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| Baron Moulton |
Answer: A Whole Lot
John Fletcher Moulton (1844-1921) was born in Madeley, Shropshire, England, as one of six children of a scholarly minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, James Egan Moulton. After a brilliant mathematical career at Cambridge and election to a Fellowship, Moulton became a London barrister, specialising in patent law. He also experimented on electricity and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. A great advocate for medical research, he was the first chair of the Medical Research Council. He was awarded the Legion of Honour for his work in establishing international units for measuring electricity.
Moulton became a Liberal Party Member of Parliament and backed the attempts of Gladstone to solve the problems in Ireland through Irish Home Rule. In 1906 Moulton was made Lord Justice on the Court of Appeal and Privy Councillor. In 1912 he entered the House of Lords with a life peerage and the title, created on 1 October, Baron Moulton, of Bank in the County of Southampton.
The First World War gave Lord Moulton his greatest challenge. He was an unlikely person to play a crucial role in both the war effort and the postwar transformation, but the analytical ability and organizational skills developed from his patent court cases proved more important than scientific and technical knowledge. Soon after its outbreak he was appointed Director-General of Explosive Supplies in the Ministry of Munitions. In that capacity he had not only to control the production of propellants like cordite, high explosives like TNT, and even tungsten, but also had to solve the not less difficult problems involved in finding the raw materials necessary to manufacture. He was assiduous in his attendance at the Munitions headquarters in London, where he had a staff of some 700 under him, and in spite of his advanced years did not spare himself in making frequent night journeys of inspection and searching for new factory sites to the most remote parts of the country. Moulton was the only Ministry of Munitions director not handpicked by Lloyd George. They did not always see eye to eye. In his memoirs Lloyd George wrote of Moulton: "As usually happens his subtlety caused distrust and misunderstanding amongst blunter minds." Moulton had conflicts with with other large personalities in the armaments field, like Admiralty representative Frederic Nathan, and C.P. Scott, something of an advocate for Chaim Weitzmann, but overall the production of munitions ran smoothly under his leadership throughout the war.
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| Loading Nitration Pans at the Gretna Factory, Scotland |
One specific improvement is directly attributable to him. At an early period in the war he came to the conclusion that in view of enormous expenditure of high explosives by the enemy the supplies of picric acid and trinitrotoluol that could be obtained from the raw materials available would be quite insufficient. He therefore urged the immediate adoption of mixed explosives, and pressed forward experiments with the mixing of trinitrotoluol and ammonium nitrate until amatol was produced equal, if not superior, to the single substances. The policy he advocated met with objections in some quarters, but finally he prevailed and obtained full authority to make any form and kin of explosive that could be produced in the country. It then became possible for Britain to insist that certain of our Allies, who were largely dependent on our production, should also economize by the adoption of ammonium nitrate mixtures. His influence on chemical industry in this country did not cease with the war. He was, for instance, active in connexion with the establishment of the dye industry, and acted as chairman of the British Dyestuffs Corporation for a time after its formation in 1919.
During the entire four war years Lord Moulton worked a ten-hour day and took less than ten days holiday. He was awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1915, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1917, the Etoile Noir of France, the Order of Leopold (Belgium) and was the last person to receive the Order of the White Eagle before the collapse of the Russian monarchy. He was acknowledged as a major contributor to the Allied victory. After the war, despite pressure to lead the expansion of the British chemical industry, he returned to his love: the law. He died in London on 9 March 1921
Sources: Wikipedia. Obituary, The Times, 10 March 1921, "John Fletcher Moulton and the Transforming Aftermath of the Chemists’ War," Peter Reed
This article does not discuss where the British obtained their nitrates from, essential ingredient for the manufacture of nitric acid and hence explosives. These nitrates were obtained from South America, Chile to be precise, most notable in the form of bird guano. The Germans had a distinct advantage with their sophisticated chemical industry's ability to synthesize ammonia from the atmosphere. Amatol while a very effective explosive has one drawback for ground combat in that it does not explode with black smoke which is desirable for artillery fire adjustment.
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