It was the Radical and anti-militarist group of the Liberal party then in power, who every year fought the Naval and Military Estimates--especially the latter--point by point, and stubbornly hampered the most necessary military provision, on whom, little as they intended or foresaw it, a tragic responsibility for the prolongation of the war, and the prodigal loss of life it involved, must always rest.

Lord Haldane, indeed during his years of office as the War Minister of the Liberal Government, made a gallant fight for the Army.

To him we owe the Expeditionary Force, the Territorials, the organisation of the General Staff, the Officers' Training Corps; and without his reforms our case would have been black indeed when the storm broke.

No one has repelled more indignantly the common Tory charges against Lord Haldane than Sir Douglas Haig himself.

But, during his years at the War Office Lord Haldane was fighting against heavy odds, attacked on the one hand by the upholders of Lord Roberts's scheme, in which neither he nor the General Staff believed, and under perpetual sniping on the other from the extreme section of his own party.