Editing H. H. Asquith (section)

===Asquith's wartime government===
The declaration of war on 4 August 1914 saw Asquith as the head of an almost united Liberal Party. Having persuaded [[Sir John Simon]] and [[William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp|Lord Beauchamp]] to remain,{{sfn|Asquith 1928b|p=10}} Asquith suffered only two resignations from his cabinet, those of [[John Morley]] and [[John Burns]].{{sfn|Hobhouse|p=180}} With other parties promising to co-operate, Asquith's government declared war on behalf of a united nation, Asquith bringing "the country into war without civil disturbance or political schism".{{sfn|Cassar|p=234}}

The first months of the War saw a revival in Asquith's popularity. Bitterness from earlier struggles temporarily receded and the nation looked to Asquith, "steady, massive, self-reliant and unswerving",{{sfn|Cassar|p=31}} to lead them to victory. But Asquith's peacetime strengths ill-equipped him for what was to become perhaps the first [[total war]] and, before its end, he would be out of office for ever and his party would never again form a majority government.{{sfn|Cassar|p=232}}

Beyond the replacement of Morley and Burns,{{sfn|Asquith 1923|pp=220–221}} Asquith made one other significant change to his cabinet. He relinquished the War Office and appointed the non-partisan but Conservative-inclined [[Lord Kitchener of Khartoum]].{{sfn|Cassar|p=38}} Kitchener was a figure of national renown and his participation strengthened the reputation of the government.{{sfn|Asquith 1923|p=219}} Whether it increased its effectiveness is less certain.{{sfn|Adelman|p=11}} Overall, it was a government of considerable talent with Lloyd George remaining as chancellor,{{sfn|Cassar|p=37}} Grey as foreign secretary,{{sfn|Cassar|p=36}} and Churchill at the Admiralty.{{sfn|Cassar|p=38}}

The invasion of Belgium by German forces, the touch paper for British intervention, saw the Kaiser's armies attempt a lightning strike through Belgium against France, while holding Russian forces on the Eastern Front.{{sfn|Liddell Hart|p=69}} To support the French, Asquith's cabinet authorised the despatch of the [[British Expeditionary Force (World War I)|British Expeditionary Force]].{{sfn|Gilbert 1995|p=37}} The ensuing [[Battle of the Frontiers]] in the late summer and early autumn of 1914 saw the final halt of the German advance at the [[First Battle of the Marne]], which established the pattern of [[Attrition warfare|attritional trench warfare]] on the Western Front that continued until 1918.{{sfn|Liddell Hart|p=131}} This stalemate brought deepening resentment against the government, and against Asquith personally, as the population at large and the press lords in particular, blamed him for a lack of energy in the prosecution of the war.{{sfn|Cassar|p=93}} It also created divisions within the Cabinet between the "Westerners", including Asquith, who supported the generals in believing that the key to victory lay in ever greater investment of men and munitions in France and Belgium,{{sfn|Cassar|p=171}} and the "Easterners", led by Churchill and Lloyd George, who believed that the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] was in a state of irreversible stasis and sought victory through action in the East.{{sfn|Cassar|p=144}} Lastly, it highlighted divisions between those politicians, and newspaper owners, who thought that military strategy and actions should be determined by the generals, and those who thought politicians should make those decisions.{{sfn|Taylor|p=109}} Asquith said in his memoirs: "Once the governing objectives have been decided by Ministers at home—the execution should always be left to the untrammeled discretion of the commanders on the spot."{{sfn|Asquith 1928a|p=154}} Lloyd George's counter view was expressed in a letter of early 1916 in which he asked "whether I have a right to express an independent view on the War or must (be) a pure advocate of opinions expressed by my military advisers?"{{sfn|Grigg 1985|p=390}} These divergent opinions lay behind the two great crises that would, within 14 months, see the collapse of the last ever fully [[First Asquith ministry|Liberal administration]] and the advent of the [[Asquith coalition ministry|first coalition]] on 25 May 1915, the Dardanelles Campaign and the Shell Crisis.{{sfn|Clifford|pp=273–274}}