This feeling was crystallised by Mr. Lloyd George in a memorandum which proposed that a committee of three, excluding the prime minister, should have full direction of the war. Discussion and correspondence followed; the proposal was made public in _The Times_ of December 4th; there was one day's more correspondence, ending with Mr. Asquith's abrupt announcement on December 5th that he had tendered his resignation to the king. It seemed unlikely, to the outside spectator, that either Mr. Bonar Law or Mr. Lloyd George would be able to form a new administration, if, as was expected, the liberal and unionist ministers remained loyal to their old chief in resisting an ambitious colleague's effort to supplant him; but those responsible for the upheaval were leaving nothing to chance in the "well-organised, carefully engineered conspiracy" which Mr. Asquith described as being "directed" in part against some of his late unionist colleagues, but in the main against Lord Grey and himself. Mr. Bonar Law lost no time in handing on to Mr. Lloyd George the opportunity of an experiment in cabinet-making; the unionist members had been approached in advance, Mr. Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil consented to take office and the small fry followed their lead. So perished the first coalition, the liberal party and the political ascendancy of Mr. Asquith. Now, as before, his supporters were not consulted any more than when he plunged them into the first coalition or incurred that earlier debt of honour which was not an obligation, but which had the compelling force of an obligation in committing them to hostilities; though he expected and received their fealty throughout the first two and a half years of war, he never found it necessary to take them into his confidence before sacrificing every principle of liberalism, placing every liberal pledge in suspense and, at the end, abdicating from his half of the political throne. Ministers had an unchallenged, victorious majority; there was no adverse vote; the white flag fluttered into view before a shot had been fired; and it was not until he assembled the liberal party at the Reform Club on December 8th and hinted at the conspiracy before which he had retired that the party knew its fate. By that time the majority of the party was grown restive under this one-sided loyalty.