ABSTRACT
The War Cabinet set up a special committee to consider the question of man-power; it held its first meeting on December 10th. It was composed of the Prime Minister, Curzon, Carson, Barnes and Smuts with myself as secretary. The Cabinet Committee has to face a situation which differs in two very important particulars from that which has faced previous Cabinet committees on the same subject. These are, first: that the economic crisis, instead of being a danger to be guarded against, is actually present; and second, that the seriousness of the military man-power crisis is not merely that we shall not smash the enemy if the men are not forthcoming, but that the enemy may smash us. The problem that confronts the Committee, therefore, is to avert a military catastrophe without plunging us into an economic catastrophe equally fatal to the cause of the Allies.
