NOTWITHSTANDING the generally agreed importance of maintaining civilian morale, the existence of a publicly funded body intended to persuade civilians to act and think in certain ways offered troubling possibilities of future exploitation. In debates on the NWAC in the House of Commons on 13 November and 14 December 1917, and in the House of Lords on 8 May 1918, serious criticisms were expressed of the NWAC's purposes or conduct. Further evidence of the views of MPs, the national press and pressure groups like the UDC and BWL extended such criticism. Although commentary was rarely flattering, the continuing involvement of many MPs as NWAC speakers, alongside its declining discussion in later months, suggest it became, to some extent, an accepted (or tolerated) part of the wartime scenery.

BROCK Millman suggests that, had the war extended beyond 1918, Lloyd George's government might have created a Britain where ‘national life would move to a beat established by a universal and uniform propaganda system in which functional distinctions between the government, the NWAC and the private press would cease to have any meanings at all’. However, there is little contemporary evidence that prominent parliamentarians or pressmen, even those – like Snowden, MacDonald or Ponsonby, or H.W. Massingham at The Nation – who conspicuously dissented from government policy, were very seriously beset by such fears. While concerns about civil liberties were expressed, much opposition to the NWAC related to more prosaic fears of future electoral advantage.