1917 the difficulty of financing imports from the United States led to an agreement between the British and French Ministers of Munitions, under which the latter undertook to pay by dollars in America for goods bought in England which involved replacement in American material. Further discussion of the problem, moreover, led the British Minister to insist that the production of shell steel to French specification should cease and that M. Loucheur should buy his shell steel direct from America. France, from a very early stage in the war, had devoted her restricted steel production to the manufacture of more finished products, and had relied on England and America for the overwhelming proportion of her shell steel. The French Minister was anxious to retain some of his supply from European sources as an insurance against an interruption of sea communica- tion; and to meet this difficulty Mr. Churchill agreed to retain a small output of shell steel of French specification. The bulk supply was, however, transferred to the United States. This example illustrates the kind of problem which arose under the conditions at the end of 1917, and which, together with the necessity of coordinating the American munition effort with the Allied needs, gave rise to the formation of the Inter-Allied Munitions Council. Prior to the formation of the British Ministry of Munitions the Allied delegates purchasing in Great Britain on behalf of their respective Governments had been brought together in an international commission under the supervision of an officer of the Board of Trade. This officer and his staff, however, could not keep in touch with the growing supply departments, and their function resolved itself into that of rendering assistance as liaison officers to the foreign purchasing agents in London. In particular their duty was to see that the purchases made were a proper charge against the funds loaned by the British Government to these various countries, and secondly that ships were available for transport- ing the goods purchased.
When the Ministry of Munitions started, Mr. Lloyd George took an early opportunity of holding a conference with the French Minister of Munitions, and throughout the war such conferences were frequent. InNov. 1915, atoneof these meetings, at which Italian and Russian delegates were present, it was agreed that an Inter-Allied bureau should be formed for the purpose of studying and coordinating the requirements of the Allies. The scheme, however, was never carried into effect, as the Allied nations were not at that time ready to declare the basis of their requirements. In the early summer of 1916 the com- petition of the Allies in the United States became accentuated, and a few months later it was decided to form a bureau the duty of which was to coordinate the demands made upon New York by the various Ministers of Munitions. The bureau was not, however, sufficiently strongly supported, and it was found that various departments were placing orders without consulting the organization. A third attempt at coordination was made in Nov. 1916, when the campaign of 1917 was discussed in Lon- don. At these conferences substantial progress was made in the direction of setting down the complete programme of the different Allies present, and it was agreed that an organization should be set up in Paris to which full information should be supplied, and from which a complete statement of the requirements in the field and the manufacturing requirements of each Ally should be circulated for confidential information to the various Ministers. This organization continued with fluctuating fortunes and with fairly full information about Great Britain and France, but very little about other Allies. Sufficient information was, however, forthcoming to afford a very valuable check upon the demands put forward from time to time by various countries.
Such was the position when a conference was held in Dec. 1917 in Paris to consider the position for 1918. At this conference the European Allies recommended America finally to adopt a European type of artillery, but no definite plan of cooperation emerged from this discussion.
In April 1918 Allied munition officers, including representa- tives of the American army, again discussed the munition
situation in reference to the situation in America, and as a result M. Loucheur, at the suggestion of the British representative, sent out formal invitations for a conference to meet in June to consider a proposition for the constitution of a permanent Inter-Allied Munitions Council, with a standing secretariat and with authority to discuss and make recommendations upon the programme of the various Allies. This Council was organized into sub-committees dealing with artillery, explosives, tanks, aircraft, tonnage, steel and raw materials. This was nominally an advisory body, but as its chief members were the Ministers themselves it was of sufficient authority to take binding decisions and to negotiate with the Inter-Allied Transport Council and the Financial Council of the Allies as to the tonnage and finance available for munitions, and to arrange between the Allies for the allotment of such resources. It thus represented an important link in the final coordination of Allied efforts.
Its existence enabled a check to be put upon the basis for calculating the production programme of the various Allies, while the general survey which it gave enabled it to make a unanimous recommendation to the United States to give priority for French and British shell steel required over steel for American factories, in view of the depletion of British and French reserves, and the necessity of making them good before the 1919 campaign, which might be expected to start early in the new year. Finally, the representative of the American War Department on the Council, when he received instructions that an enormous increase was to be made in the size of the American army in the field, was able to organize a plan which, by using British and French gun-making capacity, would have enabled this enlarged army to be equipped many months earlier than would have been the case by depending upon American factories.
At the Armistice the numbers employed in the Ministry of Munitions amounted to over 25,000, of whom 60% were women.
Some Munition Statistics. The development of the British munition effort may be illustrated by some additional statistics. The most striking are perhaps the expenditure of gun ammunition on the western front. The figures cannot suitably be shown in numbers of rounds, owing to the change from light to heavy shell during 1916 and 1917, and to a limited extent back to light shell when open warfare was resumed in 1918. The best index is therefore weight in tons.
TABLE IV. Munition Expenditure on Western Front (in tons). Eleven Months 1 Aug. 1914 to June 30 1915
1915 3 r d Quarter . ....... 19,500
4th ........ 21,800
1916 1st ........ 28,500
2nd ........ 96,70
3rd ........ 327,700].
4th ........ 239,200;
1917 ist ........ I74,ioo
2nd ........ 575,ooo
3rd ........ 600,000 \
4th ........ 425,500 /
1918 ist ........ 285,000
2nd ........ 485,000
3rd ........ 641,000
4th ........ 2 14,000
- ist Somme battle.
t Messines, Arras, Vimy, 3rd battle of Ypres, Paschaendale Ridge, ist battle of Cambrai.
% St. Quentin, 2nd battle of Somme, general advance.
Table IV. shows that the expenditure of ammunition reached its climax in the autumn of 1918. More than 10,000 tons a day were fired on 15 successive days, and in the record week ending Sept. 29 3,383,700 rounds, weighing 83,000 tons, were fired.
On Sept. 29, when the Hindenburg line was broken, 943,837 rounds were fired, the cost of a single day's ammunition amount- ing to 3,871,000.
Table V. further shows the progress of the manufacture of guns and ammunition throughout the war; of the 217,000,000 complete rounds delivered, 126,000,000 were filled in new na- tional filling factories built by the Ministry. Of the empty shells delivered during the war, 28% in number came from British
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