the Ministry of Munitions on 10 July 1918, serving under Churchill (then Minister of Munitions). He was the only member of the government, besides Churchill, to see active service in the war, and was promoted to the temporary rank of major general on 13 July. Belgium appointed him a Commander of the Order of the Crown, and France both appointed Seely a Commander of the Légion d'honneur and awarded him the Croix de guerre. Later career Seely relinquished his temporary rank of major-general on 14 January 1919. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Air and President of the Air Council in 1919, again under Winston Churchill (Secretary of State for War). However, he resigned both posts at the end of 1919 after the Government refused to create a Secretary of State for Air (as it later did). In June 1920, he was one of three candidates for the post of Governor-General of Australia presented to the Australian prime minister Billy Hughes, along with Lord Forster and Lord Donoughmore. Like many Lloyd George Liberals, Seely lost his seat at Ilkeston at the November 1922 General Election. He retired from the army on 25 August 1923, with the honorary rank of major-general. Seely was also a Colonel of the Territorial Army, an Honorary Colonel of 72nd (Hampshire), an Honorary Air Commander Auxiliary Air Force. Seely returned to Parliament as a member of the reunited Liberal Party for the Isle of Wight at the December 1923 General Election, which saw a hung Parliament in which the Liberals supported the first Labour Government under Ramsay MacDonald. In May 1924, however, Churchill (then out of Parliament, and who had recently left the Liberal Party to become an independent "Constitutionalist", prior to rejoining the Conservatives after his return to the Commons in 1924) listed Seely in a letter to Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin as one of his group of Liberal MPs who would vote against the Labour government, and a month later mentioned Seely as a likely Liberal Conservative. Indeed, according to historian Chris Wrigley, Seely's political trajectory was similar to that of Churchill's (i.e. a Conservative in 1900, joining the Liberals a few years later, then becoming a Conservative again in the 1920s). Seely lost his seat again at the 1924 General Election, at which the Liberals suffered heavy losses. Seely vehemently opposed the General Strike of 1926. He was made Chairman of the