While struggling to speed up the Cabinet on a hundred matters Lloyd George became impressed with the necessity of increasing the size of the British army, already millions strong. The voluntary system had hitherto been relied on, and there was strong opposition, both in the Cabinet and in the country, to tentative proposals for conscription. Lloyd George took an early opportunity of showing that he was on the side of the conscriptionists. There was an outburst of protests, but it proved of no avail, and it was largely through Lloyd George that conscription in Britain became an established fact. Even then he was by no means satisfied with the way affairs were being handled, and the newspapers were speculating on his next big attempt, when tragedy descended on the country in the unexpected death of Lord Kitchener by the sinking of the war-ship _Hampshire_ off the coast of Scotland. Kitchener had been Minister for War. Who was to be the new man? There was really only one man in the running, and Lloyd George forsook his munition work, now practically accomplished, and went over to take charge of the War Office. Coincident with his acceptance of this post new arrangements in the organization were made, and it was no doubt largely by his influence that General Sir William Robertson was installed at Whitehall as Chief of Staff, virtually commander-in-chief of the British armies. He was a man after Lloyd George's own heart, a soldier who had risen from the ranks, a quiet man who would stand no nonsense, and one who knew modern war conditions from A to Z. Here, then, began a new phase of the European conflict. From the shops, offices, farms, and factories of Britain there had sprung up an amateur army, millions strong, and the organization of this new national force was under the supervision and control of a Minister who began life as a village boy in a cottage of a shoemaker, and under the military direction of a commander-in-chief who also sprang from the common people, and as a young man was an ordinary trooper in the ranks. It could never henceforth be said that Britain, the most aristocratic country on earth, had not been content to hand over the reins to democracy in the greatest emergency of her history. Robertson and Lloyd George worked well together, and there can be no doubt that under their joint effects the British forces in the field attained a fighting value which was not excelled by any other army in existence on either side in the great conflict.