damaged Churchill's reputation, and as Harmsworth supported his brother, his friendship with Churchill soured to a certain extent. However, Rothermere continued to stay in contact with Churchill and employed him from time to time as a special writer on aviation for the Daily Mail. One of Rothermere's sons, Vere Harmsworth served in the Royal Naval Division and was killed in action on 16 November 1916 during the Second Battle of Cambrai. Vyvyan Harmsworth died in 1918 of wounds he taken in 1916. To add to his stress, Rothermere's marriage broke down as his wife, Lillian, had an affair with his younger brother, St. John. Britain had a very strict divorce laws until 1967, and Rothermere did not want to admit to being cuckolded in public as proving his wife's adultery in court would have the only way to dissolve his marriage. The effective break-up of his marriage together with the deaths of two of his three sons was to leave Rothermere lonely and unhappy. Rothermere served as President of the Air Council in the government of David Lloyd George for a time during the First World War, and was made Viscount Rothermere, of Hemsted in the County of Kent, in 1919. Rothermere proved to an inept politician whose background as a businessman with a dictatorial control of a press empire made him ill-suited to the cabinet which required the ability to reach a consensus with other cabinet ministers, a skill that Rothermere notably lacked. The British historian Paul Addison wrote that Rothermere was a "shrewd and decisive" business leader, but that he lacked the ability to negotiate and compromise as he tried to ram his proposals through the cabinet. His main interest was in having the Royal Flying Corps of the British Army and the Royal Naval Air Service combined to create a third service to be called the Royal Air Force. Rothermere proved to a schemer whose incessant plotting against his cabinet colleagues who disagreed with him, which combined with his inability to make allies led to his ejection from the cabinet after only five months. In 1921, he founded the Anti-Waste League to combat what he saw as excessive government spending. Press baron When his elder brother died in 1922 without an heir, Harmsworth acquired his controlling interest in Associated Newspapers for £1.6 million, and the next year bought the Hulton newspaper chain, which gave him control of