From ‘Mr Lloyd George’s Speech‘, The Spectator, 26 June 1915:
Though we are short of practically all the munitions of war, our most immediate needs are high-explosive shells and machine guns. Till the shortage here is made up we cannot show that activity which, we must never forget, is the essential element in all military operations, the sine qua non which, if it does not exist, must in the end mean defeat. But though in this war we cannot have activity without a great many more shells and a great many more machine guns than we have got at present, it by no means follows, as our pessimists would lead us to believe, that all is lost, or, if not quite all, that the danger is overwhelming.
Though it is a capital error in war to go slow or to stand permanently on the defensive, or, in fact, not to be always ready and willing to take every opportunity to push and press your opponent as far as he can be pushed and pressed—to give him no rest by day or night, and to wear him out by a perpetual offensive—it is always possible in any war to go easy for a month or two, or even for three or four months, and meanwhile to make preparations for that policy of attack which is the inspiring genius of war.
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