Between 1918 and 1939, the Foreign Office lacked the influence over British foreign policy that it had exercised before the outbreak of the Great War. Part of the reason stemmed from other departments of state seeking to force their views on the Cabinet and its advisory bodies about what British interests were and how best to protect them. Another came from the fact that far more than before 1914 there existed a range of articulate individuals and powerful domestic organisations that, having their intellectual roots in wartime criticism of the ‘old diplomacy’ practised before 1914, were both interested in foreign policy and sought to influence its nature and content. Finally, there were the efforts of the two prime ministers at the beginning and end of the period, respectively, David Lloyd George and Neville Chamberlain, to bring foreign policy under Downing Street's control. Still, less Foreign Office influence did not necessarily translate into a loss of authority for politically powerful foreign secretaries and their ‘professional’ advisers.