The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-TimeWile, Frederic William
History
The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
Wile, Frederic William
World War, 1914-1918
He knew very little--probably nothing--about munitions seven months ago.
It could not have been very much before that when he probably thought
that guncotton was raw material for pajamas. But he is the prize
"enthuser" of the Kingdom, a master of the tedious art of welding drowsy
Britons into a race of real war-makers. All the ingredients for
supplying the army with the shells it needed were in existence; but they
needed organization. The manufacturers and their works needed
organization. The workmen needed organization. The public spirit
needed organization; and the whole business needed a Lloyd-George. It
got him ten months after it ought to have had him, but not too late.
Obviously the diminutive Welsh country lawyer who had brought about the
disestablishment of the State Church of Wales, imposed State Insurance
and Old Age Pensions on a reluctant Kingdom, assailed the vested
interests of the House of Lords and demolished them, was the man to
impress the country with the true meaning of the shells tragedy. He
took the stump, his natural element, for the purpose. He went to the
people, especially in the great industrial centers, and told them the
truth. He burned into their conscience--that was the only way to get
the stolid British to wake up to a real peril--that shells, shells, and
then shells, and nothing but shells, were required if Britain meant to
win the war.
The people listened to Lloyd-George. He has a way of making them listen
to him. They gave him their ear even in his pro-Boer days. They
listened to him when he (an ardent Baptist) cleared for action against
the Welsh Church. They listened to him even when he went down to
Limehouse and coined a new word, "to limehouse," meaning violent
political spell-binding, second cousin to demagogism, by the nature of
his impassioned appeals to the people to rise and slay the Lords. It
was inevitable that the country would listen to him in his newest and
greatest rôle as organizer of victory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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