Note 2 — Chapter V · MATERIAL OF WAR

"I saw a statement the other day that the operations not only of our Army but of our Allies were being crippled, or at any rate hampered, by our failure to provide the necessary ammunition. There is not a word of truth in that statement. I say there is not a word of truth in that statement which is the more mischievous because if it were believed, it is calculated to dishearten our troops, to discourage our Allies, and to stimulate the hopes and activities of our enemies. Nor is there any more truth in the suggestion that the Government, of which I am the head, have only recently become alive to the importance and the urgency of these matters. On the contrary, in the earliest days of the war, when some of our would-be instructors were thinking of quite other things, they were already receiving our anxious attention, and as far back, I think, as the month of September I appointed a Committee of the Cabinet, presided over by Lord Kitchener, to survey the situation from this point of view—a Committee whose labours and inquiries resulted in a very substantial enlargement both on the field and of machinery of supply....

"No, the urgency of the situation—and, as I shall show, the urgency is great—can be explained without any resort to recrimination or to blame. It is due, in the main, to two very obvious causes. It is due, first of all, to the unprecedented scale upon which ammunition on both sides has been, and is being, expended. It not only goes far beyond all previous experience, but it is greatly in advance of the forecasts of the best experts."—Mr. Asquith at Newcastle, April 20, 1915.