situation too timidly. It seemed an
anomaly that a deserter at the battle-
front should have to suffer the extreme



war, as the result of the introduction
into parliament by the Asquith govern-
ment of a bill granting Home Rule for
Ireland, Ireland had been on the verge
of civil war. The Protestant people
of the North of Ireland, under the
leadership of Sir Edward Carson, had
organized an army of "Ulster Volun-
teers", had imported arms from Ger-
many, and had announced their de-
termination to resist by force of arms




THE GRAVE OF MAJOR REDMOND IN A CONVENT GARDEN

Major William Redmond, M.P., brother of Mr. John Redmond, the Irish Nationalist leader, was mortally wounded
April 26, 1917, during the successful attack on Messines Ridge. His body was taken to the little village of Loecre
behind the lines and there buried in the private garden of the convent Photograph British Official

the application of Home Rule to
Ireland; and the Roman Catholic
South of Ireland had replied with the
formation of a volunteer army of its



penalty when deserters on the home-
front got off scot-free.

HE OUTBREAK OF THE IRISH REBELLION.



The most disastrous failure of the
Coalition Government in domestic
affairs was its handling of the Irish
question. Ireland has always been
a thorn in the side of England at times
of crisis. It was so at the time of the
Puritan Revolution, at the time of the
Revolution of 1688 and during the
Napoleonic Wars. But at no time
was it more so than during the Great
War of 1914-1918. In the spring of
1914, just before the outbreak of the

654



own.

The declaration of war had had a
sobering effect on both parties. The
question of Home Rule for Ireland,
together with other contentious meas-
ures, was shelved for the time being;
and both the Ulstermen, under Sir
Edward Carson, and the Irish Nation-
alists, under Mr. John Redmond, sank
their differences, and united to support
the government in its war policy against
Germany. Mr. Redmond actually



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR




DUBLIN POST OFFICE

The portico of the gutted Post Office a scene of
devastation, dust and debris. Photograph taken from
the lofty Nelson Pillar.

went on the stump and delivered re-
cruiting speeches; and if the people
of Ireland had followed his lead full-
heartedly, it is possible that they
might have converted, not only the
people of Great Britain, but even the
people of Ulster, to Home Rule.

It is significant that the way in
which the female suffrage organizations
of Great Britain suspended their agita-
tion, and threw themselves heart and
soul into the war, resulted in the con-
cession of their demands in 1918;
and it is reasonable to suppose that if
the Irish had followed their example,
they, too, would have established an
irresistible claim to consideration. But
unfortunately the hatred of England
was so deep-rooted in Irish breasts, the
distrust of England was so ineradicable
in Irish minds, that the people of Ire-
land were not able to rise to the height
of their opportunities.

>-pHE SINN FEIN ORGANIZATION GROWS
1 STRONGER.

Early in 1915 it became clear that
Mr. Redmond had failed to carry with



him a large body of Irish opinion.
There had been founded in Ireland
about ten years before the outbreak
of the war, an Irish republican organiza-
tion named Sinn Fein, which had as
its ideal the complete independence of
Ireland, and which was virtually a
revival of the Fenian organization
of the middle of the nineteenth century.
The leaders of this movement were
chiefly dreamers, doctrinaires, and
fanatics. They now showed themselves
willing to sacrifice on the altar of Irish
nationalism all those ideals for which
Great Britain and her allies were
fighting. They discouraged recruiting;
they formed a secret revolutionary
organization; they organized an army
of Irish Volunteers, not to fight against
the Germans, but to embarrass the
British; and they did not hesitate, as
subsequent events showed, to ally
themselves with the Germans, to
accept German aid, and to champion
the German cause. Anti-recruiting
meetings were held; posters discourag-
ing recruiting were openly displayed;




IMPERIAL HOTEL, DUBLIN

Ruin of the Imperial Hotel, Dublin, as seen from the
top of the Nelson Pillar. Not a room in the building
remained intact.

655



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



seditious literature was published broad-
cast, and the police in the execution
of their right of search were met by
armed resistance.

The Irish Secretary in the Coalition
Government was Mr. Augustine Bir-
rell, a genial man of letters, a humani-
tarian Liberal, a believer in the best
side of human nature. An enemy of
the policy of repression, he showed
himself loth to use drastic measures in
dealing with the Sinn Fein agitation.
After the rebellion which broke* out,
he admitted to having held "an untrue
estimate of the Sinn Fein movement,
not of its character, or of the probable
numbers of persons engaged in it, nor
of the localities where it was most to
be found, nor of its frequent disloyal-
ties; but of the possibility of disturb-
ances, of the mode of fighting which
has been pursued, and of the desperate
folly displayed by the leaders and
their dupes." But whatever the mo-
tives which actuated the British govern-
ment, the result of their policy was
disastrous. On April 24, 1916, the
Sinn Feiners issued a proclamation
"from the Provisional Government
of the Irish Republic to the People
of Ireland", which called on the Irish
people to rise; and the same day
armed rebellion broke out in Dublin
and in other places.

SIR ROGER CASEMENT LANDS IN IRE-
LAND.

For some time German arms, am-
munition, and money had been finding
their way into Ireland. Only four
days before the rebellion, for example,
a German auxiliary, in the guise of a
neutral merchant ship, acting in con-
junction with a German submarine,
had attempted to land arms and am-
munition on the Irish coast; and Sir
Roger Casement, a former British
official who had been in Germany,
actually succeeded in landing from
the submarine only to be captured a
few days later, and to suffer ultimately
the penalty of high treason. Armed
with German rifles and cartridges, and
garbed in a sort of uniform, the Sinn
Feiners attempted on April 24 a coup
d'etat in Dublin. They occupied St.
Stephen's Green, seized the Post Office,

656



took possession of the ammunition
magazine in Phoenix Park, captured
the Four Courts and other important
buildings, barricaded the streets in
the neighborhood of Dublin Castle,
cut the telegraph and telephone wires,
and attacked the 3rd Royal Irish
Regiment when the latter attempted to
relieve the Castle. In Charles Street
a British cavalry regiment was sur-
rounded and besieged for over three
days, until it was relieved.

The outbreak seems to have taken
the authorities by surprise. There does
not seem to have been in the vicinity
of Dublin a sufficient number of troops
to cope with the rebellion. For several
days the rebels were in virtual control
of Dublin, and all the authorities
could do was to hold the Castle and
the Custom House. But gradually
troops began to pour in; a cordon was
drawn around the district in which
the rebels were concentrated ; field guns
were brought up to bombard the van-
tage-points which the rebels had seized ;
and on April 29 the rebels surrendered
unconditionally.

THE LONG ROLL OF CASUALTIES DURING
THE UPRISING.

In the street-fighting which occurred
during the rebellion, there were many
casualties and some "unfortunate in-
cidents" on both sides. The military
casualties were 521, of whom 124
were killed; and the civilian casualties,
so far as known, were 794, of whom
1 80 were killed. Many buildings were
destroyed, and millions of pounds
worth of damage was done. Mr. John
Healy, the editor of the Irish Times,
who was an eye-witness of the rebellion,
declared that "there must be no mis-
take about the uprising. It was brutal,
bloody, savage business. It was marked
by many cases of shocking and callous
cruelty. Innocent civilians were butch-
ered in cold blood. Unarmed policemen
and soldiers were shot down. As the
result of promiscuous looting and
incendiarism one of the finest public
buildings in Ireland, and the most
important commercial centre of Dublin,
are in ashes. The full toll of death will
never be known." To the rank and
file of the rebels clemency was extended,



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



which was interpreted by some of
them as a sign of weakness on the part
of the government; but the leaders of
the rebellion were duly tried and ex-
ecuted, and thus the rebellion ended,
as it was bound to end, in a tragic
fiasco.

Under normal circumstances, the
whole British Cabinet would have
been compelled to bear the blame for
the failure of their Irish policy. But
the European situation was in 1916
so critical that the resignation of the
government would have been a calamity ;
and Mr. Birrell, whom a Royal Com-
mission found mainly responsible for
"the situation that was allowed to
arise and the outbreak that occurred,"
was made the scapegoat for his col-
leagues, and forced to resign. But
there can be little doubt that the
Irish tragedy seriously undermined
the prestige of the government, and
was a factor in bringing about its fall.

THE FINAL DOWNFALL OF THE COALITION
CABINET.

As 1916 wore on, evidences of dis-
satisfaction with the Coalition Cabinet
increased. Criticism became louder
and more vigorous with regard to a
great number of phases of the govern-
ment's policy. The comparative fail-
ure of British diplomacy in the Bal-
kans; the lack of unity in the work of
the Air Forces; the supineness of the
Admiralty, where Mr. Balfour was
considered out of place, and especially
its failure to scotch the growing sub-
marine menace; the slackness of the
British blockade of Germany; the
failure to grapple with the serious
decline of the British merchant ship-
ping; the inertia of the government
with regard to food production and
food control; the mishandling of the
question of the distribution of man-
power; the slowness in winding up the
German banks in England these,
and other, matters came in for the
frankest strictures. As in 1915, the
Northcliffe press led in the chorus of
denunciation. At the beginning of
December, 1916, the Sunday Times
described the government as "mud-
dlers, " and the Daily Mail character-
ized them as "The Limpets a National



Danger." Some of the members of
the Cabinet were held up to ridicule
as "idle septuagenarians;" and the
general attitude of the Cabinet was
lampooned as one of inaction and
indecision.

THE FAILURE OF THE CABINET TO ACT
PROMPTLY.

The actual crisis, when it came,
however, occurred not over any of the
questions which have been enumerated,
but over the question of the reorganiza-
tion of the cabinet system. It had
early been recognized that "a body
of 23 men of very unequal ability,
tired by their departmental labors, and
meeting every day for a couple of
hours, was, indeed, an impossible
machinery for making war. " Such a
system was well described as "govern-
ment by debating society. " In Nov-
ember, 1915, a standing War Commit-
tee of the Cabinet had been created,
composed of the prime minister and
five other ministers; but this com-
mittee, though a step in the right
direction, was still open to grave
objections. Its members were still
heads of departments, engrossed in the
details of departmental administration ;
its decisions were subject to ratification
by the Cabinet as a whole; and owing
to its practice of calling in technical
and official advisers, as well as min-
isters from other departments, it be-
came hardly less cumbrous a body
than the Cabinet itself.

T* /TR. ASQUITH IS COMPELLED TO RESIGN.

In the summer of 1916 Lord Kitchen-
er, when on his way to Russia, had
met his death when the battleship
on which he was traveling had been
sunk by an enemy mine or submarine;
and Lloyd George had succeeded him
as Secretary for War. It was not long
before Lloyd George, with his keen
sense for organization, became dis-
satisfied with the existing machinery
for prosecuting the war. At the be-
ginning of December he proposed a
plan for the reduction in size of the
War Committee, the exclusion from
it of ministers immersed in depart-
mental business, and the investment
of it with full authority to deal with

657



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



all questions of war and strategy,
without reference to the whole cabinet.
This plan might have been accepted
had it not been that it was definitely
stipulated that the prime minister
should not be a member of the com-
mittee. This stipulation Mr. As-
quith naturally refused to approve:
and a few days later he charged that
there had been a " well-organized care-



upon applied to Mr. Lloyd George,
"the man of the hour"; and on De-
cember 10 the latter announced the
formation of a new " Win-the- War "
government.

THE LLOYD GEORGE MINISTRY IS
FORMED

The new Cabinet differed profoundly
from the old. Not only was a clean
sweep made of the old-fashioned school




THE BISHOP OF LONDON "RECRUITING"

The Church in Britain as in every country vehemently espoused the cause of war as the cause of right. This picture
of the Bishop of London was taken during one of the great recruiting drives frequent in England before the com-
pulsory service act of May 1916. The British as a nation were set against conscription, and it required almost
two years' casualty lists to prove the unsatisfactoriness of the voluntary system. Underwood & Underwood.



fully engineered conspiracy" against
himself and some other members of
the cabinet. However this may have
been, when he refused to accept Mr.
Lloyd George's plan the latter re-
signed, and thus precipitated a crisis
which immediately brought about the
resignation of Mr. Asquith and the
whole of the Cabinet. The King first
invited Mr. Bonar Law, the leader
of the Unionist party, to form an
administration: but Mr. Bonar Law,
who appears to have worked in har-
mony with Mr. Lloyd George during
the crisis, found himself unable to
accomplish the task. The King there-

658



of politicians, such as Mr. Asquith,
Lord Grey, and Lord Lansdowne, but
there was a liberal infusion of new
blood in the Cabinet. A number of
self-made business men, such as Lord
Rhondda and Sir Albert Stanley, were
included; Labor was represented by
Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. John
Hodge, and Mr. George N. Barnes;
education was placed in the hands of
a distinguished British scholar, Mr.
H. A. L. Fisher ; shipping was assigned to
Sir Joseph Maclay, a great ship-owner;
and agriculture was., placed under
Mr. R. E. Prothero, a well-known
authority on food production. To a



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR




COAL-WOMENONADAILYROUND IN GLASGOW

It was not only the light work that the women of Great
Britain took over in order to free men for service at the
front. "Doing their bit" required grit and endurance.

large extent the Cabinet was one of
experts and business men.

Another new development was the
creation of an "Inner Cabinet", or
War Cabinet. This War Cabinet was
given complete charge of the general
direction of the war, without the
necessity of reporting its decisions to
the whole Cabinet. It was composed
of five members, Mr. Lloyd George,
Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, Mr. Arthur
Henderson, and Mr. Bonar Law; and
all of these ministers, with the exception
of Mr. Bonar Law, who was Chancellor
of the Exchequer, were relieved of all
departmental duties. It was even
decided that the prime minister, as
the head of the War Cabinet, should
be relieved from the burden of at-
tendance in the House of Commons;
and the leadership of the Commons
devolved on Mr. Bonar Law.

THE EFFECT OF THE ORGANIZATION OF
THE WAR CABINET.

This arrangement marked a distinct
step in advance in the organization
of the government for war; it provided
the most effective instrument which
Great Britain had as yet had for the



HELPMATES AT HOME

This picture shows a form of service that was quite
heavy for women to perform, namely wheeling coke
to fill trucks at Coventry gasworks.

unified direction of the war, while it
left the heads of departments free to
devote their whole energies to their
administrative duties. It paved the
way, moreover, for one of the most
interesting developments of the British
Constitution in the last century or
more, the Imperial War Cabinet, a
development which offers at least
the possibility of the solution of the
intricate problem of the government
of the British Empire. On the other
hand, the dictatorial powers enjoyed
by the War Cabinet threw into relief
the decline which had taken place
in the authority of Parliament.

Once the necessity was removed of
keeping the ministry within the bounds
of an executive committee, the number
of departments in the government
began steadily to increase. A Min-
istry of Labor and a Ministry of Pen-
sions, an Air Board and a Ministry
of Blockade, the office of Shipping
Controller and that of Food Controller,
a Ministry of National Service and a
Ministry of Reconstruction all these
were created in rapid succession, until
the number of administrative depart-

659



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



ments was almost double that of the
pre-war period. At one time it was
estimated that the number of new
departments, boards, commissions, and
committees exceeded the total of four
hundred.

NEW AND DIFFICULT PROBLEMS ARE
CREATED.

This multiplication of departments
and agencies of government produced
an inevitable overlapping and duplica-
tion of business; and it soon became
clear that it created as many problems
as it solved. Lord Curzon admitted
in the House of Lords that most of the
time of the War Cabinet was taken
up with the adjustment of internal
disputes between the ministers. The
jurisdiction of the Food Controller
clashed with that of the President of
the Board of Agriculture; the new
Ministry of Labor trenched upon the
spheres both of the Ministry of Mu-
nitions and of the Board of Trade, and
the Director of the new department
of National Service, which proved a
gigantic and expensive fiasco, resigned
because he had been left nothing to do.

But, despite these and other obvious
defects, the Lloyd George government
proved itself to be a distinct improve-
ment on either of the administrations
that had preceded it. It showed leader-
ship where its predecessors had had to
be pushed; its policy was thorough-
going and decisive where the policy
of its predecessors had been weak and
vacillating ; it was on time where they
had been "too late." The masterful
energy, the cheery optimism, the
indomitable courage of the new Prime
Minister infected the rest of the nation.
The years 1917 and 1918 were, for the
people of Great Britain, by all odds
the most trying and severe of the war.
Not only did the casualty lists spread
their tragic tidings among practically
every family in the country, but, as a
result of the German submarine war-
fare, the food supply of Great Britain
ran dangerously low. The war struck
home at the everyday life of English-
men as it had never done before. Yet,
under the inspiration of "the little
Welshman" who by sheer force of
character had risen from the humblest

660



to the highest position in the land,
the people of Great Britain met the
crisis with a serenity and a resolution
that had in it something of the heroic.

THE FOOD PROBLEM WAS THE MOST
CRITICAL.

The most critical problem the coun-
try had to face under the Lloyd George
government was probably that of
maintaining the food supply. In peace
time Great Britain had been a heavy
importer of food-stuffs; and during the
first two years of war, owing to the way
in which the army had drained off the
able-bodied men from the land, Great
Britain became even more dependent
than ever on foreign imports. Already,
however, in 1916 the difficulty of
keeping up the flow of imports had
made itself felt, partly owing to the
diversion of a vast amount of merchant
shipping to purely military and naval
uses, and partly owing to the growing
success of the German submarine cam-
paign.

It so happened that just after the
entrance into office of the Lloyd George
government the Germans embarked
on an unrestricted submarine offensive.
Hitherto they had used, out of defer-
ence to the United States and other
neutral powers, some discretion in their
use of the submarine weapon; but
now they threw caution to the winds,
and adopted a policy of sinking every-
thing on the high seas at sight. The
result was that the carrying trade of
the world became threatened with
extinction. In January, 1917, the
sinkings of British, Allied, and neutral
ships totaled 333,000 tons, in Feb-
ruary 470,000, in March 600,000, in
April 788,000, in May 540,000, in June
758,000, in July 463,000, and in August
591,000 a grand total of 4,561,000
tons in eight months. As against these
figures there stood only a total of
1,500,000 tons of new shipping launched
in the same period so that Great
Britain and her Allies had to face
in these few months a net shrinkage
of over 3,000,000 tons of shipping.
And this loss represented not only
a serious reduction of carrying space,
but it meant also the complete de-
struction of vast cargoes of food-stuffs,



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



coal, munitions of war, and other
commodities.

jy If EASURES TAKEN TO RELIEVE THE FOOD
1V1 SHORTAGE.

Sir Edward Carson, who was First
Lord of the Admiralty during the
first half of 1917, has confessed that
during these terrible months there
were times when those at the Admiralty
could see no ray of light in the black
outlook. The Germans became jubi-
lant, and many of them regarded the
war as already won. Yet the British
government turned to face the new
peril undaunted, and to organize the
country to meet it. The measures
adopted by the government were of
five kinds. First, there were the purely
naval measures taken with a view to
crushing the submarine menace; second,
there were the measures taken to
increase the output of new shipping,
and to speed up the repair of damaged
shipping; third, th^re was a rigorous
restriction of imports, so that all cargo
space would be available for the im-
portation of essentials; fourth, a sys-
tem of food control, and also liquor
control, was set up which aimed at
limiting the consumption of food-stuffs
in the country; and fifth, a policy of
food production was inaugurated, which
had as its object the raising in Great
Britain itself of the maximum of food-
stuffs of which the country was capable.

The anti-submarine warfare was
one of the most thrilling and romantic
phases of the Great War. But the
story of the hunting of the submarines
by destroyers, motor-launches, sea-
planes, blimphs, and mystery ships, the
story of the mine-sweepers and of the
mine barrages, the story of the number-
less duels between lonely, merchant
vessels and gigantic submarine-cruisers
these things fall outside the scope
of this chapter. What does deserve
mention here, however, is the work
of the sailors of the merchant marine.
These heroic men, without even the
protection of the King's uniform, faced
daily danger and death as fearlessly
and gallantly as any bluejacket or
soldier; and if, in the end, the sub-
marine menace was held, if not mas-
tered, the credit was due no less to the



sailors of the merchant marine than
to those of the Royal Navy. If the
forecastle hands of the British mer-
chantmen had in any way failed in
their duty, as those of some of the
neutral countries failed, the results
would have been disastrous.




BORING OTSIDE BREECH PIECES OF HEAVY

GUNS

When the Ministry of Munitions was formed in England
women clamored to work in the factories, and govern-
ment schemes on a large scale were set on foot for their
employment.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE SHIPPING
CONTROLLER.

The work of the Shipping Controller
was not without its difficulties. The
lack of trained mechanics, strikes in the
shipyards, scarcity of materials, trou-
bles over the attempt to standardize
ships, delays in regard to the erection
of new shipyards all these things
retarded the hoped-for increase in the
output of -shipping. But gradually
these difficulties were overcome; and
by the end of 1917, while the losses of
shipping had begun to show a decided
downward curve, the curve of ship-
building was upward. The two curves