ABSTRACT
At the organisational level, the appointment of David Lloyd George as British Prime Minister in December 1916 led to an important innovation in the form of the Imperial War Cabinet. The South African Minister of Defence, Jan Smuts, was a member of the British War Cabinet from June 1917 to January 1919. Even in the darkest period of 1917, when the War Cabinet debated the possibility of seeking a negotiated peace, the evacuation of Belgium remained a basic minimum demand for Britain. A subcommittee of the Imperial War Cabinet, chaired by Lord Curzon, warned in May 1917 against tolerating a revival of 'the shattered German ambition of a great Teutonised dominion' extending to Asia Minor and the Persian Gulf. Britain emerged from the Great War as one of the principal victorious powers, with empire not merely intact but significantly expanded in size.
