Army Service Corps. During its short existence, the Graves Registration Commission consolidated many British war dead cemeteries. Ware negotiated a treaty with the French government whereby the French would purchase space for British war cemeteries, and the British government assumed the cost of platting, creating, and maintaining the sites. Over the next few months, the Graves Registration Commission closed British war dead cemeteries with fewer than 50 bodies, disinterred the bodies, and reinterred them at the new burying grounds. The Graves Registration Commission became the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries in February 1916. As the war continued, there was a growing awareness in the British Army that a more permanent body needed be organized to care for British war graves after the war. In January 1916, the prime minister H. H. Asquith appointed a National Committee for the Care of Soldiers' Graves to take over this task. Edward, Prince of Wales agreed to serve as the committee's president. The committee's membership reflected all members of the British Commonwealth (with a special representative from India). Over the next year, members of the National Committee for the Care of Soldiers' Graves began to feel that their organization was inadequate to the task, and that a more formal organization, with a broader mandate, should be created. The idea was broached at the first Imperial War Conference in March 1917, and on 21 May 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) was chartered. Lord Derby was named its chair, and the Prince of Wales its president. Development of the war cemetery ideal Prior to the First World War, the British (as well as continental European) tradition was to bury officers who died on the battlefield in individual graves and common soldiers in mass graves. The Great War changed this sentiment, as it was a total war, one in which nations engaged in the complete mobilization of all available resources, modes of production, and population in order to fight. Subsequently, as the war continued, there was a growing expectation among the people of the United Kingdom that foot soldiers as well as officers should not only be buried singly but commemorated. Many British families had already tried to visit the graves of loved ones, and could not locate them. Numerous letters appeared in newspapers decrying the problem, and Ware realized the British war effort was heading towards a public relations disaster. Ware, too, felt