The prospect was sufficiently anxious fully to warrant the
renewed call of the Prime Minister in the new year for sacrifice
sacrifice worthy of the sacrifices made by those at the
Prime front. " To every civilian," he wrote in a message to the
Minister's na tion, " I would say: ' Your firing-line is the works or
New Year ., ^ , , t u
/Message, the office in which you do your bit; the shop or the
1918. kitchen in which you spend or save ; the bank or the
post-office in which you buy your bonds.' " Sir Auck- land Geddes immediately illustrated the necessity of sacrifice by introducing a bill, the chief effect of which was to call up from civil employment a number of young men who had hitherto been exempt from military service; and he announced that it was necessary to raise immediately 420,000 to 450,000 from this class. After some demur the trade unions agreed to cooperate in making the measure effective, and it became law on Feb. 6.
The finance of the war called this year for greater sacrifices from the taxpayer than ever before. The money voted for military purposes exceeded that of any previous year. Mr. Law obtained votes of credit for 600,000,000 in March; 500,000,000 in June; 700,000,000 (the largest amount ever voted in one sum) in August; and again for 700,000,000 in November. This made a total of 8,742,000,000 for the whole war (of which 1,465,000,000 had been lent to the Allies down to the Armistice). The average daily expenditure, which was 6,986,000 in 1917-8, fell in the seven war months of 1918-9 to 6,688,000. In his budget, introduced in April, Mr. Law made unprecedented demands on the taxpayer, in order to raise sufficient revenue to cover the peace expenditure and the increased debt charge. He imposed additional tax- ation est i mat ed to bring in 114,000,000. Income Budget. tax was raised from 53. to 6s. in the ; the farmers' tax was doubled; rates of supertax increased up to a maximum of 43. 6d. in the , and the limit of exemption lowered from 3,000 to 2,500; a 2d. stamp tax was placed on cheques; beer and spirit duties were doubled, and sugar, tobacco, and match duties raised; letter rate was raised to i Jd. and post card rate to id.; and there was to be a luxury tax of ad. in the shilling. This last tax was eventually dropped, after a select committee of the House of Commons had spent many weeks in examining and reporting on its possibilities. There was little opposition to the rest of the proposals, save to the doubling of the stamp on cheques, against which there fi"*eo was cons iderable protest in the City, which the Chan- tun. cellor of the Exchequer disregarded. Protests, however,
were raised against extravagance and waste, without which the estimates of expenditure and revenue would hardly have reached the gigantic totals of 2,972,197,000 and 842,050,000, leaving a deficit of 2,130,147,000 to be met by loan. It was estimated in January by Mr. Herbert Samuel, chairman of a select committee of the House of Commons on national expendi- ture, that the following increases had taken place since the preceding August: the gd. loaf, 45,000,000; bonus to potato- growers, 5,000,000; to miners, 20,000,000; to munition workers, 40,000,000; to railwaymen, 10,000,000; and to civil servants, 3,000,000; increases in pay to officers, over 7,000,000; to soldiers, 65,000,000. The increases of pay voted to navy and army by Parliament in 1917 were, it may be explained, overdue, and were only a fitting acknowledgment of their heroic service. It should be added that in the autumn of 1918 the Government made provision for the intellectual welfare of soldiers by establish- ing a new department, under the charge of Col. Lord Gorell, to direct and coordinate education in the army.
It was in the matter of food that the sacrifices demanded were most felt by the bulk of the population. In January the quantity of staple foods which might be consumed by visit- ors in hotels and by people taking casual meals was h'mited by order; and in February compulsory ration- Jtfeat. ing of meat was enforced in London and the Home
Counties. Meat cards were issued, with coupons at- tached, under conditions that restricted the weekly adult ration to is. 3d. worth of butcher's meat, together with other meat equivalent to 5 oz. of butcher's meat. At the same time butter
and margarine were rationed, 4 oz. being allowed per head per week. At first there was a good deal of outcry against Lord Rhondda, as there had been against Lord Devonport, and attacks were made upon him in both Houses of Parliament, on account of his interferences with the course of trade, his " meddling and muddling." But in the Lords he was defended with spirit by Lord Milner, who said " that we were in a better position as regards food than any of the other countries engaged in the war; that, however the German submarine campaign might have embarrassed us, it had certainly not starved us and had not diminished the necessary supplies of our armies in the field." Mr. Clynes, the parliamentary Under-Secretary of the Depart- ment, claimed with justice that, under its arrangements, the poorest people were going to have an equal chance with their richer brethren, and that men, women and children, and not money, would be the consideration that would determine the appropriation of food. The Government, he said, had taken the place of the merchant and importer. The shortage of coal de- manded further sacrifices by the general consumer. It was found necessary to supplement the " summer time " arrangement, now become permanent, by a curfew order, limiting the hours for lights and fires, and compelling theatres to close at 10:30; and gas and electric light were rationed. Later on in the year railway facilities were greatly diminished, and fares increased.
The Government was criticised at the opening of the parlia- mentary session of 1918 for failing to reach the high standard they had set themselves in the departments of man-power, food production and shipbuilding. But Coordina- Mr. Law pointed out that in 1917 they had put into ^," e j f the army 820,600 additional men; had brought a mil- Action. lion more acres under the plough, producing an ad- ditional 8 50,000 tons of cereals and 3,000,000 tons of potatoes; and had built i , 1 63 ,474 tons of shipping, compared with a tonnage of 539,000 built in 1916. Another subject of criticism was the arrangement made with the Allies for the joint conduct of the war. Here the Government had been very active. The unity and continuity of direction which Mr. Lloyd George had ensured in the prosecution of the war, so far as the British forces were concerned, by the institution of his small War Cabinet in per- manent session, he and his Cabinet earnestly desired to see more completely realized in the joint councils of the Allies. At a meet- ing of leading ministers of the principal Allies, held at Rapallo in the autumn of 1917, a plan of coordination was approved. A war council, composed of the Prime Minister and an- other member of each of the three Governments of The Ver France, Italy and Great Britain, was constituted council. to meet at Versailles normally not less than once a month, and it was hoped that other Great Powers, especially the United States, would join the council. Mr. Lloyd George was in Paris in November 1917 for the first meeting; but he was dis- appointed with the results, and, at a luncheon there, he made an appeal to public opinion in the various Allied countries, by de- livering a very pessimistic and, as it seemed to many, a very in- judicious speech, in which he declared that unless some change were effected he could no longer remain responsible for a war direction doomed to disaster from lack of unity. He succeeded in drawing public attention; but the critics were disposed to suggest that this was a new device to enable politicians to interfere with work properly belonging to soldiers. One of Mr. Lloyd George's difficulties in securing coordination had been the instability of French ministers during 1917. M. Briand's Ministry, after a ten- ure of office of 18 months, fell in March; M. Ribot, who succeeded him, was overturned in September; M. Painleve, the next prime minister, only lasted two months ; but, fortunately, in his successor, M.Clemenceau, France obtained a chief whose whole thoughts, like Mr. Lloyd George's, were devoted to winning the war. With his cooperation the Versailles Council was strengthened, 'and arrangements were made to coordinate it with the general staffs of the various Allies by each appointing a staff officer as perma- nent military adviser at Versailles. This arrangement cost the Government the services of Sir William Robertson, the chief of the staff, who refused either to take the military advisership,
