministry. This would enable them to meet in twos or threes in quiet and agreeable surroundings daily. Everyone will get to know the other. “Shop” could be talked under good auspices.’¹³

His new job gave Churchill an overview of all the resources needed for the war, and he took the opportunity to criticise strategy. Derby was right about his interference; within ten days of taking office Churchill was telling Lord Curzon that there was no point in building more of the fast destroyers he himself had initiated. ‘It is obvious that quite a different class of destroyer, much smaller and more humdrum, is required for submarine hunting far out of reach of all German surface ships.’ Twenty-five knots would be ‘quite sufficient for such a purpose’.¹⁴ Though in theory he was not concerned with strategy, Churchill’s control of labour and resources such as steel gave him an authority which he did not shrink from using. In August 1917 he wrote to one of his advisers: ‘How many tanks, and of what patterns, are to be ready month by month in the next 12 months? By whom, and by what extent, have these programmes been approved? How much steel do they require? How much do they cost? How much skilled labour and unskilled do they require in these 12 months? What are the principal limiting factors in material and class of labour?’¹⁵

He clashed most strongly with Sir Eric Geddes, the current First Lord of the Admiralty, who complained: ‘My fears as regards the Minister of Munitions are somewhat fortified by what has passed in conversation with him upon several occasions, and at recent meetings of the War Cabinet and Cabinet Committees. He has shewn that he contemplates an extension of his functions beyond what I have ever understood them to be, and an infringement of mine which I should view with great concern.’¹⁶

Churchill attempted to define his positon, conceding that ‘the Ministry of Munitions has nothing to do with strategy and tactics’ and ‘he should express no official opinion on such subjects unless he is invited to be present as a minister of the crown at a meeting of the War Cabinet where such matters are raised, or is authorised by the Prime Minster to draw up a paper dealing with them’, but on the other hand, ‘in the sphere of material, the Minster of Munitions is entitled to review and examine the whole of our resources and to express his convictions as to the best use that can be made of them’. He was particularly concerned that ‘At present the Admiralty claim a super priority upon all supplies … even in regard to comparatively commonplace needs.’¹⁷

Certainly he still had strong views on how the navy should be run and supplied, and paradoxically his time at the Admiralty made him even more suspicious of their demands. He wrote in December 1917:

… every naval officer has been brought up with the feeling that it was his duty to do his utmost to screw as much out of the Treasury and the House of Commons as possible. There was a great deal to be said for this in time of peace, and I myself profited enormously in wringing from Parliament and the Cabinet the necessary provisions. But it is no longer a question of extracting from peace-time indulgence or Treasury thrift the greatest possible supply for the upkeep of the Navy, but rather a question of draining the last drops of blood from the soldiers in the trenches and the last ounces of energy from the munitions factories.¹⁸

He went on: ‘I am told that the construction of light cruisers of the largest kind, and battlecruisers, and the manufacture of heavy guns, is actually being proceeded with at the present time on a large scale …. It seems to me a very grievous thing that any warships other than for anti-submarine purposes, should be proceeded with at the present time.’¹⁹

Shells were the original priority of the ministry, and it was found that the Germans were using ones with false noses to give greater range. Churchill suggested ways of fitting existing British shells in response.²⁰ He advocated a much greater use of trench mortars and short-range artillery firing from trench to trench and supported increased production of the 6-inch howitzer.²¹ In March 1918 he was suggesting a gas attack on a large scale and the next month he corresponded with General Rawlinson about which types to use, including the new mustard gas. Churchill believed that ‘the Germans have very great difficulties in procuring the materials out of which good masks are made and are at a disadvantage in that respect’.²² A new method had been adopted for the manufacture of rifle bullets, and the Germans claimed that they were in effect ‘dum-dum’ which had now been banned by the Hague Convention. Churchill denied this in the War Cabinet and suggested that if the Germans instituted reprisals, they should use counter-reprisals.²³

The ministry had taken control of aircraft production early in 1917 and Churchill was well aware how much the picture had changed since his days with the Royal Naval Air Service. The number of aircraft in service in the Royal Flying Corps had expanded from 179 in August 1914 to 3,929 in January 1917; in the RNAS the figures were 93 and 1,567 respectively.²⁴ The pusher biplane was almost extinct and the monoplane was out of favour; the tractor biplane dominated the skies. The fighter aircraft had advanced since the development of the Constantinesco interrupter gear made it possible to fire through the propeller, and the most successful fighter of the war, the Sopwith Camel, entered service at the RNAS base at Dunkirk just as Churchill was taking up his new office.²⁵ It was a direct descendent of the Tabloids which he had known in 1914. Its main functions were to defend the homeland, now being attacked by twin-engined Gotha bombers as well as Zeppelins, and to gain air superiority over the Western Front – 1917 would see classic air battles against units such as the famous Richthofen Circus. The British, unlike the French and Germans, tended to emphasise team effort rather than individual brilliance, but ‘aces’ such as Mick Mannock and James McCudden gained a good deal of popular acclaim before their deaths in July 1918. The main purpose of air superiority was support for the army in the form of reconnaissance and spotting for artillery fire, but large-scale bombing of the trenches was advocated by Churchill’s old friend General Barnes, who wrote from the front in November 1917: ‘… the winning or losing of this war (bar submarines) depends on one thing, and that is real supremacy in the air. … I am sure bombing from the air – now really only in its infancy – is going to make it impossible for the weaker side in the air to fight. … Last night we were bombed continuously with hundreds of bombs, and it fairly opened one’s eyes, and mark you there is no protection possible.’²⁶

Two-seater aircraft were developed for these purposes, including the excessively stable RE8, the classic Bristol Fighter and the DH9 bomber. At sea, most of the RNAS’s aircraft operated from shore bases and the Short 184 was still the standard torpedo bomber, though being replaced. Aircraft were now being launched from the gun turrets of capital ships and cruisers although there was no means of recovering them. Squadron Commander Dunning landed on the converted foredeck of Fisher’s eccentric battlecruiser Furious, but lost his life in the second attempt and it was clear that a carrier with a completely flat deck was needed – the first one, the Argus, was ordered to be converted from a liner late in 1916. Meanwhile Churchill was a strong advocate of bombing German industry using the Handley Page 0/400, developed from the machine Sueter had ordered in 1915. In September 1917 Churchill was confident that the ‘immense programme of aeroplane construction’ would be achieved.²⁷ But by March 1918 he was aware that it might be held up by shortage of machine guns, while engines were always a bottleneck. In August 1918 he complained: ‘It would be disastrous if after having made for all these months immense preparations to bomb Germany … and having our organisation and plant prepared in all respects except one, the effort should be rendered abortive through lack of the last one, viz a comparatively small number of Liberty engines.’²⁸ Despite all the difficulties landplane production increased from 14,832 in 1917 to 30,782 in 1918.²⁹

In the meantime, plans grew to form a new Air Ministry, on a par with the Admiralty and War Office and combining the aircraft of the army and navy. Surprisingly Beatty, now commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, accepted in August 1917 that the air services to the fleet ‘could be performed from the naval point of view under an Air Ministry as they are under existing conditions’.³⁰ Churchill however ‘anticipated no great difficulty in combining the principle of a uniform air service with the recognition of the special needs of the navy’.³¹ It was finally formed on 1 April 1918 to take charge of the new Royal Air Force, and it took over Churchill’s role in supplying aircraft.

Perhaps because he was now above inter-service rivalries, in October 1917 Churchill produced an extremely balanced and far-sighted paper on the future of air power. He described how there were no flanks in the land war, but Germany could exploit the situation by sea.

If we take, on the one hand, the amount of national life-energy which the Germans have put into their submarine attack and compare it with the amount of national life-energy we are compelled to devote to meeting and overcoming that attack, it will be apparent what a fearfully profitable operation this attack on our communications has been to the enemy. Would it be an exaggeration to say that for one war-power unit Germany has applied to the submarine attack we have been forced to assign fifteen or twenty?

An attack on bases was even better than one on communications, though Churchill rejected the more extreme claims of the proponents of air power.

It is improbable that any terrorization of the civil population which could be achieved by air attack could compel the government of a great nation to surrender. Familiarity with bombardment, a good system of dug-outs and shelters, a strong control by police and military authorities, should be sufficient to preserve the national fighting spirit unimpaired. … Therefore our air offensive consistently be directed at striking at the bases and communications upon whose structure the fighting power of his armies and his fleets of the sea and of air depends. … Any injury which comes to the civil population from this process of attack must be regarded as incidental and inevitable.

So far air attack had not been investigated fully because of the ‘dominating and immediate interests of the army and the navy’, and an air staff was needed to study it. He advocated specially trained ‘bomb droppers’ who would be the equivalent of naval gunlayers, so that bombs could be dropped in salvos as in naval warfare, and they should aim to ‘straddle’ the target. But first air supremacy had to be achieved: ‘… the primary objective of our air forces become plainly apparent, viz. the air bases of the enemy and the consequent destruction of his air fighting forces. All other objectives, however tempting, however necessary it may be to make provision for attacking some of them, must be regarded as subordinate to the primary purpose.’ But once air superiority was won, bombing was not the only option. ‘Considerable parties of soldiers could be conveyed by air to the neighbourhood of bridges or other important points, and, having overwhelmed the local guard, could from the ground effect a regular and permanent demolition.’

He also discussed land warfare, commenting: ‘… if one side discovered, developed, and perfected a definite method of advancing continuously, albeit it on a fairly limited front, a decisive defeat would be inflicted upon the other’.³² He might have had cause to remember these words in 1940.

Churchill was also responsible for the safety of factories and workers during air raids, and in October 1917 he ordered that they should have dug-outs with overhead cover at least two layers deep ‘with as wide an air space as possible in between the upper or detonating platform and the lower or actual roof’. Unless they were absolutely bomb-proof, they were to be divided to contain the blast. But they need not be perfect: ‘Any shelter is better than none.’ On a wider scale he wrote: ‘I consider that, generally speaking, people are entitled to a safe shelter within reasonable distance of their homes or their work. I consider that in or near each street a house or houses should be prepared which affords reasonable security to the residents …’.³³

The tank was of course one of Churchill’s pet projects, and he believed that a year had been lost due to uncertainty about it.³⁴ A thousand had been ordered at the time of the Battle of the Somme, mostly Mark IVs which began delivery in April 1917. The Mark V, first tested in March that year, had a greatly improved driving system in contrast to the old one which needed the attention of four men. The first light tank, known as the Medium Mark A or the Whippet, was intended to exploit any breakthrough with a relatively high speed and it was first delivered in March 1918, in time to fight the German offensive. In April General Tudor wrote: ‘I wish we had had some Whippets here: I have not believed in them, except originally as a great surprise used in large numbers. But I feel a few fast ones could have done great work here, especially if constructed to give good observation.’³⁵ Churchill wanted to expand the tank corps from 600–700 tanks and 18,000 men to a huge force of 10,000 tanks and 55,000 men, though of course he had to persuade the army and his cabinet colleagues of that.³⁶ An Anglo-American tank factory was started at Chateauroux in France, but Churchill came to regard it as ‘an international scandal’ and could not procure either the labour or the organisation to complete it.³⁷ He was not short of ideas and suggested tanks which could ‘traverse the kind of inundations that are found on the Flanders Front’ and imitation tanks which could serve to fool the enemy as well as training the infantry in co-operation with them.³⁸ He had a real one sent to his constituency in Dundee, describing it as ‘This powerful weapon of war’, ‘a thoroughly British conception’ which had ‘proved on numerous occasions a method of saving lives and winning victories’.³⁹ He recognised that the Germans might develop anti-tank guns, but he advocated the use of smoke and darkness, and better tactical training with the infantry.⁴⁰ He now believed that the horse was obsolete in warfare and the cavalry should be mounted in tanks so that ‘these splendid regiments’ could be ‘given a fair opportunity in the modern field’.⁴¹

By the end of 1917 Churchill was predicting: ‘It looks as if the failure of the submarine attack as a decisive factor must leave the Germans no resource but a great offensive in the west. … I wish them joy of it … thank God our offensives are at an end.’⁴² He visited the front as often as possible, and in May 1918 he suggested to Haig that he should have ‘a permanent lodging’ assigned to him.⁴³ He was allocated a chateau at Verchocq, ‘very comfortable, simple and clean’ with a bedroom containing ‘fine and old’ wood carved furniture.⁴⁴ He told Lloyd George: ‘It is a very beautiful place, with the most lovely trees, and you might do far worse than spend a few days here.’⁴⁵ He continued to provide vivid accounts to his wife, who commented: ‘How much better you describe things than the most brilliant newspaper correspondent. But I forget. You were one once.’⁴⁶

In February he was at doing munitions business at Tramecourt: ‘a fairly long day on ammunition, tanks and gas with the different people who supply’, but he could not help but notice that he was close to the battlefield of Agincourt. By the 23rd he was much happier – ‘I have been enjoying myself so much, and have had such very interesting days and pleasant evenings.’ He had visited General Lipsett and General Barnes, his old companion in the 4th Hussars and Cuba. He had seen his old headquarters at Plug Street where the British trenches had moved forward about a mile and everything else was destroyed except a dugout which he had built and a convent he had drained. He worked with his shorthand writer and ‘polished off two bags’ before noon. In the afternoon he was moved on a visit to Ypres where thousands of British soldiers had lost their lives in three battles. He walked at least five hours each day, mostly on duckboard tracks, to view the sites whose names were known to the public only in newspaper reports: ‘… finally we got to Glencorse Wood and Polygon Wood. These consist of a few score of torn and splintered stumps only. But the view of the battle field is remarkable, Desolation reigns on every side. Litter, mud, the rusty wire and the pock-marked ground – Very few soldiers to be seen, mostly in “pill boxes” captured from the industrious Hun …. The Passchendaele Ridge was too far for us to reach but the whole immense area of slaughter was visible. … Many of our friends and my contemporaries all perished here. Death seems as commonplace and as little alarming as to the undertaker.’ He noticed that it was now possible to walk in the open without being fired on by snipers, and thought the Germans were ‘so bored by the war, that they cannot even be bothered to kill a few passers by’. But the British continued to shoot at every opportunity, at least when Churchill was there.⁴⁷ Then he retired to the Ritz in Paris where he was ‘amusing’, according to the American writer Mary Borden.⁴⁸

On 19 March Churchill was already on his fifth visit to France as Minster of Munitions and in a conference on tank production when Haig called him into his private room and showed him an enormous concentration of troops opposite the British sector of the front. He visited his old friend General Tudor, in charge of the 9th Division, and went into the trenches where ‘a deathly and suspicious silence brooded over the whole front’. That night Tudor told him: ‘It is certainly coming now. Trench raids this evening have identified no less than eight enemy battalions in a single half-mile of the front.’ On 21 March he was in a chemical warfare conference when the Germans, deploying troops from the dormant Russian front, launched what Churchill called ‘the greatest onslaught in the history of the world’.⁴⁹ He returned to London on the 23rd and visited the War Office to get the latest information. In the garden of Downing Street Lloyd George asked him about the prospects and he answered optimistically ‘that every offensive lost its force as it proceeded. It was like throwing a bucket of water over the floor. It first rushed forward, then soaked forward, and finally stopped altogether until another bucket could be brought.’ He helped to encourage the War Cabinet and suggested raising the age of conscription to 55. To General Sir Henry Wilson he was ‘a real gem in a crisis, and reminded me of August 1914’.⁵⁰ He also urged the Prime Minister to take 50,000 men from the fleet, including most of the marines, and to extend conscription to Ireland.⁵¹ But back home with his wife he spent his most anxious night of the war worrying about the crisis.⁵² In the meantime he recognised his main responsibility was to keep the army supplied in the crisis. ‘Everywhere the long-strained factories rejected the Easter breathing space which health required. One thought dominated the whole gigantic organisation. Guns, shells, rifles, ammunition, Maxim guns, Lewis guns, tanks, aeroplanes and 1,000 ancillaries were all gathered from our jealously hoarded reserves. Risks are relative, and I decided, without subsequent misadventure, to secure a month’s supply of guns by omitting the usual firing tests.’⁵³

Churchill went back to France on the 28th despite official discouragement and a message from Lloyd George ‘to stick to Paris and not go directing strategy at the French GHQ’.⁵⁴ He was mildly encouraging in a telegram to Lloyd George, reporting: ‘My impression was that the British Front was holding well in spite of continuous attack, but that the strain was great, the resources narrowing, and there was serious anxiety to know when and how the French will intervene in real force.’⁵⁵ He visited the Somme Montdidier front with Prime Minster Clemenceau, whom he compared with Fisher in style, but ‘much more efficient’.⁵⁶ He reported that the French were doing everything they could but the Germans were very strong and could now shell the Amiens-Paris railway. At midnight on the 31st he reported that no serious attack had taken place that day, and on 1 April he asked the Prime Minister to come over to sort out differences between the British and French commanders. He did, and it was agreed to put General Foch in over all command as the situation began to stabilise.⁵⁷ Churchill was in Haig’s headquarters on 29 April when there was near panic as it was reported that Mont Rouge and Mont Vidaigne had been taken. He headed out there but the French commander telephoned that it was all a mistake, nothing had happened.⁵⁸

He flew back to France early in June, piloted by Lieutenant Cyril Patteson of the Royal Engineers, known as ‘the canary’. The Germans were still only 45 miles from Paris and he endured an air raid in the city. A critical battle, a ‘blunt trial of strength’ was raging on the Montdidier-Noyon front and it seemed to be going well. He planned to fly back to Kenley aerodrome south of London.⁵⁹ In the meantime he had to fight against key men being drafted into the army. In July he wrote: ‘Since the beginning of the year we have released no fewer than 100,000 men, nearly all of whom are skilled men, for military service. We have been deprived of all Grade I men of 19 to 20 without excepting even draughtsmen, men employed in making gauges, breech mechanisms, optical instruments and vital pivotal men.’ He gave the example of the Glasgow optical firm of Barr and Stroud which was making an anti-aircraft height finder. Thirty men were about to be withdrawn which would postpone the introduction of this valuable instrument. Moreover ‘men taken from industry after July will not reach the battle-front in time to influence the decision’.⁶⁰ Again he was hard on the navy, suggesting in March that ‘… the navy increased its complements after I left by 25% above the full approved war establishment. Their whole use of man power is luxurious. … Fighting men are the need.’⁶¹ In September he suggested sending sailors to the Western Front in an echo of the Royal Naval Division idea. ‘There could be no better form for a naval contribution than to supply the men necessary to steer and manage, say, the last 2,000 British tanks to be completed before the battle.’⁶²

Churchill flew out again in August, passing over the current family home at Lullenden south of London, where he urged his wife to take the children for safety from air raids. Wilson had announced to the War Cabinet that the British attack was about to open and the allied armies were advancing. Churchill was driven through Amiens and Villers Bretonneux, about 500 yards behind the lines which the Germans had held the day before. He rejoiced to see the tracks made by the ‘invincible’ tanks and to hear that Australian armoured cars had rushed through as soon as the enemy line was broken. He was beginning to believe that the tide had turned. He saw prisoners of war and from personal experience he sympathised with their ‘miserable plight and dejection’ though he was ‘very glad to see them where they were’.⁶³ He still had to work and was ‘cooped up in conferences hour after hour’. Representatives of the four major powers – Britain, France the USA and Italy – were meeting to co-ordinate munitions supplies and each had to take a smaller nation under its wing. Churchill commented ungraciously that Portugal was ‘a rather dirty brat’.⁶⁴

Churchill listened as General Sir Henry Wilson stood in front of a map in the cabinet room and outlined a battle plan in characteristic style. ‘This morning, sir, a new battle. … This time it is we who have attacked. We have attacked with two armies – one British, one French. Sir Haig is in his train, Prime Minister, very uncomfortable, near the good city of Amiens. And Rawly [General Rawlinson] is in his left hand and Debeney in his right. Rawly is using five hundred tanks. It is a big battle, and we thought you would not like us to tell you about it beforehand.’⁶⁵ This time the tactics were right, the armies would break through and begin to push the Germans back to their frontier.

Churchill was back in France again in September despite Clementine’s complaints that ‘You have been away for nearly a month with your two visits – you bad vagrant.’ She watched from St Margaret’s Bay near Dover as his aircraft flew through a thunderstorm but ‘the canary’ was untroubled – he was ‘much alarmed by motor cars and thinks them far more dangerous than aeroplanes’. And Churchill exulted that ‘It gives me a feeling of tremendous conquest over space …’.⁶⁶ Once there, he was delighted that the soldiers received him ‘with the broadest of grins and many a friendly shout and hand wave’. It was even better than the valuable estate he had recently inherited. He wrote to Clementine: ‘The ruin of the countryside was complete. A broad belt of desert land stretches across the front in some places 30 miles wide without a tree that is not a blasted stump or a house that is not a heap of bricks. Everywhere pain and litter and squalor and the abomination of desolation. … Most of our dead are already buried, but a number of German blue grey bundles still lie about.’⁶⁷ On 26 September he was in Paris when he heard that Germany’s ally Bulgaria had given in. He knew that the end of the war was in sight as the enemy powers collapsed one by one and Germany demanded peace. On a visit near the front, he did not realise how irregular the line was and came very close to the enemy near the village of Desselghem, with shells bursting 50 yards away.⁶⁸

He was back in his office in Northumberland Avenue and looking out of a window as the Armistice took effect on the eleventh hour of 11 November 1918. The street was deserted as the first stroke of Big Ben rang out. ‘Then from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street. … The bells of London began to clash. Northumberland Avenue was now crowded with people in hundreds, nay, thousands, rushing hither and thither in a frantic manner, shouting and screaming with joy. … Around me in our very headquarters, … disorder had broken out. Doors banged. Feet clattered down corridors. Everyone rose from his desk and cast aside pen and paper. All bonds were broken.’⁶⁹