But as the weeks passed a situation began to arise which threw even this provision into the shade of inadequacy. It became clear that we had to help in the munitioning of our Allies. There was France—early in the war she lost her richest industrial districts. With splendid promptitude she had organised her factories for the making of guns, shells, and rifles. But she required to be supplied with the raw materials now lacking to her. A far graver need was soon to arise in Russia. The German victories of 1915 placed Germany in possession of 70 per cent of the Russian steel-producing area. Her millions from that time required arming, not merely for victory, but also, it soon became clear, even for defence.[80] To meet this colossal situation Great Britain was but poorly provided. The Navy absorbed for her great needs the principal national engineering resources of the country. The only British military machine of munition-supply at the opening of the war was the Ordnance Department of the War Office. Nothing could exceed the devotion and zeal of the men at the head of that office. But it was hopelessly under-equipped for so great a call. It was wanting in staff, resources, and ideas. It was perilously detached from our great civilian industries. It found itself faced with unparalleled difficulties of material and labour. For with the opening of the war we were cut off from some of our most important raw ingredients for explosives; and the very fervour of our first great recruiting campaign, too little directed and restricted, denuded the possible workshops of war. There were many crises in this situation. One of the gravest occurred in the late autumn of 1914, when we were faced with a complete inability to supply the army with explosives for the making of mines. How that situation was met by a group of civil servants and public men, and its first acuteness lessened by the formation of an Explosives Committee in the Board of Trade under Lord Moulton has already been revealed by Lord Moulton himself.[81] It is one of the great stories of the war. But no such departmental devices could long suffice to meet the terrific call of the situation as a whole. As the weeks passed, it gradually became clear to Mr. Lloyd George that, if we were to be saved, a tremendous and radical change was required. This was nothing less than the calling to our aid in this war all those great manufacturing resources of the nation which had given us our ascendancy in peace. The manufacturers, indeed, were quite willing to come. They needed no call. They were eager to help. They already clamoured at the door.