Editing David Lloyd George (section)

===== Convoys =====
{{Main|Convoys in World War I}}

Lloyd George had raised the matter of [[convoy]]s at the War Committee in November 1916, only to be told by the admirals present, including [[John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe|Jellicoe]], that convoys presented too large a target, and that merchant ship masters lacked the discipline to [[Nautical stationkeeping|keep station]] in a convoy.<ref name=GriggCrisisAtSea/>{{rp|49–50}}

In February 1917 [[Maurice Hankey]], the secretary of the War Cabinet, wrote a memorandum for Lloyd George calling for the introduction of "scientifically organised convoys", almost certainly after being persuaded by Commander [[Reginald Henderson]] and the Shipping Ministry officials with whom he was in contact. After a breakfast meeting (13 February 1917) with Lloyd George, [[Sir Edward Carson]] (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Admirals Jellicoe and [[Alexander Duff (Royal Navy officer)|Duff]] agreed to "conduct experiments"; however, convoys were not in general use until August, by which time the rate of shipping losses was already in decline after peaking in April.<ref name=GriggCrisisAtSea/>{{rp|51, 53}}

Lloyd George later claimed in his ''War Memoirs'' that the delay in introducing convoys was because the Admiralty mishandled an experimental convoy between Britain and Norway and because Jellicoe obtained, behind Maclay's back, an unrepresentative sample of merchant skippers claiming that they lacked the skill to "keep station" in convoy. In fact, Hankey's diary shows that Lloyd George's interest in the matter was intermittent, whilst Frances Stevenson's diaries contain no mention of the topic. He may well have been reluctant, especially at a time when his relations with the generals were so poor, for a showdown with Carson, a weak administrator who was as much the mouthpiece of the admirals as [[Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby|Derby]] was of the generals, but who had played a key role in the fall of Asquith and who led a significant bloc of Conservative and Irish Unionist MPs.<ref name=GriggCrisisAtSea/>{{rp|50, 52}}

The new Commander of the [[Grand Fleet]] Admiral [[David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty|Beatty]], whom Lloyd George visited at Invergordon on 15 April, was a supporter of convoys, as was the American Admiral [[William Sims|Sims]] (the USA had just entered the war). The War Cabinet on 25 April authorised Lloyd George to look into the anti-submarine campaign, and on 30 April he visited the Admiralty. Duff had already recommended to Jellicoe that the Admiralty adopt convoys after a recent successful convoy from Gibraltar.<ref name=GriggCrisisAtSea/>{{rp|52–53}}

Most of the organisations Lloyd George created during the First World War were replicated with the outbreak of the Second World War. As [[Lord Beaverbrook]] wrote, "There were no road signs on the journey he had to undertake."{{sfn|Lord Beaverbrook|1963|page=301}} The latter's ''personal'' efforts to promote convoys were less consistent than he (and Churchill in ''[[The World Crisis]]'' and Beaverbrook in ''Men and Power'') later claimed; the idea that he, after a hard struggle, sat in the First Lord's chair (on his 30 April visit to the Admiralty) and imposed convoys on a hostile Board is a myth; however, in Grigg's view the credit goes largely to men and institutions which he set in place, and with a freer hand, and making fewer mistakes, than in his dealings with the generals, he and his appointees took decisions which can reasonably be said to have saved the country. "It was a close-run thing&nbsp;... failure would have been catastrophic."<ref name=GriggCrisisAtSea/>{{rp|45, 49, 52–53}}