This idea of fusion, with its amnesty of principles, its abandonment of awkward party controversies and its escape from embarrassing party opposition, was perhaps a greater novelty to the House of Commons than to the new head of the new Ministry of Munitions. To the coalition principle he is said to have been attracted for years before the war;[35] he remained faithful to it until the end; and, with the conclusion of the armistice, he exalted it into an article of political faith, which to reject was tantamount to instant death at the political stake; even now, when peace has been signed, the need for coalition government has, in his eyes, not yet abated. The change that overcame Mr. Lloyd George's mind between the battle of Neuve Chapelle and the December crisis of 1916 was that, in addition to the need for a coalition, he saw the need for himself at its head. II Before the House of Commons and the country could be prepared for the change of government in war-time, they had to be convinced that the old administration not only had failed in the past, but was doomed to fail in the future. One bird in the coalition nest had to foul it until the offence cried to heaven; thereafter the nest could be rebuilt and repopulated. So, for a year and a half, there was always one member of the government to dissociate himself from his colleagues and to point sorrowfully to mistakes for which his sorrow appeared to absolve him from responsibility. Owing to delay, mismanagement or lack of preparation, Neuve Chapelle, Loos and the Somme by land, Jutland by sea had achieved no decision; the Gallipoli and Mesopotamia campaigns had ended in smoke and blood. The difficulty of raising new drafts, of equipping them and of feeding the civilian population was magnified by a press which ministers scorned to make sympathetic. Ireland had been goaded into revolt and was being held quiet by force. As a record of failure, much platform capital could be made out of the government's succession of disasters.[36] Whether any other government made fewer mistakes absolutely, whether it was generous to emphasise these catastrophes and to disregard the practical achievements, future historians must determine. The whole of Great Britain and of the British Empire had been brought unanimously and enthusiastically into the war; an unmilitary nation had raised and armed millions of men; it was spending thousands of millions of pounds each year; it was blockading the enemy and policing the seas. It was not, unfortunately, breaking the German line in the West nor the Turkish line in the East. Generosity was not a conspicuous quality among the men who were engaged in breaking the home front.