The battle on the home front was joined on the morrow of the campaign which registered the failure of the first British offensive. Owing to disagreement or misunderstanding between the military experts, Sir John French at General Headquarters and Lord Kitchener at the War Office, the battle of Neuve Chapelle was fought with much shrapnel and little high explosive; Mr. Asquith, basing himself on his secretary of state for war, spoke reassuringly at Newcastle on the shell position; but the commander-in-chief had by now discovered that high explosive was what he wanted, and on this subject it was impossible to speak reassuringly. To secure an adequate supply Sir John French put himself, through the medium of Captain the Honourable Frederick Guest, into communication, not with the prime minister nor with the secretary of state for war, but, behind their backs, with the chancellor of the exchequer. Mr. Lloyd George, though equally responsible with the rest of the cabinet, now posed before the world as the one minister seriously concerned to supply the army with munitions, and in his support the godliest and the greatest rubbed shoulders: Bishop Furze of Pretoria hurried to the assistance of the military experts by giving it as his considered opinion that the Neuve Chapelle failure was due to lack of an unlimited supply of high-explosive shells; _The Times_ lent its weight in the same direction. A debate was threatened at the moment when Italy was at last deciding to abandon her neutrality; and, though Mr. Asquith had announced but a few hours before that he did not contemplate forming a coalition government, his colleagues were invited a few hours later to place their resignations in his hands so that a coalition ministry might be formed. The liberal party was not consulted until the decision had been taken; and the men who had answered every demand on their loyalty for five, six and eight years were sufficiently disgruntled to call a meeting of protest. With the prime minister's entrance, indignation turned to sympathy; he was urged into the chair, and after an explanation in which nothing was explained, the meeting dispersed, bright-eyed with emotion, to a murmured chorus of "Trust the P.M." In the reconstruction of the ministry, room had to be found for as many unionists as liberals; and, as at this time Mr. Lloyd George was advertising for "a man of push and go" to control the supply of munitions, the principle of coalition government was defined as one in which the tories pushed and the liberals went.