Outside the military sector, the Ministry of Food controlled food, and. the Ministry of Munitions controlled the rationing of raw material supplies to civil industry. frame-work of import limitation imposed by the shortage of shipping tonnage and its rationing between the various Departments. That was the general set-up. The of Munitions was the most influential Of the ecónomic Ministries, and en the whole it had the most vigorous Ministers, But its powers were by no means absolute. All the other Ministries had their say, and the older-established Ministries fought bern id and when circumstances uidit, and will meet with difi-
arise which l great cee d rales provision made to counteract great for deliveries, no say Pi permits, which took precedence over everything else, and of course their subcontractors work ranked Pi as well. This system cut out non-essential Work easily enough. The main difficulty came in the priorities between Ministries. The Admiralty and the War Office distributed priority permits concurrently with the Ministry of Munitions, and there inevitably was continuous friction between the Ministries. In October, 1917, a special War Priorities Committee of the Cabinet had to be set up, in order to smooth out these difficulties. At one stage, for example, it decided that aeroplane production should have Precedence over everything else. At another, superpriority was given to mustard gas. It was not until September, 1918, indeed, that the relative priorities of the Admiralty, War Office and Ministry of Munitions lists were decided, and a unified schedule and priority machinery were set up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.