The Imperial War Cabinet was created by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in the spring of 1917 as a means of co-ordinating the British Empire's military policy during the First World War. The body met through 1917 and 1918 and consisted of, in addition to Lloyd George: Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada; Louis Botha and General Jan Smuts, each successively Prime Minister of South Africa; Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia; Bill Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand; and Sir James Meston, the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.
Other senior Ministers of the Crown from Great Britain and the dominions also served on the Imperial War Cabinet, as did H.H. Major-General Sir Ganga Singh, the Maharaja of Bikaner, a representative of British India. Other eminent imperial statesmen in the Imperial War Cabinet were Lord Curzon, the Leader of the House of Lords and a former Viceroy of India, and Andrew Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons (and future British Prime Minister).
In 1917 the Imperial War Conference passed a resolution regarding a future special Imperial Conference to readjust the relations of the component parts of the Empire. That readjustment should be based upon the full recognition of the dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, with an "adequate voice" in foreign policy.
Winston Churchill revived the Imperial War Cabinet during the Second World War at the insistence of John Curtin, the Prime Minister of Australia. William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister of Canada, declined to join the body and, as Churchill was already unenthusiastic about sharing power with the dominions, the Imperial War Cabinet's role in the Second World War was greatly diminished in comparison to the previous war.
Famous quotes containing the words imperial, war and/or cabinet:
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is well that war is so terrible: we would grow too fond of it!”
—Robert E. Lee (1807–1870)
“In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)