Fisher presented Churchill his resignation on May 15, 1915, but Asquith sent him a note, ordering him, in the King's name, to remain in his post. Fisher confronted Asquith with some fantastic conditions such as having for himself the complete charge of the war at sea and the sole disposition of the fleet as well as Churchill's resignation as First Lord of the Almiralty. Asquith rejected his conditions and allowed him to resign.
Churchill survived Fisher at the Almiralty for less than a week and King George, who personnally disliked him too, was glad to hear of his deaprture. About this fact he told Queen Mary: "I am glad the Prime Minister is going to have a National Government, only by that means, we can get rid of Churchill from Almiralty... He is a real danger". Some days later he wrote: "I hope Balfour will be First Lord of Almiralty in place of Churchill, who had became impossible". Balfour indeed replaced Churchill. King George had disagreed with Churchill's Dardanelles plan; he believed that British sea power in wartime should be concentrated in home waters and not dissipated in such precarious ventures as the Dardanelles.
On October 28 1915, while inspecting troops in France, the King suffered an accident. He had arrived by motorcar at Hesdigneul, where he mounted a chestnut mare and rode towards a detachment of the Royal Flying Corps; the mare took fright and reared up, falling back on top of the King, who was picked up and taken back to the house were he was lodging; he was in agony but conscious. The King had fractured his pelvis and he was brought back to England suffering severe pain. His convalescence was slow. By the end of November he wrote to his uncle. the Duke of Connaught: "I was extremely lucky that I was not killed... I am glad to say I am making an excellent recovery and I can walk in my room with the aid of a stick, but now nearly 5 weeks since it occurred... I am able now to do my work and see a few people. For the first fortnight I never remember having suffered so much pain".
On December 1915, King George wrote: "I consider that this war will be lost or won in the main theatres of the war, I mean in France, in Russia and in Italy, and the British Empire must make haste and concentrate all our strength and all our energy to produce as strong an army as possible to take the offensive in France in the spring and the Allies must deliver their attacks simultaneously and by then the Central Powers, I am sure, will not be able to stand the strain".
1915 and 1916 were years of changes for both the British Army and Governement. Besides Churchill's resignation to the Almiralty, the Commander-in-chief of the British forces, Field Marshall Sir John French, was replaced by decistion of King George and Prime Minister Asquith, because of his inneficient leadership of the army. His succesor was Douglas Haig, a personal friend of King George, in whom the King had a great confidence. After the Dardannelles failure, Asquith formed a coalition government. Gradually the Conservatives in his Cabinet began to doubt of Asquith's abilities as a war leader; there had still been thousands of casualties at the Western front, and the Battle of Jutland, between the British and German fleets, in which the King's second son, Prince Albert, had participated, had revealed faults in British naval construction. These events added to Lord Kitchener's death (he drowned at sea on June 5, 1916 when his ship HMS Hampshire sank while traveling to Russia in a mission sent by Asquith) had dismayed British confidence in the Prime Minister and had a great influence in his fall. David Lloyd George, who had been Minister of Munitions since 1915, and who had colaborated with Asquith in 1908 for the People's Budget, agreed to join the Conservatives and remove Asquith from the Ministery.
King George wrote in his dairy on December 4th, 1916: "The Prime Minister came and told me about the Cabinet crisis started by Loyd George, who wants to run the war committee. The Grovernment will have to be reconstructed. I told the Prime Minister that I had fullest confidence in him".
Asquith had to resigned when he learned that almost every leading Conservative had deserted him. King George regretted very much the lose of his Prime Minister; he asked Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the next longest in the Commons, to form a government, but at last it was David Lloyd George who became Prime Minister and the King did not welcome his appointement.
Altough King George's and Queen Mary's patriotic conduct during war time, austere in private, tireless in public, they were constantly mortified by rumours which doubted of their wholehearted support for the Allied cause and accused them of German simpathies. In 1917, the King decided that something must be done to silence the rumours; he would change his dinasty name. The Royal Family would no more bear the German name of Saxe Coburg Gotha; they would be known from then on as the House of Windsor. Other members of the Royal Family also got rid of their German surnames and titles; the Battenbergs bacame Mountbatten, Prince Louis became Marquess of Milford Heaven, and Prince Alexander, Princess Beatrice's son, was created Marquess of Carisbrooke. Queen Mary's brothers changed their German name of Teck for the most British of Cambridge, after his mother's family; Adolf became Marquess of Cambridge and Alexander became Earl of Athlone. In Germany, when the Kaiser learned of the change of name of the British Royal Family, he joked saying that the Shakespeare' play "The Merry Widows of Windsor", would be performed in Germany as "The Merry Widows of Saxe Coburg Gotha".
As many other parents, King George and Queen Mary suffered the war anxiety for their children. The Prince of Wales had joined the Granadier Guards and was serving in the Western front. He was inmature for his age; altough being at the front he was not allowed to go into battle and he always remained away form fighting, which he disliked. He was emotionally confused and he reflected it in a constant desobedience to his father. King George was irritated with the Prince addiction to violent exercise and irregular diet, habits he had adquired in school in order to stand out in sports, but that in the future would damage his strenght. The second son, Prince Albert, was serving as a midshipman in the battleship Collingwood and he participated in the battle of Jutland; he suffered constant gastric illnesses that forced him to submit to two surgical operations and to a prolonged diet; he was a shy and toughtful boy and a more docile son than his elder brother. The third son, Prince Henry, was a modest, kind and good-mannered boy, who was not very intelligent and lacked of athletic abilities; it was dificult for him to concentrate in school, so he made little progress; altough he didn't show much promise for military life, after studying at Eaton, he joined the School Officer's Training Corps in 1914 and four years later he surprised his parents by passing the entrance examination to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. The fourth son , Prince George, after having studied at St. Peter's Broadstairs, joined the navy as a cadet; he was a cheerful, allert and well-balanced boy, being brighter than Prince Henry at school. As his mother, he had a passion for furniture, painting, books, and art in general. As for the youngest son, Prince John, he lived happily in seclusion at Sandrigham being affected by epilepsy.
Meanwhile, things were not going well in Russia; overwhelmed by poverty, hunger and the calamities of the war, the Russians had arosen into a Revolution and forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. Nicholas was King George's first cousin; he was the son of Queen Alexandra's sister, Empress Marie Feodorovna. The Tsar and the King had such a strong physical reemblance between them that Nicholas had been confused with his cousin on the event of King George's wedding in London in 1893. King Geroge was three years Nicholas's senior and they had been friends since ever. When he learned of the Tsar's abdication, King George sent him a telegram: "Events of last week have deeply distressed me . My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend as you know I have been in the past". Nicholas never received this message, which was withheld by the Russian Provisional Government. On the contrary to the King, Lloyd George's Russian sympathies were for the new regime than for the Tsar. He sent the chief of the Provisional Government a message declaring that the Revolution was a great service the Russians had made to the cause the Allies were fihghting for ; that the war was a struggle for Popular Governments as well as for liberty.
Nevertheless, Lloyd George and his Cabinet had agreeded to gain political assylum to the tsar and his family, but the King feared that his cousin's presence in England would not be welcome by public opinion and his own popularity could be affected. On March 20, 1917, the King's private secretary. Sir Arthur Bigge, Lord Stamfordham, wrote to Arthur Balfour, Secretary of Foreign Affairs: "My Dear Balfour: The King has been thinking much about the Government 's proposal that the Emperor Nicholas and his family should come to England. As you are doubtless aware the King has a strong personal friendship for the Emperor and therefor would be glad to do anything to help him in this crisis. But His Majesty cannot help doubting, not only an account of the dangers of the voyage but on general grounds of expediency, whether it is advisable that the Imperial family should take up their residence in this country. The King would be glad if you would consult the Prime Minister, as His Majesty understands no definite decision has yet been come to on the subject by the Russian Government".
Some days later Standfordham wrote again to Balfour: "Every day the King is becoming more concerned about the question of the Emperor and Empress of Russia coming to this country...The Labour Members in the House of Commons are expressing adversed opinions to the proposal... As you know, from the first the King has tought the presence of the Imperial family (especially the Empress) in this country would rise all sorts of difficulties and I feel sure you appreciate how awkward it will be for our Royal family who are closely connected with both the Emperor and the Empress".
King George indeed found himself in an awkward position; on one side, it was his friendship for his cousin and on the other there were his fears that the fact of accepting the Tsar in England would be taken by the public opinion as an identificatin of himself withn the Tsarist autocracy, which would damage his repute as a constitutional monarch and would provoke an upsurge of republicanism. At last, he made up his mind and ordered Lloyd George to retreat the offer of assylum the British Government had originally made to the Russian Imperial family.
Having heard of Nicholas assasination , the King wrote in his dairy: "May and I attended a service at the Russain church in Welbeck Street in memory of dear Nicky, who I fear was shot last month. I was devoted to Nicky, who was kindest of men and a true gentleman; loved his country and people". A month later he wrote: "I hear from Russia that it is very probable that Alicky and four daughters and little boy were murdered at the same time as Nicky. It's too horrible and shows what fiends these Bolchevists arte. For poor Alicky perhaps it was best so. But those innocent children!".
There is no registered evidence of the King accepting his culpability in having failed to save the Tsar and his family. In 1934, Lloyd George wrote his War Memoirs and in the chapter concerning the Tsar affair he wrote: "An agitation had also started in this country, which indicated that there was a strong feeling in extensive working-class circles, hostile to the Czar comming to Great Britain. However the invitation was not withdrawn. The ultimate issue in the matter was decided by the action of the Russian Government, which continued to place obstacles in the way of the Czar's departure". This was not completely true but saved the King's honour.
In March 1918 a great German offensive concentrated in the Western front, and in March 21 at 4:30 in the morning they attacked the British Fifth Army near the Somme River, fact wich opened a breach between the Britsish and the French armies. The King told his wife: "Very often I feel i despair and if it wasn't for you I should break down"
On March 26 1918, after their great defeat at Somme, the French President Raymond Poincare, the Minister Georges Clemenceau and Marshal Ferdinand Foch gathered with the delagates of the British High Command, Lord Milner, Minister of War, Douglas Haig, Commander-in-chief, and Sir Henry Wilson, chief of the General Staff, and agreed to put the whole Allied front under the command of one only chief, Marshall Foch. Three months later, on July 6, King George and Queen Mary, altough the difficult times, celebrated their Silver Wedding with a Thanksgiving service at St. Paul's Cathedral.
The new Allied army under marshall Foch defeated the Germans on August. It was the end for the Central Powers; Turkey surrendered on October 30, Austria on Novemebr 4 and Germany a week later. King George wrote on November 11: "Today has indeed been a wonderful day, the greates in the History of the century".