in 1913. In 1913–14 he was houseman (a newly qualified doctor) at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. First World War At the onset of the First World War the Special Reserve of the Royal Army Medical Corps was mobilised and in December 1914 Elliot was attached as a medical officer to the Royal Scots Greys on the Western Front. He won a Military Cross for his actions at Wancourt during the Battle of Arras in April 1917. He won a second Military Cross in the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, adding a bar to the original medal. Walter received a leg wound in the final month of the war, but returned home safely. His younger brother Dan Elliot was killed in 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign. After the war, Elliot refused his father's urging to enter the family business, Lawrie and Symington, and instead began a political career after being asked to stand for election while recovering from his war-wound. The invitation came from the governing Lloyd George ministry, a coalition government of the Liberal Party with the Conservative Party and their allies the Unionist Party. Elliot was indifferent to party-political divisions, and was reputed to have agreed to stand before asking which party's ticket he should stand for. Member of Parliament Elliot then entered politics and was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lanark in the 1918 general election, standing as a Unionist. In 1919 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Liberal Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health for Scotland, John Pratt. During his first stint in parliament he shared a house in Westminster with Liberal MP Colin Coote, who was later to write a biography of Elliot. In the same period Elliot met Blanche "Baffy" Dugdale niece and biographer of Arthur Balfour, whose Zionism Elliot came to support. Elliot also undertook scientific research during parliamentary recesses; his friend John Boyd Orr invited him to work at the Rowett Research Institute. In the Commons, Elliot supported the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which established the Partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland as an attempt at Home Rule. At the pivotal Carlton Club meeting on 19 October 1922, he supported the Conservative Party's ongoing coalition government of the Lloyd George ministry, but the Party favoured ending its involvement. From Elliot's research emerged a doctoral thesis on nutrition in pigs submitted to the University of Glasgow and