ABSTRACT
Even though the British public were slow to realize it, by the end of 1914 it was clear that this was a different kind of war. After nearly a century of relative peace in Europe, Britain’s experience of continental warfare was confined to memories of Napoleon’s campaigns and the bloody experiences of the Crimea, while the South African conflict provided few lessons for the war that was unfolding on the Western Front. Here the BEF faced an enemy that was not just superior in guns and munitions, but ready to deploy new and technologically sophisticated weaponry that both amazed and appalled British soldiers, yet soon led to demands that they be armed in much the same way. This then would be as much a war of technology and scientific innovation as it was of raw firepower. For Lloyd George, this required nothing less than the mass mobilization of the country’s industrial and technical resources to be managed by a new ministry with new methods and a tightly controlled industrial workforce. Such a state-driven system challenged old practices and attitudes, and acute tensions were to emerge between government and people as the country adapted to a different reality. The new strategies were certainly innovative in outlook and approach, although their more distant consequences were far from clear.
