ABSTRACT
The organization of the Supreme Command which had come into existence in November 1915, with the formation of the War Committee was a great advance on what had gone before. The presence of the Foreign Secretary and the chief's of the naval and military staffs at the War Committee ensured that our foreign and military policies were co-ordinated. At one time, when the wheat situation was threatening, the emergency reserve of shipping which was always kept ready at Southampton for military purposes was used to bring over a supply of wheat from America. The figures for neutral losses were relatively high and the own losses increased during the autumn months, but a more serious feature in the situation that autumn was the failure of the North American harvest, and the additional length of voyage became a serious matter.
