To Mr. Asquith's eternal credit he rated unity in cabinet and country higher than any tactical advantage that he might have secured by a dialectical brawl with his energetic lieutenant. Mr. Lloyd George, who was now so anxious to "get on with the war," had been less anxious to follow his chief into war at the outset; "too late here," he complained, "too late there," but in every decision, were it the Dardanelles expedition or the shell controversy, he shared full and equal responsibility with the head and every member of the cabinet, he could have resigned in protest--and with greater dignity than he shewed in rounding upon his colleagues for mistakes in which he participated. From the time of Lord Kitchener's death until the December crisis, he was himself secretary of state for war with a predominant voice in all military decisions. It was easier to forget his own record and to focus the attention of his audience upon the future. After the failure of the Somme offensive, the apparent failure of the Jutland action, another winter campaign became inevitable; food was running short and would become shorter if German submarines were given free play; the evidence collected by the Dardanelles commissioners threw a disturbing light on the happy-go-lucky methods of cabinet government; ministers were allowing themselves to be bullied in the House of Commons; and from a hundred different quarters there gathered a hundred thousand wisps and wreaths of fog which intensified in a tarnishing cloud of mistrust and disapproval. Under the military service act a man could appeal for exemption on the ground that he was indispensable in his present employment; from the first days of the war Mr. Asquith was hailed as the indispensable prime minister. It is impossible to draw any chart to shew the change in psychological attitude towards him; but by the autumn of 1916, perhaps on the day when he persuaded parliament to accept conscription and imposed it upon the country without a revolution, he was no longer indispensable; very soon the antagonism strengthened into a feeling that the war would never be won so long as he remained at the head of the government.