ment.
The secrecy enforced upon the press produced many protests, until the Press Bureau was placed under the competent head- ship of an able journalist, Sir Edward Cook, and a Proioaaa- leading ex-colonial administrator, Sir Frank Swetten- ham. One urgent matter dealt with by Parliament (which sat continuously, with short intervals of pro- rogation or adjournment, throughout the war) was the question of its own existence, which under the Parliament Act should terminate in December of this year, but which was prolonged by statute this autumn, and by subsequent statutes in subsequent years, till after the conclusion of the war. Further powers were given to the Munitions Ministry by a bill passed in December; and Mr. Lloyd George, while claiming that the output of munitions had been prodigiously increased, urged the imperative need of further efforts, especially by the method of "diluting" skilled labour by the introduction of women. The footsteps of the Allies, he warned Parliament, had been dogged by the spectre of " Too late."
One vitally important matter, the finance of the war, was resolutely grappled with this autumn by the Coalition Govern- ment, and by Mr. McKenna, its Chancellor of the Exchequer. The cost of hostilities was rapidly mounting. In moving a Vote of Credit in Sept. for 250,000,000, the Prime Minister said that it had risen in the past half year from 2,700,000 to over 3,500,-
000 a day; in moving a similar Vote for 400,000,000 in Novem- ber, he estimated for an expenditure of 5,000,000 a day. In these circumstances a strenuous effort was made in the third war budget in September to raise a large portion of the outlay
by taxation. In the previous year Mr. Lloyd George Mr. He- had doubled the income-tax and super-tax, and rare?"' 5 greatly increased the taxes on beer and tea. Beer, Budget. which was now severely limited by the Board of Con-
trol, Mr. McKenna left alone. But he increased the income-tax once more by 40%, and reduced the exemption limit, while permitting payment in half-yearly instalments. Super- tax was also increased. He imposed a new excess-profits tax to tap the lucrative gains of war manufacture of 50 per cent. He increased the taxation on sugar enormously; added 50% more in duties on tea, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, chicory and dried fruits; raised the duty on motor spirits by 3d. a gallon, and doubled the patent-medicine duty. He abolished the halfpenny post, in- creased the 6d. telegram to gd., and made the press telegraph charges self-supporting. He undertook an entirely new departure by taxing foreign luxuries, putting a 333% ad valorem duty on imported motor-cars and cycles, cinema films, clocks, watches, musical instruments, plate-glass and hats. These new taxes were estimated to bring in 107,000,000; but he placed the expenditure at 1,590,000,000, and the revenue, on the basis of existing tax- ation, at 272,110,000, so that there was a wide margin still to be filled by borrowing. There was some attempt to raise in debate the issue of Free Trade and Protection; but with the exception of the plate-glass and hat taxes, which were abandoned, the budget had an easy passage through Parliament.
When the year 1916 opened there was a general agreement that the war had become to an enormous extent a war of attri-
tion, and the Cabinet therefore proceeded at once to
k" ng * n the Compulsory Service bill, to which circum- Bia. stances had, however reluctantly, driven them. It
was far from being universal. It merely treated un- attested single men and childless widowers between the ages of
1 8 and 40 as if they had attested under Lord Derby's group sys- tem. Ireland was excluded from the bill, and exemptions were allowed for ministers of religion, men medically rejected or physically unfit, those employed in necessary national work, those who were the sole support of dependents, and " conscien- tious objectors " to combatant service. Tribunals were set up to deal with claims for exemption. Sir John Simon led a small and dwindling opposition; but many of the Labour members, includ- ing Mr. Henderson, the leader of the party, supported the bill; Mr. Redmond, who led 60 Nationalists into the lobby against the first reading, withdrew Nationalist opposition on perceiving the united demand in Great Britain in its favour; and the second
reading was carried by 431 votes against 39. No hostile amend- ment received any serious support in committee, and the bill was read a third time by 383 votes against 36. In the Lords the measure was passed without a division, Lord Derby explaining that there were at least 650,000 unattested single men who would be affected by it. There was some fear that the labour organizations, who suspected the possibility of industrial con- scription, would place serious difficulties in the way of enforcing its provisions. They did indeed condemn it by a considerable majority at a labour conference held while it was passing through Parliament; but they decided not to agitate against it. Little practical effect was given to their condemnation save in the Clyde district, where in March and April strikes were organized in munition works with a view to getting this Act, and the Munitions Act facilitating dilution of labour, repealed. The ringleaders, however, were arrested and deported.
The local tribunals, which were set up, proved to be, on the whole, generous in continuing the exemptions; and there was in consequence strong criticism, in the press and in Parliament, both on behalf of the married men, who Demand considered that the pledges of comparative immunity wider made to them were imperilled, and on behalf of those Measures. who were eager for the efficient conduct of the war, and who held that the purpose of the Act was being defeated. There had been organized in the House of Commons, in each of the two great parties which supported the Coalition, a War Committee, having for its sole concern the strenuous prosecution of the war. On March 21 the Liberal War Com- mittee passed a resolution approving the extension of the princi- ple of compulsion to married men; and powerful organs of the press, notably The Times and other journals of which Lord Northcliffe was the principal proprietor, proclaimed that the needs of the army could not be properly supplied without uni- . versal compulsion. On March 28 the Unionist War Committee resolved that there ought to be equal sacrifices from all men of military age; and Sir Edward Carson, a leading spirit in that Committee, urged the Government to extend compulsion uni- versally, criticizing their hesitations. Lord Derby was also very critical in the House of Lords, and Lord Milner in that House implored the Government to put recruiting on the only satisfactory basis. The soldiers also pressed ministers hard. But a Cabinet Committee, consisting of Mr. Asquith, Mr. Mc- Kenna, Lord Lansdowne, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain came unanimously on April 14 to an adverse decision. The Cabinet did not accept their Committee's alternative scheme, but could not reach a decision. Not for the first time the Prime Minister had to ask the House of Commons for leave to post- pone his official statement on the subject, telling the House that there were still points unsettled, and that the break-up of the Cabinet would be a national disaster of the most formidable kind. At length it was announced that a satisfactory decision had been reached; and on April 25, after the Easter holidays, in secret session in both Houses (the first of seven such sessions held during the war) , ministers explained their proposals, which, it was found, only involved universal compulsion in case a number of other expedients which it is unnecessary to enumerate should fail to provide sufficient men. When the bill embodying the proposals was introduced by Mr. Long two days later, neither conscriptionists nor anti-conscriptionists found anything to say in its favour. It was withdrawn at once, and five days later Mr. Asquith announced that the Government had accepted universal compulsory service. The bill, which was introduced on May 3, brought within its Universal operation every male between the ages of 18 and 41, servk? and recalled time-expired men under 41 to the army. BUI. The exemptions remained as before, and Ireland was not included. In spite of Sir J. Simon's opposition, the bill passed easily through both Houses, though the method of deal- ing with conscientious objectors was felt to be a serious difficul- ty. The final step had been taken at last ; but the Government had lost much of its prestige owing to the " wait and see " at- titude which it had adopted.
