The year brought a gradual growth of inter-ally co-operation and creation of the Imperial War Cabinet. This development and the sessions of the Imperial War Conference were the natural outcome of the spirit of unity and self-sacrifice which has enabled the peoples of the British Commonwealth to produce no less than 7,500,000 men to fight for freedom in addition to vast quantities of munitions and supplies of all kinds. So successful was this experiment in the opinion of its members that it was decided unanimously that there ought to be an annual meeting of the Imperial Cabinet and that the Prime Ministers of the empire or their specially delegated representatives, together with the Ministers in charge of the great imperial offices, should be its _ex officio_ members. War Cabinet Reorganization Another sphere in which reorganization and expansion were necessary was that of home affairs. The period began with a reconstruction of the administrative machinery at the centre. It had become increasingly evident that the older system under which the supreme direction of the war rested, with a Cabinet consisting of the departmental chiefs under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister, was not sufficiently prompt and elastic for the conduct of a war which involved the mobilization and direction of the resources not only of the United Kingdom but of the British Empire. Even the formation of a smaller Cabinet committee of the departmental Ministers chiefly concerned in the war did not meet the needs of the case. With the advent of the new Government a modification was introduced whereby the supreme direction of the war was intrusted to a small War Cabinet, freed from all administrative duties, and yet in the closest touch with all departmental Ministers, while administrative responsibility was placed in the hands of Ministers who were left free to devote their whole time to this aspect of Governmental work. By this arrangement the War Cabinet was able to give all its attention to the task of co-ordination and direction, and so make more effective use of the immense resources which the empire had gradually produced during the preceding years. It also made it easier to create a number of much-needed new administrative departments. The most important of these were the Ministry of Shipping, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Food, and the Ministry of Pensions, to which were added at later dates the Ministry of Reconstruction, the Ministry of National Service, and the Ministry of the Air. * * * The Man-Power Problem