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Concept
War cabinet
Summary
A war cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war to efficiently and effectively conduct that war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers, although it is quite common for a war cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members.
Lloyd George ministry
Prior to the First World War, the British had the Committee of Imperial Defence. During World War I, it became a war committee.
During the First World War, lengthy cabinet discussions came to be seen as a source of vacillation in Britain's war effort.
The number of cabinet ministries grew throughout the nineteenth century. Following dissatisfaction at the conduct of the Crimean War, Disraeli proposed that the number of cabinet members never exceed 10 (he had 12 at the time). However, this didn't happen, and the number of ministries continued to grow: 15 in 1859, 21 in 1914, and 23 in 1916. Despite talk of "inner circles" within the Asquith Administration, all committees reported to the 23 cabinet ministers, whose priorities were diverse in nature, and who had final say over war policy formation for the first two years of World War I. This cumbersome arrangement could not stand; a more efficient way of prosecuting the war was needed.
In December 1916 it was proposed that Prime Minister H. H. Asquith should delegate decision-making to a small, three-man committee chaired by the Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George. Asquith initially agreed (provided the committee reported to him and he retained the right to attend if he chose) before changing his mind after being infuriated by a news story in The Times which portrayed the proposed change as a defeat for him. The political crisis grew from this point until Asquith was forced to resign as Prime Minister; he was succeeded by David Lloyd George who thereupon formed a small war cabinet.
Official source
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