Each man should be a free citizen, with as much respect for his neighbor's rights and prerogatives as for his own." As compromise was the essence of government in England, so compromise became the essence of Kerensky's method and it was compromise that eventually led to his fall and flight.

Kerensky's proclamation of a republic in Russia, on September 17, without waiting for a Constitutional Convention, showed once · more how at that time he was the genius, as well as the leader, of the Revolution. The restraint he had exercised upon violence, the success with which he had met the intrigues of domestic reactionaries and foreign foes, the ability with which he had inspired and led a demoralized army, the comparative ease with which he had put down the Korniloff rebellion, and the boldness with which he presented to his countrymen the vision of a Russian republic, filled the world with a new hope that, so far as it was ever possible for one man to shape the destiny of a nation, Kerensky had been raised up for that task. Such Kerensky seemed, for many weeks, to all the world, none dreaming of his precipitate fall, the rise of the Bolsheviki and the frightful excesses that ensued under its dominance.4

47

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, PREMIER OF GREAT BRITAIN

Of Lloyd George's birth in Manchester, England, and his boyhood in Llanystymdwy, Wales; of his early loss of his father; of the uncle who, in humble circumstances, nobly promoted his education; of his rise as a lawyer and his activities as a member of Parliament in promoting the uplift of the common people, readers had read much before the war. Early in the war, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wider fame came to him and then fame still wider as Minister of Munitions. Finally he reached the topmost round of the politicians' ladder as Prime Minister of Great Britain, and dauntlessly saw the war through to victory and peace. "'E's the bloke wot they gets to do wot no other bloke can't, or else is 'fraid to," was the way Lewis R. Freeman 48 said he once heard a Cockney "publicist," in an informal debate in Hyde Park, London, characterize Lloyd George.

Lloyd George had fine ability and high courage. His were tasks that lack of "grasp" or of nerve has made other British statesmen unfit to perform. The salient facts of the "shell muddle" after Neuve Chapelle, and of how a special "Ministry of Munitions" was created to cope with the difficulties arising out of it, formed early in

"Adapted from an article compiled by Alexander Harvey for Current Opinion from The Daily Chronicle (London), Temps and Humanite (Paris), and from articles in The Evening Post, The Sun and The World (New York). 48 In an article in The Review of Reviews (London).

1915 a notable incident of the war. That fatal shortage of highexplosive shells which caused the British such frightful loss in their attempted offensive, and which became responsible for great changes in the war on both the Eastern and the Western Fronts, had been clearly foreseen by Lloyd George, as a consequence of a visit he made to the fighting-line in October, 1914. He was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Army officials, impatient of civilian interference, turned a deaf ear to his earnest warnings. Pinning their faith to shrapnel, they had laid the train that led to disaster. Repulsed by those who should have been vitally interested in what he had to reveal, Lloyd George then resolved to bend every effort to bring the truth home to the British Government and the British people. The alarm note rang clear through a speech he made at Bangor, Wales, in February, 1915, the keynote of which was thus exprest:

"This is an engineer's war, and it will be won or lost by the efforts or shortcomings of engineers. We need men, but we need arms more than men, and delay in producing them is full of peril to the country. We must appeal for the cooperation of employers, workmen, and the general public; the three must act and endure together, or we delay and may imperil victory. We ought to requisition the aid of every man who can handle metal.'

Lloyd George already had great prestige in England, but the grave import of his utterance did not at once strike home in any quarter where it could take effect. While the Ordnance Department was striving to increase the munition output, it made the fatal error of placing full dependence on a time-hallowed system of obtaining supplies from armament firms and sub-contractors who, even under normal conditions, could not turn out anything approaching an adequate supply. With railways and ports congested with transport work, and with trans-oceanic shipping facilities greatly reducedat times raw material was two months in going from New York to Birmingham, and six weeks from Liverpool to London—a breakdown became almost complete. One firm that had contracted to deliver 1,000,000 shells had ready only a pitiful 10,000; another that contracted for 500,000 delivered 45,000. To make matters worse, many of the shells that became available were not of a character best suited to the work in hand. Tenders from responsible American firms were ignored.

As a consequence the long-heralded "spring drive" of 1915 got no farther than a few lines of German trenches, and these were won at a cost in lives unparalleled in previous warfare. A really considerable French advance, the ultimate success of which was largely dependent on British cooperation, was almost stultified by a British

failure, and the Germans, now made safe for an indefinite period against an offensive on the Western Front, turned on the Russians, who at that time were almost ready to go through the Carpathian passes to the plains of Hungary-and so started their great eastward drive under Mackensen after the Dunajec battle. With McKenna amply equipped to fill Lloyd George's portfolio as Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was natural that the head of the new department, the Minister of Munitions, should be the Cabinet Minister who had foreseen the necessity of its formation almost since the outbreak of war. So it came about that the little Welshman with the sunniest of smiles, kindliest of eyes, warmest of hand-clasps, and love of his fellow men in his heart, bent his energy and his talent for organization to the task of building up for England a war-supply machine which, in the fulness of time, would rival that of Germany.

How this miracle was accomplished the public at the time did not know. The machine for it was a compact of units assembled from the ends of the United Kingdom. It started with a minimum of "lost motion," because its parts were selected with judgment and it ran true as day followed day as a consequence of being "oiled" by the tact and persuasiveness of the chief engineer, who set to work laying out the whole country into districts, each under its own committee of management. This body in each case consisted of heads of local manufacturing firms, assisted by a technical expert. In each district a bureau was established for giving advice and direction to factories in its own area. The engineers of this bureau decided such questions as the kind of work the existing machinery of any given factory was best fitted to perform with a minimum of alteration; the character and quantity of the new machinery needed; the competency of any factory to handle adequately a given order; and such advances of money as any factory was justified in demanding for war-work extensions. Through the reports of committees in each district the Ministry had an intelligence system which enabled it to anticipate and prevent congestion of orders in one district, or a shortage of orders in another. England, through its Ministry of Munitions, was now applying ordinary business methods to warsupply.

By a system of district control, a heterogeneous lot of labor was kept track of and sent where it would do the most good. Indeed, the handling of the laborer-both as a man and as a workman-as Lloyd George realized at the outset, was the crux of the whole problem. The most unskilled and unschooled of volunteers-everybody from noble dames and university professors to costermongers and girls from the sweatshops of Houndsditch and Petticoat Lanewere included among the thousands who took up this work of

patriotism. They had to work side by side with the most highly trained machinists. In inducing trades unions to concede this and other of their bitterly-fought-for privileges, Lloyd George was credited with one of the cleverest strokes in his career. Concessions from the unions included an agreement not to strike while on war work, and to suspend restrictive regulations limiting outputs for a given time. Nothing approaching so amicable an understanding between capital and labor, or between government and labor, ever before occurred in British industrial history.

But discontent broke out, and the deliberate charge was made that the Government was doing little or nothing to limit the abnormal "war profits" of the employers, and that these were, therefore, waxing fat at the expense of the working-man. Men were being robbed, these malcontents declared, and they challenged Lloyd George or any one else in the Government, to prove the contrary. The Minister of Munitions, recognizing the threat as well as the tactical possibilities of the occasion, snatched the gauntlet with eager hand. There was no time to prepare a set speech. But here was a chance to relieve himself of a burden of facts. He took a train to Bristol where was assembled a Labor Congress and at once addrest representatives of British labor as one man addresses another, words straight from his heart. He began his speech by telling delegates to that congress that they represented the most powerful force in the life of the country. "With you," said he, "victory is assured; without you, our cause is lost." Recalling to their minds a resolution they had passed a few days previously, pledging themselves to assist the Government in carrying on the war, he told them that he was there to take them at their word. To the charge that the Government had not kept its promise to intercept "war profits," he replied by showing how the state had taken control of practically all the engineering works of the country and was appropriating profits and employing them in the prosecution of the war. Simply but convincingly he showed that the Government was carrying out completely both the letter and the spirit of its promises:

"We have set up sixteen national arsenals and are constructing eleven more. We require, in order to run those the old and the new-and to equip works which are at present engaged on turning out the equipment of war, 80,000 more skilled men, but we require in addition to that 200,000 unskilled men and women. At present you have only got 15 per cent. of the machines which you could use for the turning out. of rifles, cannon and shells working night-shifts. If you could get plenty of labor to make these machines go night and day-ah, just think of the lives that could be saved! We are not trying to displace skilled workmen by unskilled. We have not enough skilled workmen to