ON 4 August 1917, the third anniversary of Britain's entry into the First World War, David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, addressed the inaugural meeting of the National War Aims Committee (NWAC) at the Queen's Hall in Westminster. Despite his reservations about the performance of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and Belgium (and more particularly its commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig), he praised the ‘British method of advancing with the least cost in life’ which, he said, took time but was ‘sure’.

By mid-1917, following a revolution in Russia, limited reports of a mutiny in the French Army and a series of strikes in Britain, there was genuine governmental concern that domestic disaffection might make it impossible to continue the war to a successful conclusion. Such concerns had been significant in Lloyd George's attitude to the organisation of the war for a much longer period. On 1 January 1915 he had warned the War Cabinet that there is ‘a real danger that the people of Britain and France will sooner or later get tired of long casualty lists … A clear definite victory … will alone satisfy the public that tangible results are being achieved’, and his support of an ‘indirect’ strategy reflected this concern. However, public opinion, demonstrated by the initial wave of voluntary enlistment and a continuing electoral and industrial truce, remained strong throughout 1914–16. Even conscription, though decried by some as un-British and ‘immoral’ – and despite the resignation of the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, in protest at its introduction – passed relatively serenely through parliament.