title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Released to cinemas in the United States on June 30, 1995, "Apollo 13" received critical acclaim and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture (winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound). The film also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, as well as two British Academy Film Awards. In total, the film grossed over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: On July 20, 1969, astronaut Jim Lovell hosts a party where guests watch Neil Armstrong's televised first steps on the Moon from Apollo 11. Lovell, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells his wife Marilyn that he will return to the Moon to walk on its surface.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Three months later, as Lovell is conducting a VIP tour of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, his boss Deke Slayton informs him that his crew will fly Apollo 13 instead of 14, swapping flights with Alan Shepard's crew. Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise train for their mission. Days before launch, Mattingly is exposed to German measles, and the flight surgeon demands his replacement with Mattingly's backup, Jack Swigert. Lovell resists breaking up his team, but relents when Slayton threatens to bump his crew to a later mission. As the launch date approaches, Marilyn has a nightmare about her husband dying in space, and tells Lovell she will not go to Kennedy Space Center to see him off for an unprecedented fourth launch. She later changes her mind and surprises him.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: On launch day, Flight Director Gene Kranz in Houston's Mission Control Center gives the go for launch. As the Saturn V rocket climbs through the atmosphere, a second stage engine cuts off prematurely, but the craft reaches its Earth parking orbit. After the third stage fires again to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert performs the maneuver to turn the Command Module "Odyssey" around to dock with the Lunar Module "Aquarius" and pull it away from the spent rocket.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Three days into the mission, by order of Mission Control, Swigert turns on the liquid oxygen stirring fans. An electrical short causes a tank to explode, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking. Consumables manager Sy Liebergot convinces Kranz that shutting off two of "Odyssey"s three fuel cells offers the best chance to stop the leak, but this does not work. With only one fuel cell, mission rules dictate the Moon landing be aborted. Lovell and Haise power up "Aquarius" to use as a "lifeboat", while Swigert shuts down "Odyssey" to save its battery power for the return to Earth. Kranz charges his team with bringing the astronauts home, declaring "failure is not an option". Consumables manager John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help him improvise a procedure to restart "Odyssey" for the landing on Earth.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: As the crew watches the Moon pass beneath them, Lovell laments his lost dream of walking on its surface, then turns his crew's attention to the business of getting home. With "Aquarius" running on minimal electrical power and rationed water supply, the crew suffers from freezing conditions, and Haise develops a urinary tract infection. Swigert suspects Mission Control is concealing the fact they are doomed; Haise angrily blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident; but Lovell squelches the argument. As "Aquarius"s carbon dioxide filters run out, concentration of the gas approaches a dangerous level. Ground control improvises a "Rube Goldberg" device to make the Command Module's incompatible filter cartridges work in the Lunar Module. With "Aquarius"s navigation systems shut down, the crew makes a vital course correction manually by steering the Lunar Module and controlling its engine.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Mattingly and Aaron struggle to find a way to power up the Command Module systems without drawing too much power, and finally read the procedure to Swigert, who restarts "Odyssey" by drawing the extra power from "Aquarius". When the crew jettisons the Service Module, they are surprised by the extent of the damage, raising the possibility that the ablative heat shield was compromised. As they release "Aquarius" and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, no one is sure that "Odyssey"s heat shield is intact.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The tense period of radio silence due to ionization blackout is longer than normal, but when the astronauts report all is well, the world watches "Odyssey" splash down and celebrates their return. As helicopters bring the crew aboard the USS "Iwo Jima" for a hero's welcome, Lovell's voice-over describes the cause of the explosion, and the subsequent careers of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly, and Kranz. He wonders if and when mankind will return to the Moon.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The movie rights to Jim Lovell's book "Lost Moon" were being shopped to potential buyers before it was written. He stated that his first reaction was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to play him.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The original screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert was written with Costner in mind because of his facial similarities with Lovell. By the time Ron Howard acquired the director's position, Tom Hanks had expressed interest in doing a film based on Apollo 13. When Hanks' representative informed him that a script was being passed around he had it sent to him, and Costner's name never came up in serious discussion. Hanks was ultimately cast as Lovell because of his knowledge of Apollo and space history.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Because of his interest in aviation, John Travolta asked Howard for the role of Lovell, but was politely turned down. John Cusack was offered the role of Fred Haise but turned it down. Brad Pitt was offered the role of Jack Swigert, but also turned it down in favor of "Seven". Howard invited Gary Sinise to read for any of the characters, and Sinise chose Ken Mattingly.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: After Hanks had been cast and construction of the spacecraft sets had begun, John Sayles rewrote the script. While planning the film, Howard decided that every shot would be original and that no mission footage would be used. The spacecraft interiors were constructed by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center's Space Works, which also restored the Apollo 13 Command Module. Two individual Lunar Modules and two Command Modules were constructed for filming. Composed of some original Apollo materials, they were built so that different sections were removable, which allowed filming to take place inside them. Space Works also built modified Command and Lunar Modules for filming inside a Boeing KC-135 reduced-gravity aircraft, and the pressure suits worn by the actors, which are exact reproductions of those worn by the Apollo astronauts, right down to the detail of being airtight. When suited up with their helmets locked in place, the actors were cooled by and breathed air pumped into the suits, as in actual Apollo suits.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center consisted of two control rooms on the second and third floors of Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA offered the use of the control room for filming, but Howard declined, opting instead to make his own replica. Production designer Michael Corenblith and set decorator Merideth Boswell were in charge of the construction of the Mission Control set at Universal Studios. It was equipped with giant rear-screen projection capabilities, and a complex set of computers with individual video feeds to all the flight controller stations. The actors playing the flight controllers could communicate with each other on a private audio loop. The Mission Control room built for the film was on the ground floor. One NASA employee, a consultant for the film, said the set was so realistic that he would leave at the end of the day and look for the elevator before he remembered he was not in Mission Control. The recovery ship USS "Iwo Jima" had been scrapped by the time the film was made, so her sister ship, "New Orleans", was used instead.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: To prepare for their roles in the film, Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon all attended the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. While there, astronauts Jim Lovell and David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, did actual training exercises with the actors inside a simulated Command Module and Lunar Module. The actors were also taught about each of the 500 buttons, toggles, and switches used to operate the spacecraft. The actors then traveled to Johnson Space Center in Houston where they flew in the KC-135 to simulate weightlessness in outer space.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Each member of the cast performed extensive research for the project to provide an authentic story. Technical adviser Scott was impressed with their efforts, stating that each actor was determined to make every scene technically correct, word for word.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: In Los Angeles, Ed Harris and all the actors portraying flight controllers enrolled in a Flight Controller School led by Gerry Griffin, an Apollo 13 flight director, and flight controller Jerry Bostick. The actors studied audiotapes from the mission, reviewed hundreds of pages of NASA transcripts, and attended a crash course in physics.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Howard anticipated difficulty in portraying weightlessness in a realistic manner. He discussed this with Steven Spielberg, who suggested filming aboard the KC-135 airplane, which can be flown in such a way as to create about 23 seconds of weightlessness, a method NASA has always used to train its astronauts for space flight. Howard obtained NASA's permission and assistance<ref name="http://industrycentral.net/director_interviews/RH01.HTM"></ref> to obtain three hours and 54 minutes of filming time in 612 zero-g maneuvers. Filming in this environment was a time and cost saver because the stage recreation and computer graphics would have been expensive.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: While filming in 25-second burst of weightlessness was "charged and frenetic", the cast and crew only suffered from bumps and bruises and most injuries occurred when they bumped on non-padded items. The cast and Crew of Apollo 13 describe the weightlessness experience as being in a "vomit comet" and "roller coaster ride", but the motion sickness afflicted only a few members.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: To avoid awkward visible switches to stock news footage in a live action film, he decided to produce the Saturn V launch sequence using miniature models and digital image stitching to create a panoramic background. On Howard's request to "shoot it like Martin Scorsese would shoot it", Legato studied Scorsese's scenes of pool games from "The Color of Money", and copied his technique of creating a sense of rhythm by repeating two or three frames between each cut (just enough to be undetectable) for the engine ignition sequence. Legato says this scene inspired James Horner's soundtrack music for the launch. The long-range shot of the vehicle in flight was filmed using a $25 1:144 scale model Revell kit, with the camera realistically shaking, and it was digitized and re-filmed off of a high resolution monitor through a black filter, slightly overexposed to keep it from "looking like a video game".


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The exhaust of the attitude control thrusters was generated with computer-generated imagery (CGI). This was also attempted to show the astronaut's urine dump into space, but wasn't high enough resolution to look right, so droplets sprayed from an Evian bottle were photographed instead.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The producers wanted to use CGI to render the splashdown, but Legato adamantly insisted this would not look realistic. Real parachutes were used with a prop capsule tossed out of a helicopter.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The score to "Apollo 13" was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released in 1995 by MCA Records and has seven tracks of score, eight period songs used in the film, and seven tracks of dialogue by the actors at a running time of nearly seventy-eight minutes. The music also features solos by vocalist Annie Lennox and Tim Morrison on the trumpet. The score was a critical success and garnered Horner an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: In September 2002 the film was re-released in IMAX. It was the first film to be digitally remastered using IMAX DMR technology.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: "Apollo 13" earned $25,353,380 million from 2,347 theaters during its opening weekend, which made up 14.7% of the total US gross. Upon its opening, it was ranked number one at the box office, beating "Pocahontas". Additionally, it surpassed "Forrest Gump" for having the largest opening weekend for a Tom Hanks film. Within five days, "Apollo 13" generated $38.5 million, becoming the second-highest five-day opening of all time, behind "". The film earned $154 million from ticket sales, surpassing the previous record held by the combined Thanksgiving 1992 openings of "Aladdin", "The Bodyguard" and "". It would continue to stay in the number one spot for four weeks until it was dethroned by "Waterworld". Earning $355,237,933, "Apollo 13" was the third-highest-grossing film of 1995, behind "Die Hard with a Vengeance" and "Toy Story".


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that the film has an overall approval rating of 96%, based on 93 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8.10/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "In recreating the troubled space mission, "Apollo 13" pulls no punches: it's a masterfully told drama from director Ron Howard, bolstered by an ensemble of solid performances." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average score of 77 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A" on scale of A+ to F.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" praised the film in his review saying: "This is a powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics." Richard Corliss of "Time" highly praised the film, saying: "From lift-off to splashdown, "Apollo 13" gives one hell of a ride." Edward Guthmann of "San Francisco Chronicle" gave a mixed review and wrote: "I just wish that "Apollo 13" worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" praised the film and wrote: "Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film."


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Janet Maslin made the film an "NYT" Critics' Pick, calling it an "absolutely thrilling" film that "unfolds with perfect immediacy, drawing viewers into the nail-biting suspense of a spellbinding true story." According to Maslin, "like "Quiz Show", "Apollo 13" beautifully evokes recent history in ways that resonate strongly today. Cleverly nostalgic in its visual style (Rita Ryack's costumes are especially right), it harks back to movie making without phony heroics and to the strong spirit of community that enveloped the astronauts and their families. Amazingly, this film manages to seem refreshingly honest while still conforming to the three-act dramatic format of a standard Hollywood hit. It is far and away the best thing Mr. Howard has done (and "Far and Away" was one of the other kind)."


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The academic critic Raymond Malewitz focuses on the DIY aspects of the "mailbox" filtration system to illustrate the emergence of an unlikely hero in late 20th-century American culture—"the creative, improvisational, but restrained thinker—who replaces the older prodigal cowboy heroes of American mythology and provides the country a better, more frugal example of an appropriate 'husband'."


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Marilyn Lovell praised Quinlan's portrayal of her, stating she felt she could feel what Quinlan's character was going through, and remembered how she felt in her mind.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: "Apollo 13" was released on VHS on November 21, 1995 and on LaserDisc the following week. On September 9, 1997, the film debuted on a THX certified widescreen VHS release.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: A 10th-anniversary DVD of the film was released in 2005; it included both the theatrical version and the IMAX version, along with several extras. The IMAX version has a 1.66:1 aspect ratio.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: In 2006, "Apollo 13" was released on HD DVD and on April 13, 2010, it was released on Blu-ray as the 15th-anniversary edition on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 accident. The Film was released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray on October 17, 2017.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: In the film, Lovell tells his wife he was given command of Apollo 13 instead of 14 because original commander Alan Shepard's "ear infection is flaring up again"; in fact, Shepard had no "ear infection"; he had been grounded since 1963 by Ménière's disease. This was surgically corrected four years later and he was returned to flight duty in May of 1969; Manned Spacecraft Center management felt he needed more training time for a lunar mission.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The film portrays the Saturn V launch vehicle being rolled out to the launch pad two days before launch. In reality, the launch vehicle was rolled out on the Mobile Launcher using the crawler-transporter two months before the launch date.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The film depicts the crew hearing a bang quickly after Swigert followed directions from mission control to stir the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. In reality, the crew heard the bang 95 seconds later.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The film depicts Sy Liebergot suggesting that the oxygen leak was in one or two of "Odyssey"s fuel cells, and the order to shut them down was passed up to the crew, forcing abort of the lunar landing mission. In reality, Mission Control "did not" order the shutdown; Haise found the cells were already dead, because of starvation due to the damage to the oxygen system.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The film depicts Swigert and Haise arguing about who was at fault. The show "The Real Story: Apollo 13" broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel includes Haise stating that no such argument took place and that there was no way anyone could have foreseen that stirring the tank would cause problems.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The dialogue between ground control and the astronauts was taken nearly verbatim from transcripts and recordings, with the exception of one of the taglines of the film, "Houston, we have a problem." (This quote was voted #50 on the list "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes".) According to audio of the air-to-ground communications, the actual words uttered by Swigert were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here". Ground control responded by saying, "This is Houston. Say again, please." Jim Lovell then repeated, "Houston, we've had a problem."


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: One other incorrect dialogue is after the re-entry blackout. In the film, Tom Hanks (as Lovell) says "Hello Houston... this is "Odyssey"... it's good to see you again." In the actual re-entry, the Command Module's transmission was finally acquired by a Sikorsky SH-3D Sea King recovery helicopter which then relayed communications to Mission Control. CAPCOM astronaut Joe Kerwin (not Mattingly, who serves as CAPCOM in this scene in the film) then made a call to the spacecraft "Odyssey, Houston standing by. Over." Swigert, not Lovell, replied "Okay, Joe," and unlike the film, this was well before the parachutes deployed; the celebrations depicted at Mission Control were triggered by visual confirmation of their deployment.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: The tagline "Failure is not an option", stated in the film by Gene Kranz, also became very popular, but was not taken from the historical transcripts. The following story relates the origin of the phrase, from an e-mail by Apollo 13 Flight Dynamics Officer Jerry Bostick:


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: As far as the expression "Failure is not an option," you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on "What are the people in Mission Control really like?" One of their questions was "Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?" My answer was "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, "That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it." Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: In the film, Flight Director Gene Kranz and his White Team are portrayed as managing all of the essential parts of the flight, from liftoff to landing. Consequently, the actual role of the other flight directors and teams, especially Glynn Lunney and his Black Team, were neglected. In fact, it was Flight Director Lunney and his Black Team who got Apollo 13 through its most critical period in the hours immediately after the explosion, including the mid-course correction that sent Apollo 13 on a "free return" trajectory around the Moon and back to the Earth. Astronaut Ken Mattingly, who was replaced as Apollo 13 Command Module Pilot at the last minute by Swigert, later said:


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: If there was a hero, Glynn Lunney was, by himself, a hero, because when he walked in the room, I guarantee you, nobody knew what the hell was going on. Glynn walked in, took over this mess, and he just brought calm to the situation. I've never seen such an extraordinary example of leadership in my entire career. Absolutely magnificent. No general or admiral in wartime could ever be more magnificent than Glynn was that night. He and he alone brought all of the scared people together. And you've got to remember that the flight controllers in those days were—they were kids in their thirties. They were good, but very few of them had ever run into these kinds of choices in life, and they weren't used to that. All of a sudden, their confidence had been shaken. They were faced with things that they didn't understand, and Glynn walked in there, and he just kind of took charge.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: A DVD commentary track, recorded by Jim and Marilyn Lovell and included with the Signature Laserdisc and later included on both DVD versions, mentions several inaccuracies included in the film, all done for reasons of artistic license:


title: René Angélil

text: René Angélil (; January 16, 1942 – January 14, 2016) was a Canadian musical producer, talent manager and singer. He was the manager and husband of singer Celine Dion.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to a father of Syrian descent and a mother of Lebanese origin. His father, Joseph Angélil, was born in Montreal to parents from Damascus, Syria, and his mother, Alice Sara, was born in Montreal to Lebanese parents. He was the older of two children, he had a brother, André (born 1945). Both of his parents were members of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Angélil studied at Collège Saint-Viateur (high school), in Outremont and at Collège André-Grasset (post secondary), in Montreal.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil started out in 1961 as a pop singer in Montreal. He formed a pop rock group, Les Baronets (), with childhood friends Pierre Labelle and Jean Beaulne. Les Baronets had some hits during the 1960s, mostly translations of English-language pop hits from the United Kingdom or the United States, such as "C'est fou, mais c'est tout" in 1964 (a translation of The Beatles' song "Hold Me Tight"). After the dissolution of the group in 1972, Angélil and best friend Guy Cloutier began managing artists.


title: René Angélil

text: Together they managed the career of two successful Québec entertainers René Simard and Ginette Reno, among many other pop stars at the time. They parted ways in 1981 to each become solo managers. In 1981 (not long after being terminated as Ginette's manager and considering leaving the music business to pursue law school) René heard Celine Dion's demo tape when he was considered as a potential producer for her album. He soon took over as her agent. He continued as her manager until June 2014, when he stepped down because he had cancer.


title: René Angélil

text: In 1966, Angélil married his first wife, Denyse Duquette. Their son Patrick was born in 1968, and they divorced in 1972. He married singer Anne Renée in 1974; they had two children, Jean-Pierre (born 1974) and Anne-Marie Angélil (born 1977), then divorced in 1986. Anne-Marie married singer Marc Dupré in 2000.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil, a well-known former singer-turned-manager, was sent a tape of then 12-year-old singer Celine Dion and invited her to audition in Quebec. He began managing her career, taking the teen and her mother on tour in Canada, Japan and Europe. He mortgaged his house to finance her first album in 1981.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil and Dion began a personal relationship in 1988 when she was twenty years old. Their relationship began the night Celine won the Eurovision Song Contest on April 30, 1988.


title: René Angélil

text: They married on December 17, 1994, in a lavish wedding ceremony at Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.


title: René Angélil

text: After Angélil was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, and before beginning radiation treatment, the couple turned to in-vitro fertilization. Their efforts were extensively publicized. Their son René-Charles Angélil was born on January 25, 2001. Dion suffered a miscarriage in 2009, then gave birth to twin boys on October 23, 2010. The boys were named Eddy after Eddy Marnay, who produced Dion's first five albums, and Nelson Angélil after former South African president Nelson Mandela.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil and Dion were huge fans of the Montreal Canadiens NHL hockey team and were good friends of former Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche president and general manager Pierre Lacroix.


title: René Angélil

text: Montreal Jubilation Choir founder Trevor Payne has said that "backstage, out of the eye of the general public, they were the kindest, most down-to-earth, superstars that I've ever known in my entire career."


title: René Angélil

text: In 2001, Angélil and Dion filed a $5million defamation lawsuit against the Quebec tabloid "Allô Vedettes", which claimed that the couple paid $5,001 to rent the swimming pool of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas so that Dion could sunbathe topless and Angélil could go skinny dipping. The couple strenuously denied the claim.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil was an avid poker player, having qualified for the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, and finishing in the money at the 2007 Mirage Poker Showdown event on the World Poker Tour, a series of high-stakes tournaments. Angélil was also rumoured to be a dedicated gambler away from the poker table. He reportedly gambled upwards of $1million a week at Caesars Palace, and kept a line of credit for the same amount at Bellagio. In 2007, Jan Jones, a casino executive and the former mayor of Las Vegas, claimed that Angélil gambled $1million a week, but later retracted the statement. Caesars Palace later released a statement of Angélil's gambling losses and wins with his permission.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil suffered a heart attack in 1991 at age 49. In 1999 he was diagnosed with throat cancer and made a full recovery after treatment. He appeared in the video for Simple Plan's song "Save You" as a survivor of cancer. In 2009, Angélil reportedly underwent a heart-related medical procedure to deal with arterial blockage. The procedure had been planned for months and was not heart surgery.


title: René Angélil

text: Angélil had surgery in December 2013 for throat cancer. In June 2014, Angélil stepped down as Dion's manager to focus on his health, but was still involved in business decisions related to her career. In September 2015, Dion announced that Angélil's cancer had progressed and that he had only "months to live". Angélil died on January 14, 2016, of throat cancer, two days before his 74th birthday. He received a "national funeral" service at Notre-Dame Basilica from the government of Quebec on January 22 and was buried at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery.


title: René Angélil

text: Following Angélil's death, Dion became the sole owner and president of her management and production companies, including CDA Productions and Les Productions Feeling.


title: Celeb Jihad

text: Celeb Jihad is a website known for sharing leaked private (often sexual) videos of celebrities as a form of jihad satire. "The Daily Beast" describes it as a "satirical celebrity gossip website."


title: Celeb Jihad

text: The website describes itself as "a satirical website containing published rumors, speculation, assumptions, opinions, fiction as well as factual information". The site lists its owner as "Durka Durka Mohammad" a fictitious terrorist whose goal is "destroying the poisonous celebrity culture" of America.


title: Celeb Jihad

text: The website has participated in a series of releases of images and video, generally believed to have been stolen from hacked cell phones, dubbed "Fappening 2.0".


title: Celeb Jihad

text: In August 2017 it released nude pictures of Lindsey Vonn, Tiger Woods, Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart, and Katharine McPhee. The image of Woods and Vonn, posted August 21, was suppressed in apparent reaction to legal threats on August 23; images of Carly Booth were deleted August 23 or 24.


title: Celeb Jihad

text: In November 2017 Celeb Jihad released naked images of WWE divas Saraya-Jade Bevis, JoJo Offerman, and Maria Kanellis, the latest in a long series of similar leaks of WWE celebrity images. The website has also released fake nude photos of female celebrities, including doctored photos of Meghan Markle, Taylor Swift, Megan Fox and Kate Upton.


title: David Lloyd George

text: David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, social reform policies including the National Insurance Act 1911, his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. Early in his career, he was known for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales and support of Welsh devolution. He was the last Liberal Party prime minister; the party fell into third party status shortly after the end of his premiership.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents. From around three months of age he was raised in Pembrokeshire and Llanystumdwy, Caernarfonshire, speaking Welsh. His father, a schoolmaster, died in 1864, and David was raised by his mother and her shoemaker brother, whose Liberal politics and Baptist faith strongly influenced Lloyd George; the same uncle helped the boy embark on a career as a solicitor after leaving school.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George became active in local politics, gaining a reputation as an orator and a proponent of a Welsh blend of radical Liberalism which championed Welsh devolution, the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, equality for labourers and tenant farmers, and reform of land ownership. In 1890, he narrowly won a by-election to become the Member of Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs, in which seat he remained for 55 years. He served in Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet from 1905. After H. H. Asquith succeeded to the premiership in 1908, Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To fund extensive welfare reforms he proposed taxes on land ownership and high incomes in the "People's Budget" (1909), which the Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected. The resulting constitutional crisis was only resolved after two elections in 1910 and the passage of the Parliament Act 1911. His budget was enacted in 1910, and the National Insurance Act 1911 and other measures helped to establish the modern welfare state. In 1913, he was embroiled in the Marconi scandal, but he remained in office and promoted the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales and until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 suspended its implementation.


title: David Lloyd George

text: As wartime chancellor, Lloyd George strengthened the country's finances and forged agreements with trade unions to maintain production. In 1915, Asquith formed a Liberal-led wartime coalition with the Conservatives and Labour. Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and rapidly expanded production. Amongst other measures, he set up four large munitions factories as a countermeasure to the shell crisis of the previous year. The so-called 'National Filling Factory' in Renfrewshire was named 'Georgetown' in Lloyd George's honour. In 1916, he was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and clashes with the military establishment over strategy. Amid stalemate on the Western Front, confidence in Asquith's leadership waned. He was forced to resign in December 1916; Lloyd George succeeded him as prime minister, supported by the Conservatives and some Liberals. He centralised authority through a smaller war cabinet, a new Cabinet Office and his "Garden Suburb" of advisers. To combat food shortages he implemented the convoy system, established rationing, and stimulated farming. After supporting the disastrous French Nivelle Offensive in 1917, he had to reluctantly approve Field Marshal Haig's plans for the Battle of Passchendaele which resulted in huge casualties with little strategic benefit. Against the views of his commanders, he was finally able to see the Allies brought under one command in March 1918. The war effort turned in their favour that August and was won in November. In the aftermath, he and the Conservatives maintained their coalition with popular support following the December 1918 "Coupon" election. His government had extended the franchise to all men and some women earlier in the year.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was a major player in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 but the situation in Ireland worsened that year, erupting into the Irish War of Independence, which lasted until Lloyd George negotiated independence for the Irish Free State in 1921. At home, he initiated reforms to education and housing but trade union militancy entered record levels, the economy became depressed in 1920 and unemployment rose; spending cuts followed (1921–22) and he was embroiled in a scandal over the sale of honours and the Chanak Crisis in 1922. Bonar Law won backbench support for the Conservatives to contend the next election alone. Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and never held office again, but continued as leader of a Liberal faction. After an awkward reunion with Asquith's faction in 1923, Lloyd George led the Liberals from 1926 to 1931. He put forward innovative proposals for public works and other reforms in a series of coloured books, but made only modest gains in the 1929 election. After 1931, he was a mistrusted figure heading a small rump of breakaway Liberals opposed to the National Government. He refused to serve in Winston Churchill's War Cabinet in 1940. He was raised to the peerage in 1945, shortly before his death.


title: David Lloyd George

text: David George was born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents William George and Elizabeth Lloyd George.


title: David Lloyd George

text: William George had been a teacher in both London and Liverpool. He also taught in the Unitarian-administered Hope Street Sunday Schools, where he met Unitarian minister James Martineau. In March 1863, on account of his failing health, William George returned with his family to his native Pembrokeshire. He took up farming but died in June 1864 of pneumonia, aged 44. David was just over one year old.


title: David Lloyd George

text: His widow, Elizabeth George (1828–96), sold the farm and moved with her children to her native Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire, where she lived in a cottage known as Highgate with her brother Richard. Richard Lloyd (1834–1917) was a shoemaker, a minister (first in the Scottish Baptists and then the Church of Christ), and a strong Liberal. Richard Lloyd was a towering influence on his nephew until his death in 1917 and was the first to encourage his nephew to take up a career in law and enter politics. David adopted his uncle's surname to become "Lloyd George." Lloyd George was educated at the local Anglican school, Llanystumdwy National School and later under tutors.


title: David Lloyd George

text: He was brought up with Welsh as his first language; Roy Jenkins, another Welsh politician, notes that, "Lloyd George was Welsh, that his whole culture, his whole outlook, his language was Welsh." Though Lloyd George cited the influence of his childhood throughout his career, biographer John Grigg argues that his childhood was nowhere near as poverty-stricken as he liked to suggest.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Though brought up a devout evangelical, Lloyd George privately lost his religious faith as a young man. Biographer Don Cregier says he became "a Deist and perhaps an agnostic, though he remained a chapel-goer and connoisseur of good preaching all his life." He was nevertheless, according to Frank Owen, "one of the foremost fighting leaders of a fanatical Welsh Nonconformity" for a quarter of a century.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George qualified as a solicitor in 1884 after being articled to a firm in Porthmadog and taking Honours in his final law examination. He set up his own practice in the back parlour of his uncle's house in 1885. Although many prime ministers have been barristers, Lloyd George is, as of , the only solicitor to have held that office.


title: David Lloyd George

text: As a solicitor, Lloyd George was politically active from the start, campaigning for his uncle's Liberal Party in the 1885 election. He was attracted by Joseph Chamberlain's "unauthorised programme" of Radical reform. After the election, Chamberlain split with Gladstone in opposition to Irish Home Rule, and Lloyd George moved to join the Liberal Unionists. He moved a resolution in support of Chamberlain at a local Liberal club and travelled to Birmingham to attend the first meeting of Chamberlain's new National Radical Union, but arrived a week too early. Lloyd George later told Herbert Lewis that he thought Chamberlain could have carried Wales if "Henry Richmond, Osborne Morgan and the Welsh members had stood by Chamberlain on an agreement as regards the disestablishment."


title: David Lloyd George

text: His legal practice quickly flourished; he established branch offices in surrounding towns and took his brother William into partnership in 1887. Lloyd George's legal and political triumph came in the Llanfrothen burial case, which established the right of Nonconformists to be buried according to denominational rites in parish burial grounds, as given by the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880 but theretofore ignored by the Anglican clergy. On Lloyd George's advice, a Baptist burial party broke open a gate to a cemetery that had been locked against them by the vicar. The vicar sued them for trespass and although the jury returned a verdict for the party, the local judge misrecorded the jury's verdict and found in the vicar's favour. Suspecting bias, Lloyd George's clients won on appeal to the Divisional Court of Queen's Bench in London, where Lord Chief Justice Coleridge found in their favour. The case was hailed as a great victory throughout Wales and led to Lloyd George's adoption as the Liberal candidate for Carnarvon Boroughs on 27 December 1888. The same year, he and other young Welsh Liberals founded a monthly paper, "Udgorn Rhyddid" (Bugle of Freedom).


title: David Lloyd George

text: In 1889, Lloyd George became an alderman on Carnarvonshire County Council and would remain so for the rest of his life. Lloyd George would also serve the county as a Justice of the Peace (1910), chairman of Quarter Sessions (1929–38), and Deputy Lieutenant in 1921.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a well-to-do local farming family, on 24 January 1888.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George's career as a member of parliament began when he was returned as a Liberal MP for Caernarfon Boroughs (now Caernarfon), narrowly winning the by-election on 10 April 1890, following the death of the Conservative member Edmund Swetenham. He would remain an MP for the same constituency until 1945, 55 years later. Lloyd George's early beginnings in Westminster may have proven difficult for him as a radical liberal and "a great outsider". Backbench members of the House of Commons were not paid at that time, so Lloyd George supported himself and his growing family by continuing to practise as a solicitor. He opened an office in London under the name of "Lloyd George and Co." and continued in partnership with William George in Criccieth. In 1897, he merged his growing London practice with that of Arthur Rhys Roberts (who was to become Official Solicitor) under the name of "Lloyd George, Roberts and Co."


title: David Lloyd George

text: Kenneth O. Morgan describes Lloyd George as a "lifelong Welsh nationalist" and suggests that between 1880 and 1914 he was "the symbol and tribune of the national reawakening of Wales", although he is also clear that from the early 1900s his main focus gradually shifted to UK wide issues. He also became an associate of Tom Ellis, MP for Meirionydd, having previously told a Caernarfon friend in 1888 that he was a "Welsh Nationalist of the Ellis type".


title: David Lloyd George

text: One of Lloyd George's first acts as an MP was to organise an informal grouping of Welsh Liberal members with a programme that included; disestablishing and disendowing the Church of England in Wales, temperance reform, and establishing Welsh home rule. He was keen on decentralisation and thus Welsh devolution, starting with the devolution of the Church in Wales saying in 1890: "I am deeply impressed with the fact that Wales has wants and inspirations of her own which have too long been ignored, but which must no longer be neglected. First and foremost amongst these stands the cause of Religious Liberty and Equality in Wales. If returned to Parliament by you, it shall be my earnest endeavour to labour for the triumph of this great cause. I believe in a liberal extension of the principle of Decentralization."


title: David Lloyd George

text: During the next decade, Lloyd George campaigned in Parliament largely on Welsh issues, in particular for disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. When Gladstone retired in 1894 after the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Liberal members chose him to serve on a deputation to William Harcourt to press for specific assurances on Welsh issues. When those assurances were not provided, they resolved to take independent action if the government did not bring a bill for disestablishment. When a bill was not forthcoming, he and three other Welsh Liberals (D. A. Thomas, Herbert Lewis and Frank Edwards) refused the whip on 14 April 1894, but accepted Lord Rosebery's assurance and rejoined the official Liberals on 29 May.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Historian Emyr Price referred to Lloyd George as "the first architect of Welsh devolution and its most famous advocate" as well as "the pioneering advocate of a powerful parliament for the Welsh people". Lloyd George himself stated in 1880 "Is it not high time that Wales should the powers to manage its own affairs" and in 1890, "Parliament is so overweighted that it cannot possibly devote the time and trouble necessary to legislate for the peculiar and domestic retirement of each and every separate province of Britain". These statements would later be used to advocate for a Welsh assembly in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum. Lloyd George felt that disestablishment, land reform and other forms of Welsh devolution could only be achieved if Wales formed its own government within a federal imperial system. In 1895, in a failed Church in Wales Bill, Lloyd George added an amendment in a discreet attempt at forming a sort of Welsh home rule, a national council for appointment of the Welsh Church commissioners. Although not condemned by Tom Ellis MP, this was to the annoyance of J. Bryn Roberts MP and the Home Secretary H. H. Asquith MP.


title: David Lloyd George

text: He was also a co-leader of , a national Welsh party with liberal values with the goals of promoting a "stronger Welsh identity" and establishing a Welsh government. He hoped that would become a force like the Irish National Party. He abandoned this idea after being criticised in Welsh newspapers for bringing about the defeat of the Liberal Party in the 1895 election. In an AGM meeting in Newport on 16 January 1896 of the South Wales Liberal Federation, led by D. A. Thomas, a proposal was made to unite the North and South Liberal Federations with to form The Welsh National Federation. This was a proposal which the North Wales Liberal Federation had already agreed to. However, the South Wales Liberal Federation rejected this. According to Lloyd George, he was shouted down by "Newport Englishmen" in the meeting, although the "South Wales Argus" suggested the poor crowd behaviour came from Lloyd George's supporters. Following difficulty in uniting the Liberal federations along with in the South East and thus, difficulty in gaining support for Home Rule for Wales, Lloyd George shifted his focus to improving the socio-economic environment of Wales as part of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Although Lloyd George considered himself a "Welshman first", he saw the opportunities for Wales within the UK.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In 1898, Lloyd George created the Welsh National Liberal Council, a loose umbrella organisation covering the two federations, but with very little power. In time, it became known as the Liberal Party of Wales.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George had a connection or promoted the establishment of the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales and the Welsh Department of the Board of Education. He also showed considerable support for the University of Wales, that its establishment raised the status of Welsh people and that the university deserved greater funding by the UK government.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George had been impressed by his journey to Canada in 1899. Although sometimes wrongly supposed – both at the time and subsequently – to be a Little Englander, he was not an opponent of the British Empire "per se", but in a speech at Birkenhead (21 November 1901) he stressed that it needed to be based on freedom, including for India, not "racial arrogance". Consequently, he gained national fame by displaying vehement opposition to the Second Boer War.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Following Rosebery's lead, he based his attack firstly on what were supposed to be Britain's war aims – remedying the grievances of the and in particular the claim that they were wrongly denied the right to vote, saying "I do not believe the war has any connection with the franchise. It is a question of 45% dividends" and that England (which did not then have universal male suffrage) was more in need of franchise reform than the Boer republics. A second attack came on the cost of the war, which, he argued, prevented overdue social reform in England, such as old-age pensions and workmen's cottages. As the fighting continued his attacks moved to its conduct by the generals, who, he said (basing his words on reports by William Burdett-Coutts in "The Times"), were not providing for the sick or wounded soldiers and were starving Boer women and children in concentration camps. But his major thrusts were reserved for the Chamberlains, accusing them of war profiteering through the family company Kynoch Ltd, of which Chamberlain's brother was chairman. The firm had won tenders to the War Office, though its prices were higher than some of its competitors. After speaking at a meeting in Birmingham Lloyd George had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman, as his life was in danger from the mob. At this time the Liberal Party was badly split as H. H. Asquith, R. B. Haldane and others were supporters of the war and formed the Liberal Imperial League.


title: David Lloyd George

text: On 24 March Arthur Balfour, just about to take office as Prime Minister, introduced a bill which was to become the Education Act 1902. Lloyd George supported the bill's proposals to bring voluntary schools (i.e. religious schools – mainly Church of England, and some Roman Catholic schools in certain inner city areas) in England and Wales under the control of local school boards, who would conduct inspections and appoint two out of each school's six managers. However, other measures were more contentious: the majority-religious school managers would retain the power to employ or sack teachers on religious grounds and would receive money from the rates (local property taxes). This offended nonconformist opinion, then in a period of revival, as it seemed like a return to the hated church rates (which had been compulsory until 1868), and inspired a large grassroots campaign against the bill.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Within days of the bill's unveiling (27 March), Lloyd George denounced "priestcraft" in a speech to his constituents, and he began an active campaign of speaking against the bill, both in public in Wales (with a few speeches in England) and in the House of Commons. On 12 November Balfour accepted an amendment (willingly, but a rare case of him doing so), ostensibly from Alfred Thomas, chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary Liberal Party, but in reality instigated by Lloyd George, transferring control of Welsh schools from appointed boards to the elected county councils. The Education Act became law on 20 December 1902.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George now announced the real purpose of the amendment, described as a "booby trap" by his biographer John Grigg. The Welsh National Liberal Council soon adopted his proposal that county councils should refuse funding unless repairs were carried out to schools (many were in a poor state), and should also demand control of school governing bodies and a ban on religious tests for teachers; "no control, no cash" was Lloyd George's slogan. Lloyd George negotiated with A. G. Edwards, Anglican Bishop of St Asaph, and was prepared to settle on an "agreed religious syllabus" or even to allow Anglican teaching in schools, provided the county councils retained control of teacher appointments, but this compromise failed after opposition from other Anglican Welsh bishops. A well-attended meeting at Park Hall Cardiff (3 June 1903) passed a number of resolutions by acclamation: county council control of schools, withholding money from schools or even withholding rates from unsupportive county councils. The Liberals soon gained control of all thirteen Welsh County Councils. Lloyd George continued to speak in England against the bill, but the campaign there was less aggressively-led, taking the form of passive resistance to rate paying.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In August 1904 the government brought in the Education (Local Authority Default) Act giving the Board of Education power to take charge of schools, which Lloyd George immediately nicknamed the "Coercion of Wales Act". He addressed another convention in Cardiff on 6 October 1904, during which he proclaimed that the Welsh flag was "a dragon rampant, not a sheep recumbent". Under his leadership, the convention pledged not to maintain elementary schools, or to withdraw children from elementary schools altogether so that they could be taught privately by the nonconformist churches. In Travis Crosbie's words, public resistance to the Education Act had caused a "perfect impasse". There was no progress between Welsh counties and Westminster until 1905.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Having already gained national recognition for his anti-Boer War campaigns, Lloyd George's leadership of the attacks on the Education Act gave him a strong parliamentary reputation and marked him as a likely future cabinet member. The Act served to reunify the Liberals after their divisions over the Boer War and to increase Nonconformist influence in the party, which then included educational reform as policy in the 1906 election, which resulted in a Liberal landslide. All 34 Welsh seats returned a Liberal, except for one Labour seat in Merthyr Tydfil.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George also supported the idea of Pan-Celtic unity and gave a speech at the 1904 Pan-Celtic Congress in Caernarfon.


title: David Lloyd George

text: During his second-ever speech in the House of Commons, Lloyd George criticised the grandeur of the monarchy.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George wrote extensively for Liberal-supporting papers such as the "Manchester Guardian" and spoke on Liberal issues (particularly temperance – the "local option" – and national as opposed to denominational education) throughout England and Wales.


title: David Lloyd George

text: He served as the legal adviser of Theodor Herzl in his negotiations with the British government regarding the Uganda Scheme, proposed as an alternative homeland for the Jews due to Turkish refusal to grant a charter for Jewish settlement in Palestine.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In 1905, Lloyd George entered the new Liberal Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Trade.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The first priority on taking office was the repeal of the 1902 Education Act. Lloyd George took the lead along with Augustine Birrell, President of the Board of Education. Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee drawing up the bill in its later stages and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. Birrell complained privately that the bill, introduced in the Commons on 9 April 1906, owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents. The bill passed the House of Commons greatly amended but was completely mangled by the House of Lords. For the rest of the year Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, in defiance of the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act. Lloyd George was rebuked by King Edward VII for these speeches: the Prime Minister defended him to the King's secretary Francis Knollys, stating that his behaviour in Parliament was more constructive but that in speeches to the public "the combative spirit seems to get the better of him". No compromise was possible and the bill was abandoned, allowing the 1902 Act to continue in effect. As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying, a separate department for Wales was created within the Board of Education.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Nonconformists were bitterly upset by the failure of the Liberal Party to reform the 1902 Education Act, its most important promise to them, and over time their support for the Liberal Party slowly fell away.


title: David Lloyd George

text: At the Board of Trade Lloyd George introduced legislation on many topics, from merchant shipping and the Port of London to companies and railway regulation. His main achievement was in stopping a proposed national strike of the railway unions by brokering an agreement between the unions and the railway companies. While almost all the companies refused to recognise the unions, Lloyd George persuaded the companies to recognise elected representatives of the workers who sat with the company representatives on conciliation boards—one for each company. If those boards failed to agree then an arbitrator would be called upon.


title: David Lloyd George

text: On Campbell-Bannerman's death, he succeeded Asquith, who had become prime minister, as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915. While he continued some work from the Board of Trade—for example, legislation to establish the Port of London Authority and to pursue traditional Liberal programmes such as licensing law reforms—his first major trial in this role was over the 1908–1909 Naval Estimates. The Liberal manifesto at the 1906 general election included a commitment to reduce military expenditure. Lloyd George strongly supported this, writing to Reginald McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, "the emphatic pledges given by all of us at the last general election to reduce the gigantic expenditure on armaments built up by the recklessness of our predecessors." He then proposed the programme be reduced from six to four dreadnoughts. This was adopted by the government, but there was a public storm when the Conservatives, with covert support from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Jackie Fisher, campaigned for more with the slogan "We want eight and we won't wait". This resulted in Lloyd George's defeat in Cabinet and the adoption of estimates including provision for eight dreadnoughts. During this period he was also a target of protest by the women's suffrage movement, as he professed support personally but did not move for changes within the Parliament process.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In 1909, Lloyd George introduced his People's Budget, imposing a 20% tax on the unearned increase in value of land, payable at the death of the owner or sale of the land, and  d. on undeveloped land and minerals, increased death duties, a rise in income tax, and the introduction of Supertax on income over £3,000. There were taxes also on luxuries, alcohol, and tobacco, so that money could be made available for the new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. The nation's landowners (well represented in the House of Lords) were intensely angry at the new taxes, mostly at the proposed very high tax on land values, but also because the instrumental redistribution of wealth could be used to detract from an argument for protective tariffs.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The immediate consequences included the end of the Liberal League, and Rosebery breaking friendship with the Liberal Party, which in itself was for Lloyd George a triumph. He had won the case of social reform without losing the debate on Free Trade. Arthur Balfour denounced the budget as "vindictive, inequitable, based on no principles, and injurious to the productive capacity of the country." Roy Jenkins described it as the most reverberating since Gladstone's in 1860.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In the House of Commons, Lloyd George gave a brilliant account of the budget, which was attacked by the Conservatives. On the stump, notably at his Limehouse speech in 1909, he denounced the Conservatives and the wealthy classes with all his very considerable oratorical power. In a break with convention, the budget was defeated by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. The elections of 1910 narrowly upheld the Liberal government. The 1909 budget was passed on 28 April 1910 by the Lords and received the Royal Assent on the 29th. Subsequently, the Parliament Act 1911 removed the House of Lords' power to block money bills, and with a few exceptions replaced their veto power over most bills with a power to delay them for up to two years.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Although old-age pensions had already been introduced by Asquith as Chancellor, Lloyd George was largely responsible for the introduction of state financial support for the sick and infirm (known colloquially as "going on the Lloyd George" for decades afterwards)—legislation referred to as the Liberal Reforms. Lloyd George also succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act 1911, making provision for sickness and invalidism, and a system of unemployment insurance. He was helped in his endeavours by forty or so backbenchers who regularly pushed for new social measures, often voted with Labour MPs. These social reforms in Britain were the beginnings of a welfare state and fulfilled the aim of dampening down the demands of the growing working class for rather more radical solutions to their impoverishment.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was an opponent of warfare but he paid little attention to foreign affairs until the Agadir Crisis of 1911. After consulting Edward Grey (the foreign minister) and H.H. Asquith (the prime minister) he gave a stirring and patriotic speech at Mansion House on 21 July 1911. He stated: But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. National honour is no party question. The security of our great international trade is no party question.


title: David Lloyd George

text: He was warning both France and Germany, but the public response cheered solidarity with France and hostility toward Germany. Berlin was outraged, blaming Lloyd George for doing "untold harm both with regard to German public opinion and the negotiations." Count Metternich, Germany's ambassador in London, said, "Mr Lloyd George's speech came upon us like a thunderbolt".


title: David Lloyd George

text: In 1913, Lloyd George, along with Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, was involved in the Marconi scandal. Accused of speculating in Marconi shares on the inside information that they were about to be awarded a key government contract (which would have caused them to increase in value), he told the House of Commons that he had not speculated in the shares of "that company". He had in fact bought shares in the American Marconi Company.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was instrumental in fulfilling a long-standing aspiration to disestablish the Anglican Church of Wales. Like Irish Home Rule, previous attempts to enact this had failed in the 1892–1895 Governments, and were now made possible by the removal of the Lords' veto in 1911, and as with Home Rule the initial bill (1912) was delayed for two years by the Lords, becoming law in 1914, only to be suspended for the duration of the war. After the Welsh Church (Temporalities) Act 1919 was passed, Welsh Disestablishment finally came into force in 1920. This Act also removed the right of the six Welsh Bishops in the new Church in Wales to sit in the House of Lords and removed (disendowed) certain pre-1662 property rights.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was as surprised as almost everyone else by the outbreak of the First World War. On 23 July 1914, almost a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and on the eve of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, he made a speech advocating "economy" in the House of Commons, saying that Britain's relations with Germany were better than for many years. On 27 July he told C. P. Scott of the "Manchester Guardian" that Britain would keep out of the impending war. With the Cabinet divided, and most ministers reluctant for Britain to get involved, he struck Asquith as "statesmanlike" at the Cabinet meeting on 1 August, favouring keeping Britain's options open. The next day he seemed likely to resign if Britain intervened, but he held back at Cabinet on Monday 3 August, moved by the news that Belgium would resist Germany's demand for the passage for her army across her soil. He was seen as a key figure whose stance helped to persuade almost the entire Cabinet to support British intervention. He was able to give the more pacifist members of the cabinet and the Liberal Party a principle – the rights of small nations – which meant they could support the war and maintain united political and popular support.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George remained in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer for the first year of the Great War. The budget of 17 November 1914 had to allow for lower taxation receipts because of the reduction in world trade. The Crimean and Boer Wars had largely been paid for out of taxation, but Lloyd George raised debt financing of £321 million. Large (but deferred) increases in Supertax and income tax rates were accompanied by increases in excise duties, and the budget produced a tax increase of £63 million in a full year. His last budget, on 4 May 1915, showed a growing concern for the effects of alcohol on the war effort, with large increases in duties, and a scheme of state control of alcohol sales in specified areas. The excise proposals were opposed by the Irish Nationalists and the Conservatives and were abandoned.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George gained a heroic reputation with his energetic work as Minister of Munitions, 1915–16, setting the stage for his move up to the height of power. After a long struggle with the War Office, he wrested responsibility for arms production away from the generals, making it a purely industrial department, with considerable expert assistance from Walter Runciman. The two men gained the respect of Liberal cabinet colleagues for improving administrative capabilities, and increasing outputs.


title: David Lloyd George

text: When the Shell Crisis of 1915 dismayed public opinion with the news that the Army was running short of artillery shells, demands rose for a strong leader to take charge of munitions. In the first coalition ministry, formed in May 1915, Lloyd George was made Minister of Munitions, heading a new department. In this position, he won great acclaim, which formed the basis for his political ascent. All historians agree that he boosted national morale and focussed attention on the urgent need for greater output, but many also say the increase in munitions output in 1915–16 was due largely to reforms already underway, though not yet effective before he had even arrived. The Ministry broke through the cumbersome bureaucracy of the War Office, resolved labour problems, rationalised the supply system and dramatically increased production. Within a year it became the largest buyer, seller, and employer in Britain.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was not at all satisfied with the progress of the war. He wanted to "knock away the props", by attacking Germany's allies – from early in 1915 he argued for the sending of British troops to the Balkans to assist Serbia and bring Greece and other Balkan countries onto the side of the Allies (this was eventually done – the Salonika expedition – although not on the scale that Lloyd George had wanted, and mountain ranges made his suggestions of grand Balkan offensives impractical); in 1916, he wanted to send machine guns to Romania (insufficient amounts were available for this to be feasible). These suggestions began a period of poor relations with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Robertson, who was "brusque to the point of rudeness" and "barely concealed his contempt for Lloyd George's military opinions", to which he was in the habit of retorting "I've 'eard different".


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George persuaded Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, to raise a Welsh Division, and, despite Kitchener's threat of resignation, to recognise nonconformist chaplains in the Army.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Late in 1915, Lloyd George became a strong supporter of general conscription, an issue that divided Liberals, and helped the passage of several conscription acts from January 1916 onwards. In spring 1916 Alfred Milner hoped Lloyd George could be persuaded to bring down the coalition government by resigning, but this did not happen.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In June 1916 Lloyd George succeeded Lord Kitchener (who died when the ship "HMS Hampshire" was sunk taking him on a mission to Russia) as Secretary of State for War, although he had little control over strategy, as General Robertson had been given direct right of access to the Cabinet so as to bypass Kitchener. He did succeed in securing the appointment of Sir Eric Geddes to take charge of military railways behind British lines in France, with the honorary rank of major-general.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George told a journalist, Roy W. Howard, in late September that "the fight must be to a finish – to a knockout", a rejection of President Woodrow Wilson's offer to mediate.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George was increasingly frustrated at the limited gains of the Somme Offensive, criticising General Haig to Ferdinand Foch on a visit to the Western Front in September (British casualty ratios were worse than those of the French, who were more experienced and had more artillery), proposing sending Robertson on a mission to Russia (he refused to go), and demanding that more troops be sent to Salonika to help Romania. Robertson eventually threatened to resign.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Much of the press still argued that the professional leadership of Haig and Robertson was preferable to civilian interference which had led to disasters like Gallipoli and Kut. Lord Northcliffe, owner of "The Times" stormed into Lloyd George's office and, finding him unavailable, told his secretary "You can tell him that I hear he has been interfering with Strategy and that if he goes on I will break him", and the same day (11 October) Lloyd George also received a warning letter from H. A. Gwynne, editor of the "Morning Post". He was obliged to give his "word of honour" to Asquith that he had complete confidence in Haig and Robertson and thought them irreplaceable, but he wrote to Robertson wanting to know how their differences had been leaked to the press (affecting to believe that Robertson had not personally "authorised such a breach of confidence & discipline"). He asserted his right to express his opinions about strategy in November, by which time ministers had taken to holding meetings to which Robertson was not invited.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The weakness of Asquith as a planner and organiser was increasingly apparent to senior officials. After Asquith had refused, then agreed, and then refused again to agree to Lloyd George's demand that he should be allowed to chair a small committee to manage the war, he resigned in December 1916. Grey was among leading Asquithians who had identified Lloyd George's intentions the previous month. Lloyd George became prime minister, with the nation demanding he take vigorous charge of the war. A "Punch" cartoon of the time showed him as "The New Conductor" conducting the orchestra in the "Opening of the 1917 Overture".


title: David Lloyd George

text: Although during the political crisis Robertson had advised Lloyd George to "stick to it" and form a small War Council, Lloyd George had planned if necessary to appeal to the country. His Military Secretary Colonel Arthur Lee prepared a memo blaming Robertson and the General Staff for the loss of Serbia and Romania. Lloyd George was restricted by his promise to the Unionists to keep Haig as Commander-in-Chief and the press support for the generals, although Milner and Curzon were also sympathetic to campaigns to increase British power in the Middle East. After Germany's offer (12 December 1916) of a negotiated peace Lloyd George rebuffed President Wilson's request for the belligerents to state their war aims by demanding terms tantamount to German defeat.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The fall of Asquith as prime minister split the Liberal Party into two factions: those who supported him and those who supported the coalition government. In his "War Memoirs", Lloyd George compared himself with Asquith:


title: David Lloyd George

text: There are certain indispensable qualities essential to the Chief Minister of the Crown in a great war. ... Such a minister must have courage, composure, and judgment. All this Mr. Asquith possessed in a superlative degree. ... But a war minister must also have vision, imagination and initiative—he must show untiring assiduity, must exercise constant oversight and supervision of every sphere of war activity, must possess driving force to energize this activity, must be in continuous consultation with experts, official and unofficial, as to the best means of using the resources of the country in conjunction with the Allies for the achievement of victory. If to this can be added a flair for conducting a great fight, then you have an ideal War Minister.


title: David Lloyd George

text: After December 1916 Lloyd George relied on the support of Conservatives and of the press baron Lord Northcliffe (who owned both "The Times" and the "Daily Mail"). Besides the Prime Minister, the five-member War Cabinet contained three Conservatives (Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords Lord Curzon, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons Bonar Law, and Minister without Portfolio Lord Milner) and Arthur Henderson, unofficially representing Labour. Edward Carson was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, as had been widely touted during the intrigues of the previous month, but excluded from the War Cabinet. Amongst the few Liberal frontbenchers to support Lloyd George were Christopher Addison (who had played an important role in drumming up some backbench Liberal support for Lloyd George), H. A. L. Fisher, Lord Rhondda and Sir Albert Stanley. Edwin Montagu and Churchill joined the government in the summer of 1917.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George's Secretariat, popularly known as Downing Street's "Garden Suburb", assisted him in discharging his responsibilities within the constraints of the war cabinet system. Its function was to maintain contact with the numerous departments of government, to collect information, and to report on matters of special concern. Its leading members were George Adams and Philip Kerr, and the other secretaries included David Davies, Joseph Davies, Waldorf Astor and, later, Cecil Harmsworth.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George wanted to make the destruction of the Ottoman Empire a major British war aim, and two days after taking office told Robertson that he wanted a major victory, preferably the capture of Jerusalem, to impress British public opinion.


title: David Lloyd George

text: At the Rome Conference (5–6 January 1917) Lloyd George was discreetly quiet about plans to take Jerusalem, an object which advanced British interests rather than doing much to win the war. Lloyd George proposed sending heavy guns to Italy with a view to defeating Austria-Hungary, possibly to be balanced by a transfer of Italian troops to Salonika but was unable to obtain the support of the French or Italians, and Robertson talked of resigning.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George engaged almost constantly in intrigues calculated to reduce the power of the generals, including trying to subordinate British forces in France to the French General Nivelle. He backed Nivelle because he thought he had "proved himself to be a Man" by his successful counterattacks at Verdun, and because of his promises that he could break the German lines in 48 hours. Nivelle increasingly complained of Haig's dragging his feet rather than cooperating with their plans for the offensive.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The plan was to put British forces under Nivelle's direct command for the great 1917 offensive. The British would attack first, thereby tying down the German reserves. Then the French would strike and score an overwhelming victory in two days. It was announced at a War Cabinet meeting on 24 February, to which neither Robertson nor Lord Derby (Secretary of State for War) had been invited. Ministers felt that the French generals and staff had shown themselves more skilful than the British in 1916, whilst politically Britain had to give wholehearted support to what would probably be the last major French effort of the war. The Nivelle proposal was then given to Robertson and Haig without warning on 26–27 February at the Calais Conference (minutes from the War Cabinet meeting were not sent to the King until 28 February, so that he did not have a prior chance to object). Robertson in particular protested vehemently. Finally, a compromise was reached whereby Haig would be under Nivelle's orders but would retain operational control of British forces and keep a right of appeal to London "if he saw good reason". After further argument the "status quo", that Haig was an ally of the French but was expected to defer to their wishes, was largely restored in mid-March.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The British attack at the Battle of Arras (9–14 April 1917) was partly successful but with much higher casualties than the Germans suffered. There had been many delays and the Germans, suspecting an attack, had shortened their lines to the strong Hindenburg Line. The French attack on the Aisne River in mid-April gained some tactically important high ground but failed to achieve the promised decisive breakthrough, pushing the French Army to the point of mutiny. While Haig gained prestige, Lloyd George lost credibility, and the affair further poisoned relations between himself and the "Brasshats".


title: David Lloyd George

text: In early 1917 the Germans had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in a bid to achieve victory on the Western Approaches. Lloyd George set up a Ministry of Shipping under Sir Joseph Maclay, a Glasgow shipowner who was not, until after he left office, a member of either House of Parliament, and housed in a wooden building in a specially drained lake in St James's Park, within a few minutes' walk from the Admiralty. The Junior Minister and House of Commons spokesman was Leo Chiozza Money, with whom Maclay did not get on, but on whose appointment Lloyd George insisted, feeling that their qualities would complement one another. The Civil Service staff was headed by the highly able John Anderson (then only thirty-four years old) and included Arthur Salter. A number of shipping magnates were persuaded, like Maclay himself, to work unpaid for the ministry (as had a number of industrialists for the Ministry of Munitions), who were also able to obtain ideas privately from junior naval officers who were reluctant to argue with their superiors in meetings. The ministers heading the Board of Trade, for Munitions (Addison) and for Agriculture and Food (Lord Rhondda), were also expected to co-operate with Maclay.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In accordance with a pledge Lloyd George had given in December 1916 nearly 90% of Britain's merchant shipping tonnage was soon brought under state control (previously less than half had been controlled by the Admiralty), whilst remaining privately owned (similar measures were in force at the time for the railways). Merchant shipping was concentrated, largely on Chiozza Money's initiative, on the transatlantic route where it could more easily be protected, instead of being spread out all over the globe (this relied on imports coming first into North America). Maclay began the process of increasing ship construction, although he was hampered by shortages of steel and labour, and ships under construction in the United States were confiscated by the Americans when she entered the war. In May 1917 Eric Geddes, based at the Admiralty, was put in charge of shipbuilding, and in July he became First Lord of the Admiralty. Later the German U-Boats were defeated in 1918.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George had raised the matter of convoys at the War Committee in November 1916, only to be told by the admirals present, including Jellicoe, that convoys presented too large a target, and that merchant ship masters lacked the discipline to keep station in a convoy.


title: David Lloyd George

text: 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 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.


title: David Lloyd George

text: 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 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.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The new Commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral Beatty, whom Lloyd George visited at Invergordon on 15 April, was a supporter of convoys, as was the American Admiral 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.


title: David Lloyd George

text: 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." 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 ... failure would have been catastrophic."


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George welcomed the Fall of the Tsar, both in a private letter to his brother and in a message to the new Russian Prime Minister Prince Lvov, not least as the war could now be portrayed as a clash between liberal governments and the autocratic Central Powers. Like many observers, he had been taken by surprise by the exact timing of the revolution (it had not been predicted by Lord Milner or General Wilson on their visit to Russia a few weeks earlier) and hoped – albeit with some concerns – that Russia's war effort would be invigorated like that of France in the early 1790s.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George gave a cautious welcome to the suggestion (19 March on the western calendar) by the Russian Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov that the toppled Tsar and his family be given sanctuary in Britain (although Lloyd George would have preferred that they go to a neutral country). From the very start the King's adviser Stamfordham raised objections, and in April the British government withdrew its consent under Royal pressure. Eventually, the Russian Royal Family were moved to the Urals where they were executed in 1918. Lloyd George was often blamed for the refusal of asylum, and in his "War Memoirs" he did not mention King George V's role in the matter, which was not explicitly confirmed until Kenneth Rose's biography of the King was published in 1983.


title: David Lloyd George

text: An Imperial War Cabinet, including representatives from Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, met 14 times from 20 March 1917 to 2 May 1917 (a crisis period of the war) and twice in 1918. The idea was not entirely without precedent as there had been Imperial Conferences in 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907 and 1911, whilst the Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes had been invited to attend the Cabinet and War Committee on his visit to the UK in the spring of 1916. The South African Jan Smuts was appointed to the British War Cabinet in the early summer of 1917.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George set up a War Policy Committee (himself, Curzon, Milner, Law and Smuts, with Maurice Hankey as secretary) to discuss strategy, which held 16 meetings over the next six weeks. At the very first meeting (11 June) Lloyd George proposed helping the Italians to capture Trieste, explicitly telling the War Policy Committee (21 June 1917) that he wanted Italian soldiers to be killed rather than British.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Haig believed that a Flanders Offensive had a good chance of clearing the Belgian coast, from which German submarines and destroyers were operating (a popular goal with politicians), and that victory at Ypres "might quite possibly lead to (German) collapse". Robertson was less optimistic, but preferred Britain to keep her focus on defeating Germany on the Western Front, and had told Haig that the politicians would not "dare" overrule both soldiers if they gave the same advice. Haig promised he had no "intention of entering into a tremendous offensive involving heavy losses" (20 June) whilst Robertson wanted to avoid "disproportionate loss" (23 June).


title: David Lloyd George

text: The Flanders Offensive was reluctantly sanctioned by the War Policy Committee on 18 July and the War Cabinet two days later, on condition it did not degenerate into a long drawn-out fight like the Somme. The War Cabinet promised to monitor progress and casualties and, if necessary call a halt, although in the event they made little effort to monitor progress until September. Frustrated at his inability to get his way, Lloyd George talked of resigning and taking his case to the public.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The Battle of Passchendaele began on 31 July, but soon became bogged down in unseasonably early wet weather, which turned much of the battlefield into a barely passable swamp in which men and animals sometimes drowned, whilst the mud and rain severely reduced the accuracy and effectiveness of artillery, the dominant weapon of the time. Lloyd George tried to enlist the King for diverting efforts against Austria-Hungary, telling Stamfordham (14 August) that the King and Prime Minister were "joint trustees of the nation" who had to avoid waste of manpower. A new Italian offensive began (18 August), but Robertson advised that it was "false strategy" to call off Passchendaele to send reinforcements to Italy, and despite being summoned to George Riddell's home in Sussex, where he was served apple pudding (his favourite dish), agreed only reluctantly. The Anglo-French leadership agreed in early September to send 100 heavy guns to Italy (50 of them French) rather than the 300 which Lloyd George wanted – Lloyd George talked of ordering a halt to Passchendaele, but in Hankey's words "funked it" (4 September). Had he not done so his government might have fallen, for as soon as the guns reached Italy Cadorna called off his offensive (21 September).


title: David Lloyd George

text: At a meeting at Boulogne on the 25th of September, Lloyd George broached with Painlevé the setting up of an Allied Supreme War Council then making Foch generalissimo. Law had written to Lloyd George that ministers must soon decide whether or not the offensive was to continue. Lloyd George and Robertson met Haig in France (26 September) to discuss the recent German peace feelers (which in the end were publicly repudiated by Chancellor Michaelis) and the progress of the offensive. Haig preferred to continue, encouraged by Plumer's recent successful attacks in dry weather at Menin Road (20 September) and Polygon Wood (26 September), and stating that the Germans were "very worn out". In October the wet weather returned for the final attack towards Passchendaele. At the final meeting of the War Policy Committee on 11 October 1917, Lloyd George authorised the offensive to continue, but warning of failure in three weeks' time. Hankey (21 October) claimed in his diary that Lloyd George had deliberately allowed Passchendaele to continue to discredit Haig and Robertson and make it easier for him to forbid similar offensives in 1918.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George played a critical role in the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour's famous Declaration: "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."


title: David Lloyd George

text: The Italians suffered a disastrous defeat at Caporetto, requiring British and French reinforcements to be sent. Lloyd George said he "wanted to take advantage of Caporetto to gain "control of the War". The Supreme War Council was inaugurated at the Rapallo Conference (6–7 November 1917). Lloyd George then gave a controversial speech in Paris (12 November) at which he criticised the high casualties of recent Allied "victories" (a word which he used with an element of sarcasm). These events led to an angry Commons debate (19 November), which Lloyd George survived.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In reply to Robertson's 19 November memo, which warned (correctly) that the Germans would use the opportunity of Russia's departure from the war to attack in 1918 before the Americans were present in strength, Lloyd George wrote (wrongly) that the Germans would not attack and would fail if they did. That autumn he declared that he was willing "to risk his whole political reputation" to avoid a repetition of the Somme or Passchendaele.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In December 1917 Lloyd George remarked to C. P. Scott that: "If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course, they don't know, and can't know."


title: David Lloyd George

text: A Manpower Committee was set up on 6 December 1917, consisting of the Prime Minister, Curzon, Carson, George Barnes and Smuts with Maurice Hankey as secretary, and Auckland Geddes (Minister of National Service – in charge of Army recruitment) in regular attendance.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The first meeting of the Manpower Committee was on 10 December, and it met twice the next day and again on 15 December. Lloyd George questioned Generals Macready (Adjutant-General) and Macdonogh (Chief of Military Intelligence), who advised that the Allied superiority of numbers on the Western Front would not survive the transfer of German reinforcements from the East now that Russia was dropping out of the war. Deeply concerned about the publicity attracted by the recent Lansdowne Letter's mention of casualties, he suggested removing Haig and Robertson from office at this time, but this was met by a threat of resignation from Lord Derby. At this stage Lloyd George opposed extending conscription to Ireland – Carson advised that extending conscription to Ulster alone would be impractical.


title: David Lloyd George

text: When Hankey's report eventually emerged it reflected Lloyd George's wishes: it gave top priority to shipbuilding and merchant shipping (not least to ship US troops to Europe), and placed Army manpower below both weapons production and civilian industry. The size of the Army in Britain was to be reduced from eight divisions to four, freeing about 40,000 men for service in France. In the House of Commons (20 December) Lloyd George also argued that the collapse of Russia and defeat of Italy required further "combing-out" of men from industry, in breach of pledges given to the trade unions in 1916. Auckland Geddes was given increased powers to direct labour – a new bill became law, despite the opposition of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, in February 1918.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The unions were placated with the Caxton Hall conference (5 January 1918), at which Lloyd George outlined Allied war aims. He called for Germany to be stripped of her conquests (including her colonies, and Alsace-Lorraine, annexed in 1871) and democratised (although he was clear that this was not an Allied war aim, something which would help to ensure the future peace of Europe), and for the liberation of the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. He also hinted at reparations (although it was suggested that these would not be on the scale imposed on France after 1871) and a new international order. Lloyd George explained to critics that he was hoping to detach Austria-Hungary and turn the German people against her rulers; the speech greatly increased his support amongst trade unions and the Labour Party. President Wilson at first considered abandoning his speech outlining US war aims – the "Fourteen Points", many of which were similar to the aims outlined by Lloyd George – but was persuaded by his adviser Colonel House to deliver it. Wilson's speech (8 January) overshadowed Lloyd George's and is better remembered by posterity.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Lloyd George had told Edmund Allenby, who was appointed the new commander in Egypt in June, that his objective was "Jerusalem before Christmas" and that he had only to ask for reinforcements, although the exact nature of his offensives was still undecided when he was appointed. Amidst months of argument throughout the autumn of 1917 Robertson was able to block Lloyd George's plan to make Palestine the main theatre of operations by having Allenby make the impossible demand that thirteen extra divisions be sent to him. Allenby captured Jerusalem in December 1917.


title: David Lloyd George

text: In the winter of 1917–18, Lloyd George secured the resignations of both the service chiefs. Removing the First Sea Lord Admiral Jellicoe earlier in 1917, as Lloyd George wanted, would have been politically impossible given Conservative anger at the return of Churchill (still blamed for the Dardanelles) to office as Minister of Munitions in July, and Lloyd George's preoccupations with Passchendaele, Caporetto and the Supreme War Council from July onward. By December it was clear that Lloyd George would have to sack Jellicoe or lose Eric Geddes (First Lord of the Admiralty), who wanted to return to his previous job in charge of military transport in France. The Christmas holiday, when Parliament was not sitting, provided a good opportunity. Before Jellicoe left for leave on Christmas Eve he received a letter from Geddes demanding his resignation. The other Sea Lords talked of resigning but did not do so, whilst Jellicoe's ally Carson remained a member of the War Cabinet until he resigned in January over Irish Home Rule.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Relations with General Robertson had worsened further over the creation of the Supreme War Council at Versailles and he was eventually forced out over his insistence that the British delegate there be subordinate to Robertson as CIGS in London.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The War Cabinet was a very successful innovation. It met almost daily, with Maurice Hankey as secretary, and made all major political, military, economic and diplomatic decisions. Rationing was finally imposed in early 1918 for meat, sugar and fats (butter and margarine) – but not bread; the new system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918 trade-union membership doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million. Work stoppages and strikes became frequent in 1917–18 as the unions expressed grievances regarding prices, alcohol control, pay disputes, dilution of labour, fatigue from overtime and from Sunday work, and inadequate housing.


title: David Lloyd George

text: The Corn Production Act 1917 bestowed upon the Board of Agriculture the power to ensure that all land was properly cultivated, appointed a wages board to operate a new minimum wage in agriculture, and guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats.


title: David Lloyd George

text: Conscription put into uniform nearly every physically fit man, six million out of ten million eligible. Of these, about 750,000 died and 1,700,000 were wounded. Most deaths were of young unmarried men; however, 160,000 wives lost their husbands and 300,000 children lost their fathers.