ABSTRACT
FROM the start, Asquith’s new Coalition was plagued by intrigue and dissension. Long before the end of 1915, it seemed that its days must be numbered. And, at every stage of the crisis, it seemed that the Liberals were the inevitable victims. For it was their principles which the very fact of total war, with the unbridled collectivism and the ‘jingo’ passions which it unleashed, appeared to undermine. From May 1915, therefore, the Liberal party at Westminster became increasingly riven by internal divisions, while the constituency parties just withered away. Amidst all these new tensions, most Liberals felt that the introduction of military conscription marked a symbolic divide between a whole-hearted commitment to all-out war, whatever the sacrifice, and a respect for the historic cause of individual liberty. The issues involved had already been raised, in a very different context, by Lloyd George himself in April, just before the downfall of the Asquith government. This concerned the supply of alcoholic liquor, which Lloyd George considered a grave menace to the war effort. He had shaken his colleagues with a series of extreme proposals, even including the public ownership of the drink trade, an extremely radical measure which a traditionalist like Asquith resisted to the end. Lloyd George’s temperance schemes eventually collapsed, leaving as their curious legacies the nationalized public houses of Carlisle and the diluted quality of ‘Lloyd George’s Beer’. But the issue of military conscription raised the question of the validity of the Liberal ethic during wartime in a far more acute form.
