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Title: Lloyd George
       The Man and His Story

Author: Frank Dilnot

Release Date: March 13, 2007 [EBook #20805]

Language: English

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[Frontispiece: Photograph of David Lloyd George]





LLOYD GEORGE

THE MAN AND HIS STORY


BY

FRANK DILNOT



AUTHOR OF

"THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH"




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON




LLOYD GEORGE: THE MAN AND HIS STORY


Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

Published March, 1917




CONTENTS


FOREWORD

    I.  THE VILLAGE COBBLER WHO HELPED THE BRITISH EMPIRE
   II.  HOW LLOYD GEORGE BECAME FAMOUS AT TWENTY-FIVE
  III.  FIGHTING THE LONE HAND
   IV.  THE DAREDEVIL STATESMAN
    V.  THE FIRST GREAT TASK
   VI.  HOW LLOYD GEORGE BROKE THE HOUSE OF LORDS
  VII.  AT HOME AND IN DOWNING STREET
 VIII.  A CHAMPION OF WAR
   IX.  THE ALLIANCE WITH NORTHCLIFFE
    X.  AT HIGH PRESSURE
   XI.  HIS INCONSISTENCIES
  XII.  HOW HE BECAME PRIME MINISTER
 XIII.  THE FUTURE OF LLOYD GEORGE

APPENDIX--MR. LLOYD GEORGE ON AMERICA AND THE EUROPEAN WAR




FOREWORD

Mr. Lloyd George gets a grip on those who read about him, but his
personality is far more powerful and fascinating to those who have
known the man himself, known him during the time his genius has been
forcing him to eminence.  He does not fill the eye as a sanctified hero
should; he is too vitally human, too affectionate, too bitter, and he
has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually.  (You
cannot imagine an archangel with a sense of humor.)  But it is this
very mixture in the man that holds the character student.  Lloyd George
is quite unpretentious, loves children, will join heartily in the
chorus of a popular song, and yet there is concealed behind these
softer traits a stark and desperate courage which leads him always to
the policy of make or break.  He is flamingly sincere, and yet no
subtler statesman ever walked the boards at Westminster.  That is the
man I have seen at close quarters for years.  Is it to be wondered at
that he alternately bewilders, attracts, and dominates high-browed
intellectuals?  Strangely enough, it is the common people who
understand Lloyd George better than the clever ones.  Explain that how
you will.

I have seen David Lloyd George, present Prime Minister of England, as
the young political free-lance fighting furiously for unpopular causes,
fighting sometimes from sheer love of battle.  I have seen him in that
same period in moods of persuasion and appeal pleading the cause of the
inarticulate masses of the poor with an intensity which has thrilled a
placid British audience to the verge of tears.  Since then I have seen
him under the venomous attacks of aristocrats and plutocrats in
Parliament when his eyes have sparkled as he has turned on them and
hissed out to their faces words which burned and seared them and caused
them to shake with passion.  And in the midst of this orgy of hate
which encircled him I have seen him in his home with his
twelve-year-old blue-eyed daughter Megan curled up in his lap, his face
brimming with merriment as, with her arm around his neck, she asserted
her will in regard to school and holidays over a happy and indulgent
father.  That is the kind of man who now rules England, rules her with
an absoluteness granted to no man, king or statesman, since the British
became a nation.  A reserved people like the British, conservative by
instinct, with centuries of caste feeling behind them, have
unreservedly and with acclamation placed their fate in the hands of one
who began life as a village boy.  It was but recently I was talking
with a blacksmith hammering out horseshoes at Llanystumdwy in Wales who
was a school-mate of Lloyd George in those days not so very long ago.
The Prime Minister still has his home down there and talks to the
blacksmith and to others of his school companions, for he and they are
still one people together, with ties which it is impossible for
statecraft to break--or to forge.  I have met Lloyd George in private,
have seen him among his own people at his Welsh home, and for five
years as a journalist I had the opportunity of observing him from the
gallery of the British Houses of Parliament, five years during which he
introduced his famous Budget, forced a fight with the House of Lords,
and broke their power.  I purpose to tell in plain words the drama of
the man as I have seen it.

A year before the war broke out, while he was still bitterly hated by
the Conservatives, I was visiting him at his Welsh home near
Llanystumdwy and he asked me what I thought of the district.  I said it
was all very beautiful, as indeed it was.  I emphasized my appreciation
by saying that the visitors at the big hotel at Criccieth near by were
one and all enchanted.  They were nearly all Conservatives, I pointed
out, and there was just one fly in their ointment.  "I know it," said
Lloyd George, vivaciously, with a quick twinkle in his eye.  "Here's a
bay like the Bay of Naples, God's great mountains behind, beautiful
woods, and green meadows, and trickling streams--everything the heart
of man can desire, and in the midst of it all HE lives."  He paused and
deepened his voice.  "Satan in the Garden of Eden," he said.  It was
just his twist of humor, but it told a story.  Now for the companion
picture.  The last time I saw Lloyd George was one dark evening in the
December which has just gone by.  It had been a day of big political
happenings; the Asquith Government had resigned, Bonar Law, the
Conservative leader, had been asked by the King to form a Ministry and
had said he could not do so.  Lloyd George's name was being bandied
about.  In those few fateful hours Britain was without a Government.
At seven o'clock I was at the entrance of the War Office at Whitehall.
Through the dark street an automobile dashed up.  The door was opened,
and a silk-hatted man stepped out and passed rapidly into the War
Office, and then the little group of bystanders noticed that the
footman at the door of the automobile was wearing the royal livery.
The silk-hatted visitor was obviously a messenger from King George.
Three minutes later the War Office doors swung open and two men came
hurrying out.  The first was the King's messenger, the second was Lloyd
George.  The latter's shoulders were hunched with haste, his hat was
pressed deep and irregularly over his forehead, his face, set hard, was
canted forward.  He almost scrambled into the conveyance, and three
seconds later the automobile was going at top speed for Buckingham
Palace.  The King had sent for Lloyd George to ask him to become his
Prime Minister.

F. D.

_January, 1917._




LLOYD GEORGE


I

THE VILLAGE COBBLER WHO HELPED THE BRITISH EMPIRE

One day in the year 1866 a middle-aged cobbler named Richard Lloyd,
occupying a tiny cottage in the village of Llanystumdwy in North Wales,
had a letter delivered to him by the postman which was to alter the
whole of his simple and placid life.  It was a letter from his sister
and bore melancholy tidings.  The letter told how she had lost her
husband and how she and her two little children were in distress.  She
was the mother of the present Prime Minister of Britain.  The elder of
her two children, then three years old, was David Lloyd George.

Miss Lloyd, the sister of Richard Lloyd, the cobbler, had married, a
few years before, a William George who came of farming people in South
Wales.  A studious young fellow, he had devoted himself to reading, and
presently passed the examinations necessary to become a teacher in the
elementary schools.  The countryside offered him no opportunity of
advancement and he migrated to the big city of Manchester, where he
secured a position as master in one of the national schools of the
district.  In Manchester were born two children, the elder of whom,
David, was fated in after years to rise to fame.  David's birthday was
January 17, 1863.  Far indeed were thoughts of future eminence from the
struggling family during that time in Manchester.

Under the strain of city life the health of William George began to
fail.  Country-bred as he was, he pined for the open air of the fields
and the valleys, and very soon the doctor gave him no choice and told
him that if he wished to prolong his life he must leave the city
streets.  And so it came about that William George and the two children
forsook Manchester and went back again to country life in South Wales
to a place called Haverfordwest.  William George took a farm and for a
year or more he and his wife toiled on it.  How much of the work fell
on Mrs. George can only be guessed, but she must have carried a full
share, for her husband's health was undermined, and the home had to be
kept up not only for the sake of her husband, but the children as well.
She was in delicate health, and her efforts must have been arduous and
painful.  Withal, destiny had its severest blow still in hand.  William
George had not recovered his strength; an attack of pneumonia came upon
him, and his death occurred some few months after leaving Manchester.

Mrs. George, overwhelmed by the death of her husband, was at the same
time faced by financial difficulties and the problem of maintaining the
existence of herself and her two children.  To carry on the farm
single-handed was impossible.  There were, moreover, immediate
liabilities to be met.  She could find no way out, and the upshot was a
public auction sale of the farm effects and the household furniture.
Three-year-old David, not understanding the tragedy of it all, was
nevertheless impressed by the scene on the day the neighbors came to
bid for, and to buy, the things that made up his mother's home.  Even
now he can recall how the tables and chairs from the house, and the
plows and harrows from the fields, were scheduled and ticketed in and
around the homestead and disposed of by the auction to the highest
bidder.  He could not understand it, but somewhere deep within the
sensitive child was struck a note of pain, the echoes of which have
never left him throughout his strenuous life.  He felt dimly in his
childlike way the loneliness of his mother.  He has never forgotten it.
Lonely indeed she was.  She had but one friend to turn to, and that one
friend was her brother, Richard Lloyd, the village shoemaker up in
North Wales.  To him she wrote and told her story.

It was her letter which Richard Lloyd paused in his work to read that
day some fifty years ago.  This village cobbler, destined unwittingly
to play such an important part in the history of the British Empire, is
still alive and hale and hearty, still lives in his old district.  I
saw him recently, a tall, erect, fearless-eyed man, though in the
neighborhood of ninety, perhaps past that age.  He had a full beard,
snow-white, and a clean-shaven upper lip, reminiscent of the fashion of
half a century ago.  He lives, of course, in comfort now and enjoys a
dignified, happy old age.  Vigorous still, he continues to preach in
the chapel of the Nonconformist denomination of which he is a member.
I tried to picture him as he must have been fifty years back, a
studious, middle-aged man, rigidly religious, a confirmed bachelor,
dividing his time between his calling, on the one hand, and the study
of the Bible, on the other.

He lived at that time a laborious life, frugal by necessity, doing his
duty as he saw it, and I dare say he appeared to a casual observer an
uninteresting village type, a silent man, sincere in his bigoted way,
but colorless as such persons must always be to those of a different
class.  To me he will remain one of the most interesting men I have
ever seen.  Richard Lloyd read his sister's letter and formed his
resolution.  He decided to go to her help.  And thus it was he
journeyed to South Wales and brought the widow and her two little boys
up north to Llanystumdwy, where he lived.  He installed them in his
cottage, a little two-story residence with a tiny workshop abutting
from it at the side where he carried on his shoe-mending.  In front the
main road ran by, twisting its way through the village, and thence
through woods and meadows, and giving access within a mile on either
side to park-lands attached to the big country houses of wealthy people
to whom the village cobbler was a nonentity and a person of a different
order of beings from themselves.  They were not to know, these rich
neighbors, that the cobbler was bringing for protection to his humble
home a child destined to be a Prime Minister of the country.  Prime
Minister in a crisis of its history.

Of the little family's years of struggle there are a few glimpses.
Cheerfully Richard Lloyd bent himself to his self-imposed task of
lightening his sister's lot, and Mrs. George worked hard that her
children should not suffer from want.  There was no money to spare in
the household.  Mrs. George baked bread so as not to take anything from
their small resources for the baker.  Twice a week there was a little
meat for the family.  Subsequently, as the children grew bigger, a tiny
luxury was here and there found for them.  At Sunday morning breakfast,
for example, they received as a treat half an egg each to eat with
their bread-and-butter.  In the garden behind the cottage vegetables
were grown to eke out supplies, and it was one of the tasks of young
Lloyd George to dig up the potatoes for the household.

Llanystumdwy, the boyhood home of Lloyd George, is a picturesque
village, a mile or so from the sea, nestling at the foot of the Snowdon
range.  Meadows and woods embower Llanystumdwy.  Rushing through the
village a rock-strewn stream pours down from the mountains to the sea,
with the trees on its banks locking their branches overhead in an
irregular green archway.  Look westward to the coast from Llanystumdwy
and you have in Carnavon Bay one of the finest seascapes in Britain.
Turn to the east, and the rising mountains culminate in the white
summit of Snowdon and other giant peaks stretching upward through the
clouds.  Could Providence have selected a more fitting spot for the
upgrowth of a romantic boy?  Lloyd George's Celtic heart had an
environment made for it in this nook between the Welsh mountains and
the sea.  Little wonder that he has never left the place.  At the
present time his country house is on the slope overlooking Criccieth,
about a mile from the old cobbler's cottage where he spent his boyhood
forty years ago.

Lloyd George was sent quite early to the church elementary school with
the other village children.  There seems to have been nothing of the
copy-book order about his behavior, nor are any moral lessons for the
young to be drawn from it.  He set no specially good example, was not
particularly studious, was quite as mischievous if not more so than his
schoolmates, and on top of all this--sad to relate after such a
record--was practically always at the head of his class.  He achieved
without effort what others sought to accomplish by hard and persistent
work.  He just soaked up knowledge as a sponge soaks up water; he could
not help it.  Out of school hours he was a daring youngster filled with
high spirits, and very active.  He had dark-blue eyes, blackish hair, a
delicate skin, and regular features, and the audacity within him was
concealed behind a thoughtful, studious expression--just such a boy as
a mother worships.  That old Puritan, his uncle, worshiped him, too,
though I am quite sure he concealed the fact behind the gravest and
sometimes the most reproving of demeanors.  An interesting point is
that the vivacious and keen-witted child understood and was devoted to
this serious-minded uncle of his.  Richard Lloyd worked hard to make
the boy grow up a straight-living, brave, and God-fearing man, and his
influence on his young nephew was strong from the start.  There is a
story told about this.  The children of the village school (which was
connected with the Established Church of England) on each Ash Wednesday
had to march from the school to the church, and were there made to give
the responses to the Church Catechism and to recite the Apostles'
Creed.  That sturdy Nonconformist, Richard Lloyd, denied the right of
the Church of England to force children, many of them belonging to
Nonconformist parents, to go to church to subscribe to the Church
doctrine.  Lloyd George carefully digested his uncle's protest, and
went away and organized a revolt among the children.  The next time
they went to church they refused to make the responses.  Lloyd George
as the ring-leader was punished, but the rebellion he organized stopped
the practice of forcing Church dogmas into the mouths of the children.
This is a very suggestive story.  I know the main facts to be true
because not so very long ago Lloyd George himself confirmed them to me.
At the same time I beg leave to doubt whether any great spiritual
fervor was the motive power of Master Lloyd George at that time.  It
was just the first outbreak of his desire for revolt against the powers
that be--wicked powers because his uncle had said so--and the
satisfaction of that instinct for audacious action which has marked him
ever since.  To me there was not much of the saint about the boy Lloyd
George; he was just a young daredevil--which, on the whole, is perhaps
the more attractive.

By the time Lloyd George was ten or eleven years of age his mother and
his uncle became filled with thoughts as to his future.  They both knew
the boy was specially gifted, both realized that unless special effort
were made he must inevitably drift from school into the lower ranks of
labor, probably that of work on a farm.  There were long and anxious
consultations between the cobbler and his sister.  Finally Richard
Lloyd came to a decision, a decision which was to have a lasting effect
on the destinies of the British nation.  He resolved on a noble act,
the nobler in that he had no idea what tremendous consequences would
spring from it.

By long years of work and self-denial he had saved a little sum toward
his old age.  It amounted to a few hundred pounds.  It was all he had.
He decided to devote that sum toward the making of his nephew, Lloyd
George, an educated man, toward putting him in a profession where he
might have a chance in the world.

After the great speculation had been decided on it was settled that
young David should be brought up as a solicitor.  This necessitated not
only the provision of certain heavy fees in connection with the
examinations, but also time spent in a prolonged course of study.  The
few hundreds of pounds was a small-enough amount, and it was obvious
that it would have to be sparingly expended if it were to cover all
that was required.  Young Lloyd George was a brilliant youth, but even
his brilliancy could not help beyond a certain point.  The old cobbler
saw one way of economizing.  He set himself the task of personally
learning the elements of French and Latin in order to impart them to
his nephew.  I have often imagined the mental agony of the cobbler
struggling with those foreign grammars.  But he succeeded.  His nephew
also succeeded.  Young George passed his preliminary examination and
his intermediate without difficulty.  Then while he progressed further
he had to have experience in a solicitor's office--which ran away with
more money.  At twenty-one, however, he was finished, and was admitted
a solicitor.  All that had been gone through for him to reach this goal
is shown by the fact that, having been formally enrolled as a lawyer,
he and his family at that time could not raise the three guineas
necessary to purchase the official robe without which he could not
practise in the local courts.  He at once went out and worked in an
office and earned that three guineas.

He was now launched in the world.  The great adventure of life began
almost immediately for him.




II

HOW LLOYD GEORGE BECAME FAMOUS AT TWENTY-FIVE

The personalities of history flash across our vision like
shooting-stars in the sky, emerging from hidden origins, making for
their unknown goal with a speed and brilliance at once spectacular and
mysterious.  They are incalculable forces; we can only look at them and
wonder at them.  It is futile and quite useless to try to define the
secret motive power of these personalities by puny analyses of moral
influences and by a catalogue of their feelings and surroundings.  They
follow their destined course and raise our admiration or our fears and
all the while they give us no real clue to the powers within their
souls or the end they serve.

There had been many endeavors to link up Lloyd George with certain sets
of beliefs; sincere persons have associated his prominence with his
Liberalism, with his Nonconformity, with his passion for the interests
of the poor, and in these later days with his fervor for national and
patriotic effort.  As a matter of fact, the framing of his dogmas has
had little or nothing to do with the power of the man.  He is one of
those persons whom nature has made of dynamite; who would have blasted
a way for himself in any kind of conditions.  It is neither to his
credit nor to his discredit that Heaven has given him an individuality
which has taken him throughout life to distinction and high
achievement.  He has always swung to his tasks like a needle to the
Pole.

It so happened that by the surroundings of his youth--the piety and
pride and modest circumstances of his uncle and his mother--he was
early thrown into certain spheres of activity.  But these spheres were
merely the medium for his powers.  A wider survey than that of the
enthusiastic Nonconformist or the patriotic Welshman shows that Lloyd
George's nature would have cleaved its way like a sword through any
obstacle in any cause.  He simply could not have helped it.  Destiny
had set a mark on him from birth.

He was only seventeen when on a visit to London he went for the first
time to the House of Commons to listen to the proceedings from the
gallery and here is an abstract from his diary at that period: "Went to
Houses of Parliament.  Very much disappointed with them. . . .  I will
not say I eyed the assembly in the spirit in which William the
Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor--as the
region of his future domain.  O Vanity!"  A country youth without
money, without prospects, sitting in the exclusive Parliament House of
the most exclusive nation of the world, watched the assembly before him
and there occurred to him the thought of conquering it single-handed.
That is what it came to.  Of course his reference is in the nature of a
joke.  It could hardly be otherwise.  But it was a joke which has
proved to be a prophecy.

Before he was seventeen Lloyd George had already dived deep into
controversy.  His school of debating consisted of the cobbler's
workshop and the village smithy at Llanystumdwy, where in the evenings
young men and old men and a sprinkling of boys used to assemble to
discuss in a haphazard way questions of ethics, the politics of the
day, and most of all the rights and wrongs of the religious sects to
which they respectively belonged.  Richard Lloyd, on the one hand, and
the old blacksmith, on the other, would stir the discussion now and
again with a sagacious word.  It is easy to imagine the ripple of
musical Welsh which sometimes drowned the tap-tap of the cobbler's
hammer, or was submerged beneath the clang of the anvil.  The bright
eyes and excited faces of these Celts partly illumined by the oil-lamp
or by the sudden glow of the blacksmith's furnace must have provided
pictures worth record for themselves, quite apart from the personal
interest they would now possess.

In the midst of the discussions young David would plunge with a wit and
understanding beyond his years, and he stood up to his seniors with
both gravity and audacity.  "Do you know," said the gray-haired
blacksmith to Richard Lloyd one day, "I really had to turn my serious
attention to David last evening or he would have got the best of me."

If any of those who read this narrative are beginning to have an idea
that this fourteen-year-old boy was by way of becoming a prig they may
be relieved by the knowledge that when the youngster was not taking a
hand in polemics in the smithy or the cobbler's cottage he was often
enough leading the boys of the village into some kind of mischief.  One
old inhabitant came to have the fixed belief that David was the origin
of pretty well all the mishaps in Llanystumdwy.  Let a gate be found
lifted from its hinges, a fence or hedge broken down, or windows
smashed, and the old man had the one explanation, "It's that David
Lloyd at it again."

It is important to know that Richard Lloyd, the shoemaker, was not only
studious and intelligent, but was independent beyond his class.  A kind
of benevolent feudalism still existed in the district, and villagers at
election time fell naturally into the groove required by the rich
landowners and gentlefolk of the neighborhood.  Once at an election
three or four of the cottagers voted Liberal instead of Conservative.
They were promptly turned out of their dwellings.  The time came when
the shoemaker was the only Liberal voter in the place.  He remained
quite unshaken by persuasion, influence, or material considerations.
Lloyd George even as a young boy gloried in his stalwart uncle.  He was
rebellious that it should be possible to cow other people, and the
knowledge of the prevalent thraldom poured deep into young Lloyd
George's soul.  This simple religious village folk lived hard, with but
a week's wages between them and want, lived, so to speak, on sufferance
under the vicar and squire and land-owner, who, while often kindly
enough and even generous in their way, expected obedience, and who
exacted servitude in all matters of opinion.  The big people and the
cottage folk were two entirely different sets of beings.  What a
precipice there was between them can hardly be understood by those who
have not passed some time in the village life of Britain.  A man who
took a rabbit or hare from the preserved coverts of game extending for
miles in all directions was rigorously prosecuted as a criminal.  A man
who took fish from prohibited waters was often a good deal more harshly
adjudged than the drunken brute who beat his wife or the assailant in
some desperate fight.  And let it be noted that these superior people
had veritable power of government, for from them were drawn the benches
of magistrates--amateur local judges, who sat weekly or monthly, as the
case might be, to punish evil-doers of the district.  Many of these
people in some of the relations of life were quite admirable, but when
it came to any question of the protection of privilege, the
preservation of property, or the rights in general of their superior
class, these landowners were as merciless in the North Wales district
as in many other parts of the country.  Scorn and rage grew in the
heart of young Lloyd George as he realized that these individuals had
no claim over their fellows in personal worth or understanding, that
they were practically unassailable by reason of their ramparts of
wealth, that they lived in comfort, if not in luxury, while those whom
they dominated were struggling hard for a bare subsistence.  I can
imagine the youth reciting the couplet which sets out the position:

  God bless the squire and his relations,
  And keep us in our proper stations.


Worldly knowledge and bookish knowledge were acquired by Lloyd George
during the next few years while he was going through his law course in
the office of a firm of solicitors in the neighboring little town of
Portmadoc.  While there he had further opportunity for developing his
natural powers of oratory, for he became a member of a local debating
society which regularly had set battles on all kinds of
topics--political, literary, and social.  At twenty-one his
preliminaries ended and he became an admitted solicitor competent to
practise law and to appear as an advocate in the local civil and
criminal courts.  He was penniless, he had no friends likely to help
him in his profession.  But he had confidence in himself.  Hidden fires
were burning behind those steady dark-blue eyes of his.  The office
work which he undertook to secure the money to buy his official robe
was accomplished with a run.  Then he put up a little brass plate
announcing to all and sundry in the locality that he was prepared to
practise law.  Though he had no rich friends, he possessed certain
assets in the reputation he had made among the residents of the
district by his sparkling good humor, his ready sympathy with distress,
and his vivacious wit in debate.  Individuals of the humbler class soon
began to come to the young solicitor for advice and assistance.  He
found himself engaged to defend people charged with small offenses
before the local magistrates and to fight cases connected with small
money transactions before the county court--which was the civil
tribunal.  Clients found in the young fellow not only a shrewd lawyer,
but a friend who entered into their cases with ardor.

He differed from other lawyers of the country towns, men who had grown
prosperous in their profession, in so far as he always put up a
tremendous fight, whatever the chances of success.  He was, moreover,
never hampered by deference for the bench.  It was the practice of the
magistrates, most of them local land-owners and all of them belonging
to the propertied classes, to browbeat any local solicitors who showed
signs of presumption--that is to say, of independence and lack of what
was regarded as proper respect in their conduct of cases before the
court.  Lloyd George said things and did things which the most
experienced and successful solicitors of the district would have shrunk
from as ruinous to their business.  He made it a practice never to
waste a word in any subservience to magistrates who showed an
overbearing disposition.  The magistrates, to their amazement, found
they could not overawe the young upstart.  When one realizes the
unchallenged caste rule of those local bigwigs and the extraordinary
respect which was paid to them by advocates and litigants alike, it is
easy to understand the amazement and the shock which came upon them
when young Lloyd George not only refused to submit to their bullying,
but stood up to them and even thrust wounding words at them.  It was an
unheard-of proceeding.  Some of these magistrates, lifelong supporters
of Church and state, must sometimes have wondered why the presumptuous
youth was not struck dead by Providence for his temerity.  He, on his
part, was never so happy as when he was shocking them.  Clients quickly
grew in number.  The farmers found him an enthusiastic defender of
their rights, the shopkeepers trusted him with their small business
worries, and if there were any poachers to be defended where was there
to be found so able, so sympathetic, and so fearless an advocate as
young Lloyd George?  All this time it must be remembered he was but
early in the twenties, little more than a boy.

Many instances might be given of his audacity in the face of the lordly
magistrates before whom he appeared.  Here is one that is typical.
Lloyd George was retained to defend four men who were charged with
illegally taking fish from prohibited waters--in other words, accused
of poaching, the most deadly sin of all to the owners of the land.  The
case was tried before a big bench of magistrates, all of them local
celebrities.  Early in the proceedings Lloyd George put in a plea that
the court had no jurisdiction in the matter.  In response the
chairman--the presiding magistrate--replied grandiloquently that such a
point must be decided by a higher court.

"Yes, sir," said Lloyd George, "and in a perfectly just and unbiased
court."

The magistrate stared open-eyed at this impudence, and promptly
proceeded to put Lloyd George in his place.  "If," said he, "that
remark is intended as a reflection on any magistrate sitting on this
bench I hope Mr. George will name him.  A more insulting and
ungentlemanly remark to the bench I have never heard during my
experience as a magistrate."

"Yes," replied Lloyd George, "and a more true remark was never made in
any court of justice."

This was more than flesh and blood could stand.  In admonitory tone the
chairman said: "Tell me to whom you are referring.  I must insist upon
your stating if you are referring to any magistrate sitting in this
court."

"I refer to you in particular, sir," said Lloyd George.

"Then I retire from the bench," said the chairman, rising from his
place.  He turned to his fellow-magistrates.  "This is the first time I
have ever been insulted in a court of justice."

In company with a colleague he left the court.  A third magistrate
remarked that he could not proceed with the case until Lloyd George had
apologized.

"I am glad to hear it," said Lloyd George, imperturbably.  Promptly
another magistrate went out.  One of the few justices remaining
repeated the demand for an apology.  Instead of apologizing Lloyd
George made the following reply; "I say this, that at least two or
three magistrates of this court are bent upon securing a conviction
whether there is a fair case or not.  I am sorry the chairman left the
court, because I am in a position to prove what I have said.  I shall
not withdraw anything, because every word I have spoken is true."

This was really too much.  All the lot of the magistrates went out,
their departure being accompanied by the few barbed words from the
young advocate.  What happened when the magistrates got together
outside the courtroom can only be guessed.  They must have had a
painful discussion among themselves, because presently four of them
came in and rather meekly said they would try the case, though they
again made a protest to the effect that Lloyd George really ought to
apologize.  Of course he did not do so.

It was when Lloyd George was twenty-five and was already a highly
popular figure throughout a large part of Wales that he sprang suddenly
into a wider notice and may be said to have had for the first time the
eyes of the whole country centered on him.  Wales is a country of
Nonconformists who attend religious services in their own chapels and
do not--at least the great majority of them--belong to the Established
Church of England.  The state Church, however, is implanted throughout
the country, and it is only to be expected that local friction should
sometimes arise.

In a village at the foot of Snowdon an old quarryman died, and before
he passed away expressed the wish that he should be laid by the side of
his daughter, who was buried in the graveyard of the Church of England.
The Church clergyman would not consent to the Nonconformist rites being
performed if the old man were buried where he desired to be.  The old
man, he said, could not be placed by the side of his daughter, but must
be buried in a remote portion of the graveyard reserved for unknown
people and for suicides.  The Nonconformists of the village were
outraged at the suggestion.  They went to young Lloyd George and asked
his advice about the matter.  Lloyd George plunged deep into legal
enactments, into the local conditions, and all the facts pertaining to
the case.  Then he delivered a characteristic judgment.  "You have the
right," he said, "to bury this man by the side of his daughter in the
churchyard.  If the clergyman refuses you permission proceed with the
body to the graveyard.  Take the coffin in by force, if necessary.  If
the churchyard gates are locked against you, break them down."  The
villagers faithfully followed the suggestion of the young lawyer.  They
took the body to the churchyard--I believe Lloyd George accompanied
them--and they broke down the locked churchyard gates, dug a grave for
the old man by the side of his daughter, and buried him there.  The
Church authorities were scandalized and an action at law was the
result.  It was heard in the local county court before a judge and
jury.  Lloyd George defended the villagers, and the jury, influenced by
his speech, returned a verdict in their favor.  The judge, however,
said that Lloyd George was wrong on a point of law and decided the case
on the side of the Church.  Lloyd George instantly said that the matter
could not rest, and on behalf of the villagers he appealed against the
decision to the Lord Chief Justice in London.  The case was heard by
the Lord Chief and another judge, and they came to the conclusion that
the jury's decision was right, that the county-court judge was wrong,
and that Lloyd George was perfectly correct on the point of law in
connection with which he had been overruled.

Lloyd George was twenty-five when he secured this triumph.  All the
public were interested in the case, and in the Welsh townships and
villages his name flamed out like a beacon.




III

FIGHTING THE LONE HAND

Lloyd George was twenty-five when his fight for the burial of the old
quarryman lifted him to the public notice of the country at large.  The
year was a fateful one for him in other respects.  For two or three
years before this he had been speaking at public meetings, securing
more and more confidence as he realized his powers.  He became the
banner-bearer for the allied causes of democracy, a free Church, and
the rights of Wales as a nation.  His compatriots rallied round him as
their forefathers had rallied round Owen Glendower centuries before.

Working early and late, Lloyd George united his professional
engagements with appearances on the public platform.  He was already
rousing those eddies of hatred and that personal devotion on which he
has been borne to fame.  Furiously he flung himself into attacks on the
classes from which his political opponents were drawn.  He adopted new
methods, he heeded not convention, made always for the thickest of the
fray.  All the time there was mixed with his fervor an element of
shrewdness.  It was this shrewdness, for instance, which sent him to a
big gathering of his political opponents, where he sat quietly in a
back seat in order to learn what they had to say about him, and
listened to their abuse with keen satisfaction.  Gleams of ambition
must have been shooting in upon him by this time.  It was impossible
that he had not thoughts of a bigger future for himself, and yet it
came as a thunderclap to him when he heard that he, a youthful
free-lance, had been adopted by the Liberal associations of the
district to be their candidate for Parliament at the next election.  It
may be imagined with what zest under this stimulation he carried on his
preparations for the contest whenever it should arise.  The
constituency--Carnarvon Boroughs--comprised a group of towns and a
large number of villages.  It included castles and mansions and great
estates; a considerable portion of the general body voters were
associated with the landowners and aristocrats.  Lloyd George must have
felt it was a pretty hopeless fight, but a fight, nevertheless, which
he would enjoy.

There is one other event to chronicle during this year when he reached
the age of twenty-five.  Upon the mountain slopes beyond Llanystumdwy
was a spacious old farm-house, the home of a sweetly pretty Welsh girl
named Maggie Owen.  How or when Lloyd George first met her is not
recorded, but in the course of his diary we come across a significant
entry just before this time.  The diary refers to a meeting of a
debating society in which he had taken part, and goes on to relate
"Took Maggie Owen home."  It is hard to imagine young Lloyd George
anything but an impetuous lover.  His suit progressed, and in this same
fateful year of 1888 he was married.  It may be said in passing that
never was a happier union, and that in the hard and adventurous life
that lay before the young politician he found in Mrs. George a true
companion.  Marriage seemed to strengthen his ambition, and his vision
began to spread over the general field of politics instead of remaining
exclusively, as hitherto, fixed upon projects of special, if not of
exclusive, interest to Wales.  Nevertheless he continued the leading
figure in the fight for reforms in his native country.  A good deal of
his enthusiasm, for example, was expended on Church disestablishment in
Wales--that is to say, the separation of the English Church from state
support and state endowment, in view of the fact that the majority of
the people were Nonconformists, and that it was unfair to impose upon
them an unwanted and costly church which they had to help support even
though they were Nonconformist enthusiasts.  There is nothing like a
religious controversy to stir feelings strongly, and the conflicts in
the campaign for disestablishment were very bitter.  Lloyd George's
chief opponent on the other side was the Bishop of St. Asaph, a prelate
of the Church of England, himself a Welshman and a very able man.  He
gave the promoters of disestablishment some hard knocks, and it is
related of him that he was particularly effective in one of the
districts.  Accordingly, the Nonconformists there brought down Lloyd
George to speak at a public meeting in order to counteract the bishop's
influence.  Lloyd George himself tells the story of how he was
introduced at that meeting by the chairman, a leading deacon of the
village.  "We have suffered much of late from misrepresentations," he
said.  "The Bishop of St. Asaph has been speaking against us and we all
know that he is a very great liar.  Thank God we have a match for him
here to-night in Mr. Lloyd George."  In later years when Lloyd George
and the bishop became good friends in spite of their differences of
opinion, it was hard to decide which of them enjoyed this story most.

Lloyd George began to speak everywhere, at street corners, in
conventicles, in the market-places, at mass-meetings in the public
buildings, and his peculiar oratory secured him larger and larger
audiences and aroused attention, sympathetic or hostile, all over the
constituency.  Many who were lukewarm and went to hear him out of
curiosity were swung by his personality into being supporters.  He had
always his own natural style of talk.  Possessing a musical and clear
voice, he never strained for effect, rarely used a rotund sentence, but
talked to his audiences in a red-hot conversational kind of way, his
heightened feelings finding expression in a sibilance which always
touched the nerves of his hearers.  He seldom interrupted interrupters,
finding it more effective to let them speak and then to deal with them
in his own special manner when they had finished.  There were
occasionally exceptions to this, however.  In the course of one of his
speeches he exclaimed, "What do my opponents really want?"  A husky,
hostile voice from the crowd broke in, "What I want is a change of
government."  "No," said Lloyd George; "what you really want is a
change of drink."  Another time he had begun a sentence with the words
"I am here," when an opponent in the crowd shouted, "So am I."  "Yes,"
said Lloyd George, "but you are not all there."  One of his best
retorts in his early days was to a Conservative who came to a Liberal
meeting determined to stand no nonsense.  "We must give home rule,"
declared Lloyd George, "not only to Ireland, but to Scotland as well,
and to Wales."  "And home rule for hell," shouted a man in the
audience.  "Quite right," said Lloyd George; "let every person stick up
for his own country."

A hard-working young professional man, Lloyd George was in for a heavy
fight and, in the opinion of many, a hopeless fight, when the election
came two years later.  It was a dramatic chance that selected for his
Conservative opponent the squire of his native village, the dignitary
to whom Lloyd George as a village lad used to touch his hat.  Fierce
excitement ranged throughout the election fight.  In the result Lloyd
George snatched victory by just a handful of votes, his poll being one
thousand nine hundred sixty-three against the Conservative total of one
thousand nine hundred forty-five.  Lloyd George was twenty-seven at the
time of this triumph and became known as "the boy politician."  There
were many sneers among his opponents, who pointed out that this fluent
young demagogue had now reached the end of his tether.  In the
environment of the House of Commons, among really clever men, he would
sink to the natural inconsequence from which a series of fortunate
accidents had lifted him.  And indeed it was not unnatural for even the
sympathetic observer to feel that perhaps this was the end of Lloyd
George, that the ability which he undoubtedly possessed and which had
carried him a considerable distance was not the ability which could do
any more for him.  He had projected himself out of the congenial
surroundings wherein his talents had proved of avail, but, like a spent
rocket, he would now rapidly come to earth.

It would have been inconceivable to many of his friends and to all of
his opponents that this twenty-seven-year-old M. P. should have
regarded himself as but on the threshold of his work, should have
looked upon what he had achieved merely as preliminaries to his rarely
serious efforts in life.  They would have smiled indulgently or
ironically if they had been told at this period the story of Lloyd
George's diary entry after his first visit to the House of Commons at
seventeen.  Probably no person on earth but his wife knew the steely
determination behind her husband's impetuosity.

The young M.P. took his seat in the House of Commons on April 17, 1890.
A Liberal Government was in power.  Gladstone, over eighty years of
age, was at the head of it.  Political giants whose reputation had
reached young Lloyd George through the newspapers were scattered along
the two front benches.  He sat himself down on one of the back seats
and proceeded to look at these men in action and to weigh them up.  He
formed some judgments about them.  Here is what he wrote about Mr.
Asquith in the course of some work for a Welsh newspaper a little later
on: "A short, thick-set, rather round-shouldered man with a face as
clean shaven as that of the most advanced curate, keen eyes and a
broad, intellectual forehead--he speaks clearly and emphatically.  He
sets out his arguments with great brilliancy and force."  Little did
the young M. P. think that in the years to come he would be supplanting
this man as Prime Minister of the country.

Right from the start Lloyd George set himself to acquire the methods
and fashions of the House of Commons, with all the involved procedure.
He wanted to avoid the obvious pitfalls.  Presently he essayed a
speech, and though he confessed himself as nervous, he did well, and
members spoke highly of his first effort.  It is as well to say here
that the House of Commons quickly cuts short the ambitions and hopes of
many young men who on the strength of platform popularity look for
triumph at Westminster.  The House of Commons, whatever may be its
drawbacks, has some human qualities, is kindly to beginners, has a
respect for sincerity, an undisguised yawn for bores, and a cold
contempt for swollen-headed young members who try to impress it with
their capacity.  When once a member has passed the stage of initial
forbearance due to a new-comer, there grows upon him the fact that the
House of Commons is indeed the most critical assembly in the world.
There are always within it many who have secured their places by money
or influence, but they are in the minority, and the House, as a whole,
including even these rich men, has never any respect for moneyed men as
such, pays no special deference to the person of lordly birth within
its walls.  A member is judged absolutely on what he is himself.  The
two most popular and respected members in the strangely mixed House of
Commons I watched for years were Mr. Thomas Burt, the father of the
House, who had been a working miner, and that ardent and lovable Irish
Nationalist, Mr. Willie Redmond--both men having secured in
extraordinary measure the personal affection of the whole House.  In
some respects, therefore, the House is like a big public school, and
Conservatives and Liberals, notwithstanding their political
differences, are welded together by a common instinct so far as the
domestic character of the Chamber is concerned.

The peculiar atmosphere was not lost upon Lloyd George, and he
diligently attuned himself to the new medium.  This would have been
unavailing if there had been nothing in his speeches, but it was soon
realized that here was an interesting new member, a man inexperienced
in some directions, but with bold thoughts, apt phrases, and an almost
unpleasant sincerity.  He did not take the House by storm, but still he
was listened to.  He quickly developed.  Within a year his name was
frequently in the newspapers as one of the guerrilla fighters below the
gangway who gave the Government no peace.

Lloyd George had made up his mind about the statesmen in the House and
had come to a decision that not even the strongest of them was
unassailable.  Gladstone led the Government and Lloyd George was his
nominal follower, but on individual matters the young M. P. opposed his
chief.  It was rather like a fox-terrier standing up to a lion.
Gladstone had an incomparable prestige, the result of a continuous
half-century of work for his country, including four periods as Prime
Minister.  Probably three-quarters of the six hundred and seventy
members of the House of Commons, many of them old politicians, would
have been nervous about tackling Gladstone, who, despite his eighty
years, was still a terrific force in debate, possessing an eagle mien
which subdued opponent and recalcitrant supporters alike.  Young Lloyd
George refused to be cowed even by Gladstone.

Wales was pressing for the disestablishment of the English Church
within its borders, and Lloyd George with two or three other Liberal
members bitterly protested about the postponement of this reform.
Difficulties of immediate parliamentary action, the urgency of other
legislation, the opposition from powerful sections of the House, all
these things were nothing to Lloyd George; what he wanted was the
disestablishment of the Church in Wales.  Frequently the Prime Minister
in the British Parliament ignores the attacks of the lesser men.
Gladstone could not ignore Lloyd George.  He had to answer him.
Sometimes he condescended to berate him, much to the enjoyment of the
assembly.  Lloyd George always came up unhurt, alert, and persistent.

In 1892 Mr. Gladstone retired, and his place at the head of the Liberal
Government was taken by Lord Rosebery.  Lloyd George, in his efforts to
secure the early passage of the Welsh disestablishment bill, continued
to strike hard at his nominal chief until in 1894 came the end of this
particular sphere of his operations, for the Liberal Government was
turned out and a Conservative Government put in its place.  This,
however, was Lloyd George's real opportunity.  Independent as he had
been in the ranks of his own party, he now found far greater scope as a
foe in opposition to Ministers in power.  He went for them, tooth and
nail, making a dead set at Chamberlain, who had taken Gladstone's place
as the leading figure in the House of Commons.  Chamberlain himself had
fought his way up.  Those who have seen Chamberlain will never forget
him--the long, strong face, the steady, hard eyes, the straight-cut
mouth, the rigidly erect, slim body, the unfailing single eyeglass, and
the orchid in his buttonhole making a picture which can never be
disassociated from will-power, a mind cold and clear, a lucid gift of
speech, unflinching courage, and a savage contempt for weakness or
inefficiency.  He had against him in the House of Commons some able
critics, but not more than two or three could really stand up to him in
argument.  I believe there was not a single one even of these who dared
to take off the gloves to him in real fighting earnest.  Lloyd George
went into opposition with his eyes fixed on Chamberlain.

From that time onward Lloyd George deliberately fought the Birmingham
statesman on every possible opportunity.  In committee, during question
time, at set debate, he pursued him unremittingly.  Chamberlain tried
at first to shake him off with a scornful word or two.  But Lloyd
George was not to be dismissed as so many others had been.  He returned
to the attack like a hornet.  He was never appeased, never in doubt,
never content.  Chamberlain had presently to take real notice of him.
He turned on the Welshman and with ferocity held him up to scorn and
ridicule--not a difficult task for such a man as Chamberlain,
especially as the majority of the House of Commons were his followers.
Lloyd George certainly had his bad times then.  Sometimes his facts
would be proved awry and his arguments fallacious and he would be
harried with merciless sarcasm.  He would, in effect, be smashed to
pieces.  To the amazement of every one he refused to understand that he
was smashed.  After any and every attack he would be swiftly on his
feet, hurling forth fresh accusatory words and ignoring the punishment
he had just received--would be himself the scourger of sin.  Sometimes
he even took to imitating Chamberlain's own methods, and pointing a
finger at his distinguished victim, would hiss out his charges word by
word with a vibrant slowness.  Even the impassive Chamberlain used
sometimes to color a little under this mimicry.  If ever a man went
thoroughly out of his way to be hated it was Lloyd George.  But he
gained way.  Once under an unsparing attack by Lloyd George,
Chamberlain winced, leaped to his feet, and asked permission to make a
second speech in reply.  That was the first occasion which caused
members to say among themselves that Chamberlain, gladiator that he
was, had met his match in Lloyd George.




IV

THE DAREDEVIL STATESMAN

What was the underlying motive in Lloyd George during those years of
feverish combat?  Why should he have gone out of his way to deal injury
and to incur enmity?  Why was he always in the pose of rebel even when
his friends were in power?  Was he anything more than a clever young
politician seeking notoriety by espousing unpopular courses whenever
there was a chance to strike a blow at those high in authority?  They
are justifiable questions, and they can be answered quite shortly.
Heaven had given Lloyd George, together with much impulsiveness, the
most sensitive of souls and a kindly heart, together with the
imagination of a poet.  Even when he was a boy resentment blazed from
him as he realized the injustices which were suffered by the poorer
people, people who could not raise their voice to protest and who went
on in stolid resignation from childhood to the grave.  The example of
his mother, a patient and noble woman, struggling with fate for the
sake of her children, was ever before him.  He saw his uncle, a sturdy
Puritan of high character and intelligence, looked down upon, or at
least disapproved of, because of his religious and political opinions,
and this in spite of the fact that Richard Lloyd's beliefs sprang from
selfless emotions and held him in an upright life.  As Lloyd George
grew older and mingled with the world he saw how oppression, active or
passive, often went with wealth and power, and that not only material
sustenance, but education and even the right to think, was denied the
vast preponderance of the population by those who through inheritance,
accident, or hardihood had secured the good things of the earth.  Every
nerve within him quivered in revolt.  And even before he realized the
full extent of the powers that lay within him his ardent spirit was
leaping forward to fight what he regarded as the great giants of
evil--the systems and the customs which gave individuals the power to
hold down those who could not help themselves.  He loved his native
land passionately and was saturated with religious feeling, and he was
strung with indignation that the state Church system of England should
continue to be forced upon a nation of Nonconformists, with its
resulting social influence on the people of his land.  He was stirred
to the depths by the lives of poor people among whom he had lived his
most impressionable years.  Enraged at the mental and moral attitude of
the rich Conservatives who placidly assumed that Providence meant them
to rule the earth and all the lesser horde to bow down to their
inspired will, he was dissatisfied with the stolidity and lethargy of
the official Liberal party, although he himself was a Liberal.  When
the Boer War broke out his sense of chivalry and justice was outraged
at the thought that a great people like the British nation should
attempt to crush a tiny pastoral race, even under some provocation.
Thus from the start he devoted himself passionately and whole-heartedly
to the side of the under dog.

Incidentally in this single-handed fight he took a sardonic delight in
shocking those pillars of society who to him were symbols of the
existing order of things.  Fiercely he smashed away at idols, however
highly placed, however much revered.  At all times and in all
circumstances he was regardless of consequences to himself, a fact
which, together with his gifts, secured for him a certain measure of
concealed respect even from those who hated him most.  Withal,
throughout these years of destructiveness his mind was working toward
the formation of a new order of things.  Behind and beyond all his
Ishmaelitish tactics there were thoughts of a reconstruction.  He may
have been right or wrong in his courses.  At any rate, it is necessary
in a sketch of his career to set out the connecting links in years of
activity which to a casual observer may seem disjointed, variable, and
erratic.

A notable incident in his career was when, with practically the whole
country inflamed against him, owing to his attitude on the Boer War, he
decided to go down to Birmingham, the seat and stronghold of Joseph
Chamberlain, and address a public meeting in support of his anti-war
policy.  Friends tried to dissuade him.  He was not to be dissuaded.
Preparations were quickly set afoot in Birmingham to break up his
meeting.  When the evening arrived so great were the hostile crowds
around the town hall, so high their temper, that the chief constable of
the city begged Lloyd George not to risk himself on the platform.
Lloyd George would have none of his suggestion.  He went to the hall,
and his appearance was a signal for a riot such as had been unknown for
a generation at a public gathering in Britain.  In a frantic fight by
the Chamberlain supporters to reach the platform the sympathizers with
Lloyd George were trampled down.  Furniture was broken up, windows were
smashed, several people were seriously injured, and one man was killed.
Lloyd George was smuggled out of the hall in a policeman's uniform.

England rang with the story of the happenings on that night in
Birmingham.  Lloyd George was called a coward and sneered at for
allowing himself to get away in disguise, and if poisonous words could
have checked a man's career he would have been finished from that time.
A few days after the riot an M. P. met Joseph Chamberlain in the lobby
of the House of Commons and said to him, "So your people didn't manage
to kill Lloyd George the other night?"  "What is everybody's business
is nobody's business," said Chamberlain as he passed on.

It is a tribute to Lloyd George's power among his own people in Wales
that when an election took place in the middle of the war he retained
his seat in Parliament.  You get a touch of the kind of man in the
words he spoke to his supporters in the course of his speech after the
declaration of the poll.  "While England and Scotland are drunk with
blood, the brain of Wales remains clear, and she advances with steady
step on the road to progress and liberty."

The Conservatives remained in power to the end of 1905, and in the
beginning of 1906 there was a general election which returned to power
a strong Liberal majority augmented by some thirty Labor members.  A
vigorous spirit was sweeping through the Liberal ranks.  New men had
sprung to the front to take the place of those who had dropped out by
death, old age, or the feeling that modern thought was too advanced for
them.  Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a pawky old Scotsman who became
the Liberal Prime Minister, did not confine the members of his Cabinet
to the respectable leaders of old time, but brought in new blood, among
his selections being Lloyd George.  This promotion was unexpected by
the public.  Lloyd George had made a big reputation in Parliament, but
it was always that of the free-lance.  On vital questions of principle
he was as free from control by the Liberals as by the Conservatives.
He was known as an untamed guerrilla, and that was all.  There were
many shrugs of the shoulder, many doubtful whispers, at the hazards
which Campbell-Bannerman was taking in putting such a person into the
Cabinet.  True, he was but one of the lesser appointments--namely, that
of president of the Board of Trade--but was he capable of even that
responsibility?  Had he any capacity at all as an administrator?  These
were the doubts pretty freely expressed in political circles when the
appointments to the new Cabinet were announced.

It is significant of the reserves in Lloyd George that from the time he
took his place among the line of Ministers on the Treasury bench he
began to show signs of qualities unsuspected.  Gone was his
combativeness.  He answered questions about his department with
urbanity, replied to criticism with courtesy and painstaking detail.
Out of the House he devoted himself assiduously to learning the
intricacies of his department.  Very soon reforms began to be
manifested.  The Board of Trade, an old and historic department,
largely bound up with red tape, became the most unconventional office
in Whitehall.  Moreover, the activities of the Board of Trade began to
get an importance in Parliament that they had never hitherto possessed.
Novel measures were brought in by Lloyd George and, what was more
surprising, were successfully piloted into law by him.  His grasp of
detail, his unfailing tact, his readiness to meet reasonable
objections, all contributed to the result.  I do not mean that he was
always suave, because occasionally biting sentences would make
themselves felt as of old, but wherever courtesy and politeness were
forthcoming from opponents he returned them in full measure.
Responsibility was certainly having its effect on him.

He passed the Patents and Designs Act, formulated to compel
manufacturers holding British patents to make their goods in Britain
instead of abroad, and he passed also the Merchant Shipping Act, for
the purpose of giving British sailors better food and healthier
conditions of life.  While the Board of Trade was thus forging its way
in public estimation it suddenly became the most important Government
department in the country.  The railway men all over the lines planned
a strike to get more pay, a strike which would have dislocated if it
had not stopped all the trains in Britain.  It is the business of the
Board of Trade to handle labor disputes.  Lloyd George was at once in
the vortex.  To the surprise of some, he took no extreme view, but
considered it his duty as a Minister first of all to keep the railways
running for the benefit of the community as a whole, and then after
that to secure some arrangement, if it were possible, by which the lot
of the railway men could be bettered.  He flung into the struggle for
compromise the whole of the ardor which for years past he had devoted
to combat, and after ceaseless struggles with both sides during some
days and nights lie was successful in fixing up a scheme under which
the railways were continued in operation, and the men got a good deal
of what they asked for.  All sections praised him, and the new Lloyd
George was acclaimed as something of a revelation.

His tenure as president of the Board of Trade was his first experience
as Cabinet Minister.  He, nevertheless, established innovations the
thought of which would have given respectable and long-established
statesmen a shudder.  He cared not a rap for convention.  He was not in
the least afraid of his permanent officials, who so often control their
department and their political chief with it.  A Cabinet Minister in
Britain is hedged with a certain divinity and is almost unapproachable
except under stated conditions.  Lloyd George bewildered people with
his approachability, his unpretentiousness.  During the strain of the
railway struggle he would exchange a cheery word with the waiting
newspaper reporters as he passed them on going in or out of his office,
an unheard-of thing for a Cabinet Minister to do.  The second day was
cold and inclement when he stopped among them as he approached the
Board of Trade entrance.  "There is no need for you gentlemen to wait
outside here in the cold.  Come inside and I'll find you a room," he
said.  He caused a comfortable apartment to be set aside for them
during their vigil, and each afternoon he caused tea and cigarettes to
be sent down to them to beguile the long period of waiting.  Here is
another little story of his early days of office.  A railway smash at
Shrewsbury resulted in the death of twenty people and the injury of a
great many more, and in accordance with the usual practice the Board of
Trade sent down immediately an inspector to investigate the cause of
the accident.  But on this occasion not only did the inspector go down
to Shrewsbury, but his chief, the president of the Board of Trade,
also, quite a novel course for a high and mighty Cabinet Minister.  I
was present as a journalist and remember seeing Lloyd George walking
along by the side of the dismantled lines, threading his way through
the wreckage, putting questions to the railway officials, and generally
seeking to probe out on his own account how the affair occurred.  On
behalf of a score of special correspondents who had come down from
London, I stopped Lloyd George in the street as he was walking to his
hotel to ask him about the official inquiry.  "Is it to be held in
private, as usual?" I said.  "No," replied Lloyd George.  "The inquiry
will be in public.  Here are twenty people killed and the country has
the right to know why they were killed."  That was the way he used to
break precedents.  Next day we all went down to the Raven Hotel, the
appointed place, and the inspector proceeded with his work of examining
witnesses.  Lloyd George sat by his side.  I felt sorry for that
inspector--who usually was monarch of all he surveyed.  He was a man of
dignified and leisurely manner.  Lloyd George cut in and took the
examination of witnesses out of his mouth and, figuratively speaking,
turned them inside out in trying to get the facts.  He did not consider
the position of the inspector one bit.  But he made the inquiry a very
interesting one.

Despite his new manner on the Treasury bench in the House of Commons
Lloyd George had lost none of the freshness and suppleness of mind
which had distinguished him as a free-lance, and as he proceeded to do
unexpected things it became apparent he was going to be as vital a
figure in office as he had been on the back benches.  Traces of
appreciation showed themselves in public comment, though his ancient
enemies, the Conservatives, held their dislike in reserve, and had some
forebodings in their hearts about the future.  They knew quite well by
now that this Welshman could not be read at a glance.

Bits of the old Adam began to show up in Lloyd George's speeches as he
lent his aid on the platform in support of Liberal proposals.  I
remember that at this time there was still a good deal of talk by the
Conservatives of tariff reform--that is to say, of the imposition of
import duties for protection and revenue purposes.  The Liberals were
against the proposals, fought them strongly, and indeed by their
attitude had won a good deal of support in the election which returned
them to power.  Lloyd George made some of his flaming speeches in
support of free trade against protection.  Then came one night when the
Board of Trade Minister had to speak in the House of Commons as a
defender of the Government policy against a motion put forth by the
Opposition in favor of tariff reform.  After speakers on both sides had
debated the topic for some hours it was Lloyd George's duty to wind up
the discussion for the Government.  When he rose there was much
excitement on both sides and a good deal of shouting and
counter-shouting.  Remarks were thrown across from the Opposition
benches indicating that Lloyd George's speeches about the evil of
tariff reform on the Continent had been exaggerated.  "I have been
challenged," he said, "with regard to statements as to the food of the
poorer people in Germany, and I am going to give now, not my opinion,
but some hard facts."  He held up a blue book.  "This volume is the
last annual report of the Consul-General in Germany.  The facts which I
shall quote are his facts, not mine.  If you will not take my word, you
will at any rate be able to take his word."  He turned to a marked
page.  "Let us see what he says about a typical center, the city of
Chemnitz.  Here are some interesting figures as to what the poorer
class eat in this tariff-reform paradise of Chemnitz."  He proceeded to
read extracts.  I cannot recall the extra figures, but Lloyd George's
phrases ran something like this: "This report states that in Chemnitz
last year there were sold in the shops two thousand tons of
horse-flesh.  These are not my figures, mind, but those of the
Consul-General.  I commend the figures to excited members opposite.
But horse-flesh is not the only thing the people through the pressure
of tariff reform are compelled to eat in Chemnitz.  They even eat
dog-meat."  (Cheers from the Liberals and derisive shouts from the
Conservatives.)  "The Consul-General states that one thousand tons of
dog-meat were consumed in Chemnitz last year."  (More shouting from
both sides.)  "But there is even worse to come."  Lloyd George's voice
took on a note of gravity, and the House hushed itself to listen.  "Not
only horse-flesh, not only dog-meat, but five hundred tons of
donkey-flesh were sold in Chemnitz last year."  He swung his finger
along the line of Opposition leaders and paused.  "The fact has a
tragic significance for right honorable gentlemen who want to introduce
tariff reform into this country."

Then his speech had to be suspended for a full minute.

At this time the cause of tariff reform was going rapidly downhill.
Austen Chamberlain, the son of Joseph Chamberlain, strove hard to keep
it to the fore, and frequently at intervals in the House of Commons the
protectionist proposals were brought forward.  Lloyd George had a
characteristic word to say about the situation one day.  "I do not
blame Mr. Austen Chamberlain for sticking to his father.  But the
considerations which have made him protectionist are not fiscal, but
filial.  History ever repeats itself, and the boy still stands on the
burning deck."

By rapid steps Lloyd George became the outstanding figure of the
Government in which he occupied a comparatively minor position.  Soon
he was as prominent in Britain as, when a youth, he was prominent in
Wales.  Hardly a week passed in which he was not by his daring speeches
or actions raising storms of anger among opponents or choruses of
approval among the advanced Liberals.  Vital force radiated from him.
When Campbell-Bannerman died in 1908 and Asquith, his Chancellor of the
Exchequer, became Prime Minister, it was on Lloyd George that his
choice fell as the new Chancellor.  The public, dazzled at Lloyd
George's swift rise, withheld their judgment as to the wisdom of Mr.
Asquith's experiment in this elevation of the Welshman to the post of
second statesman in the United Kingdom.  As for Lloyd George himself,
he took up the position with calmness and a gleaming eye.  At last he
had his hand on the helm.




V

THE FIRST GREAT TASK

The biggest day in Lloyd George's life until he was called upon by the
King to form a Government was Thursday, April 29, 1909.  On that day he
presented to Parliament and the country his first Budget--the framework
of taxation and legislation which was to be the foundation of a new
social system in Britain--which incidentally was to break the power of
the House of Lords and to lead to such a storm among all classes that the
aid of the King himself had to be invoked in order to carry out the plan
of the Welsh statesman.

A dramatic situation had arisen at Westminster.  Up to 1906 when the
Liberals were returned by a large majority the Conservatives, with the
exception of a short break, had been in power for twenty years.  Another
generation of the people had come to adult life since the early eighties
when the Liberals were last in real power, and a new set of Liberal
statesmen with advanced ideals had been put into office.  The exultation
among the forces of progress was great.  The hot hopes were to have a
speedy quenching.  The laws of England are passed by the joint consent of
the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.  The House of
Commons is an electoral body, but the House of Lords has a hereditary
membership, descending from father to son.  Of the six hundred members of
the House of Lords five hundred are Conservatives.  The Conservative
minority in the Commons, faced with startling Liberal reforms, called to
their aid the five hundred stalwarts in the Lords, and the consequence
was that the sweeping measures introduced by the Liberals were promptly
thrown out by the Lords.  Thus an intolerable situation presented itself
to the Liberal majority chosen by the nation to direct its Government.

Lloyd George, on being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, at once set
himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his
hand.  He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the
means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords.  The
ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation
for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country.
Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs
of the country" and then to raise the money on account of them.  He
purposed to bring about a wholesale readjustment between rich and poor
and to use the readjustment as a basis for developments in the future.
That was his bold and carefully devised plan of action.  It will be asked
at once why the Lords could not frustrate this intention as well as those
embodied in the other Liberal bills they had thrown out.  This was the
reason: the Lords were prevented by the constitution from altering money
bills sent up to them by the Commons, though they might do what they
liked with other bills.  The people provided the taxes, the Commons are
elected by the people, and the power of the purse possessed by the
Commons gives the people the command in affairs of state.  As long ago as
the time of Charles II. this rule about the Commons and Lords with
respect to money supplies was emphatically laid down.  Lloyd George's
scheme was to wrap up social changes in his Budget and to dare the Lords
to meddle with them, inasmuch as they were part and parcel of a money
bill.

The country had no idea of this deep-rooted plan.  Something sensational
was expected of Lloyd George, but his proposals, it was thought, would be
of a purely financial nature, including, possibly, heavy taxation of rich
people and relief of the indirect taxation of the poor.  As a matter of
fact, Lloyd George, walking over from Downing Street to the House of
Commons on that Thursday afternoon, had three secrets in the leather
despatch-case he carried in his hand.  One was the amount of money he was
going to raise, the second the sources from which he was going to obtain
it, and third the way in which the money was to be spent.  Those of us
who saw him walking briskly across Palace Yard that afternoon in company
with Mr. Winston Churchill little thought that the small brown
despatch-case held plans which within three years were to alter vitally
the constitution of the United Kingdom as it had existed for eight
hundred years.

The national financial position was known in the morning before Lloyd
George made his speech.  The amount needed for the current year by the
country for the army, navy, civil services, and social relief was
164,152,000 pounds.  The revenue to be expected on the existing basis of
taxation was 148,390,000 pounds.  A deficit of nearly 16,000,000 pounds
had, therefore, to be provided for.  In addition, in the framing of this
as of other Budgets, regard was necessary to the automatic increase of
certain expenditures in coming years, increases which must be met by the
expanding capacity of schemes of revenue.  (Though the Budget is an
annual affair, a good many of its features are necessarily continuing.)
After all this has been taken into account there must be remembered that
Lloyd George was planning still further expenditure.  He had therefore to
get piles of money from somewhere or other and to make sure of it in
increasing volume as years went on.

I was present in the House of Commons to describe the Budget scene.  The
Chamber was packed and was quivering with excitement when at four minutes
to three, during the preliminary business, Lloyd George, with a red
despatch-box in his hand, came into view from behind the Speaker's chair,
and passed with alert and nervous steps to the place on the Treasury
bench reserved for him between the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and Mr.
Churchill.  I can see Lloyd George now as he sat bolt-upright with one
knee crossed over the other, waiting for the moment when the chairman
should call on him.  His face was pale and his eyes were rather dull.  He
looked a little overwrought.  He was feeling the tension; so much was
obvious.  I remember wondering if he had reached the limit of his
strength, whether he was really big enough in spirit for the ordeal that
lay before him.

Within ten minutes the formal business of the day was over, and the
chairman, standing up on his dais, announced, "Mr. Chancellor of the
Exchequer."  Lloyd George rose to the table.  He seemed almost an
insignificant figure in the midst of the crowded assembly.  Members were
filling all the seats, some squatting on the steps of the Speaker's
chair, others standing together in the space below the bar at the farther
end of the House.  The galleries banked overhead were occupied by
distinguished visitors, foreign ambassadors, members of the House of
Lords, ladies of title, distinguished men of thought and action.  It was
such an audience as is given to but few men in a lifetime.

In low voice and conversational phrase Lloyd George began his speech.  He
told of the money that had to be raised, but he did not stop at the
narrative of what may be called ordinary expenditure.  He told how the
primary duty of a rich nation was to help those who had been exhausted,
to give a chance to the downtrodden.  He related some of the things he
had in his mind--the insurance of workmen against illness and
unemployment, the payment of pensions for persons over a certain age.  He
told of how unemployment might be largely eliminated by developments in
the countryside, through new methods of agriculture, through light
railways, through afforestation, through stock-breeding, through the
reclamation of land.  Efforts in these directions would not only help a
great many of the population at the present time, but would provide
enormously increased opportunities for coming generations.  He proposed
that part of the money of the year should be taken up with these projects.

Very soon he swept into the explanation of how new money was to be
raised.  It was necessary to set up a system which would, year by year,
produce an increasing supply of money.  When Lloyd George came to the
point of his actual proposals you could have heard the slightest rustle
of an order paper, so keen were the silent Commons.  He was going to
raise the income tax, he said, the existing impost on incomes of 160
pounds a year and over.  He was going to put a super tax on rich people,
those who had 5,000 pounds a year or more.  He was going to make big
additions to the duty charged on great estates when they changed hands.

Demand after demand he showered on the rich and comfortable.  The
assembly, expecting surprises, had them in abundance.  The Chancellor
drew sheaf after sheaf of notes from the red despatch-box on the table in
front of him and explained with an air of intensive reasonableness the
huge sums he proposed to draw from the property-owners in the country.
New inroads were to be made on the profits of land and liquor.
Coal-mines were to pay royalties.  People were to be taxed when they
became rich without any effort on their own part, but by fortunate
accident in the increased value of special localities.  There was to be a
complete valuation of every yard of land in the country as the basis for
developments to come.

Although the money to be raised that year by these new proposals would
not much more than cover what was required by immediate necessities, the
taxation was such as to multiply in product as years went on.  Finally
the motive behind the revolutionary Budget of Lloyd George came in the
concluding words of his speech.  "It is essential that we should make
provision for the defense of our country.  But, surely, it is equally
imperative that we should make it a country even better worth defending
for all and by all.  And it is that this expenditure is for both these
purposes that alone can justify the Government.  I am told that no
Chancellor of the Exchequer has ever been called upon to impose such
heavy taxes in a time of peace.  This, Mr. Chairman, is a war Budget.  It
is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and
squalidness.  I cannot help hoping and believing that before this
generation has passed away we shall have advanced a great step toward
that good time when poverty and wretchedness, and the human degradation
which always follows in its camp, will be as remote from the people of
this country as the wolves which once infested its forests."

It took a day or so for the full effect of the Budget to be understood.
And then enthusiasm rose in the breasts of Liberals and Labor men, while
the middle and upper classes poured forth outcries and protests.  As the
proposals were discussed in detail, feeling arose on both sides, and
Lloyd George was variously described as a genius who was laying the
foundation of a new Britain and a predatory politician out to catch
votes.  Throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom his name
was on the lips of all, either in execration or in praise.

The greatest Parliamentary fight of a generation began to take form in
the House of Commons.  The Conservatives, led by Mr. Balfour, put up an
obstructive fight to every line and almost every word of the finance bill
which was founded on the Budget.  Departmental duties all day, the onward
fight with his finance measure throughout the night and often the early
hours of the morning, became the routine of Lloyd George's life.  I have
seen him at the table at the House of Commons at seven o'clock in the
morning, with ashen face and burning eyes, after a week of all-night
sittings, persuading, explaining, and arguing with determined opponents
of his measure.  Often enough in these fatiguing morning hours there
would be sitting up behind the grille in the ladies' gallery an anxious,
but proud, woman watching the Welsh statesman at the table.  It was Mrs.
George, the pretty Maggie Owen of years before whom the young Welsh
solicitor had taken from her father's farm.

In justice I ought to summarize in a few sentences written at the time
the attitude of the opponents of the Budget.  "Why put forward these
extraordinary changes?  Here was an unequaled nation, the richest and
greatest in existence, which by its character and energy had built up an
empire reaching across the globe, with Parliamentary institutions which
were the admiration of every state.  The millions of our population were
welded in a common sentiment, unsurpassed since history began, making
unshakable the foundations of our nationality.  We had fought our way to
modern conditions very slowly, and now, class for class, we were perhaps
the most contented and prosperous people on the face of the earth.
Admitted that we had vast crowds of silently enduring poor.  (The poor we
have always with us, as has every great nation.)  But the way to
ameliorate the evils among them was not to disturb the comfort,
convenience, or property of the rich, but to increase the prosperity of
rich and poor alike by putting a tax on foreigners' goods coming into
this country, thus providing revenue and increasing home manufactures at
one stroke.  That was the course to pursue, not to disturb the elaborate
and happy system, the pride of the world, by sudden incursions into the
liberty of the individual and by depredations on the privileged in order
to benefit the unhappy.  Property, whether obtained without effort or
built up by the hardest of labor, had its inalienable rights, and
violently to outrage those rights was not only unjust to the persons
chiefly concerned, but dangerous to the state at large."

The campaign which was set in motion against Lloyd George has not been
equaled in violence since the old free-speaking days of a century ago.
He was called a vulgar Welsh attorney.  He was accused of having every
kind of attribute which was contemptible and hateful.  One of the things
urged against him was that he was no gentleman and could not understand
the feeling of gentlefolk, owing to his unfortunate upbringing.  His
opponents thus attacking him went into paroxysms of rage over a speech he
made at Limehouse in the East End of London, where he defended his
Budget.  The Limehouse speech has become famous as an example of Lloyd
George's oratory.  I give a few extracts to enable an idea to be formed
about it.

"The Budget is introduced, not merely for the purpose of raising barren
taxes, but taxes that are fertile taxes, taxes that will bring forth
fruit--the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of
all, provision for the aged and deserving poor.  It was time it was done.
It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours, probably the richest
country in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen, that it
should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and
possibly starvation.  It is rather hard that an old workman should have
to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore through
the brambles and thorns of poverty.  We cut a new path through, an easier
one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn.  We are raising
money to pay for the new road, aye, and to widen it, so that two hundred
thousand paupers shall be able to join in the march.  There are many in
the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are
among them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution toward
the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen, they are shabby rich men.

"We propose to do more by the means of the Budget.  We are raising money
to provide against the evils and sufferings that follow from
unemployment.  We are raising money for the purpose of assisting our
great friendly societies to provide for the sick, the widows, and the
orphans.  We are providing money to enable us to develop the resources of
our own land.  I do not believe any fair-minded man would challenge the
justice and the fairness of the objects which we have in view of raising
this money.  But there are some who say that the taxes themselves are
unjust, unfair, unequal, oppressive, notably so the land taxes.  They are
engaged, not merely in the House of Commons, but outside the House of
Commons, in assailing these taxes with a concentrated and sustained
ferocity which will not even allow a comma to escape with its life.

"We claim that the tax we impose on land is fair, just, and moderate.
They go on threatening that if we proceed they will cut down their
benefactions and discharge labor.  What kind of labor?  What is the labor
they are going to choose for dismissal?  Are they going to threaten to
devastate rural England while feeding themselves and dressing themselves?
Are they going to reduce their gamekeepers?  That would be sad.  The
agricultural laborer and the farmer might then have some part of the game
which they fatten with their labor.  But what would happen to you in the
season?  No weekend shooting with the Duke of Norfolk for any of us.  But
that is not the kind of labor they are going to cut down.  They are going
to cut down productive labor--builders and gardeners--and they are going
to ruin their property so that it shall not be taxed.  All I can say is
this: the ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is
stewardship.  It has been reckoned as such in the past, and if they cease
to discharge their functions, which include the security and defense of
the country and the looking after the broken in their villages and
neighborhood, those functions which are part of the traditional duties
attaching to the ownership of land and which have given to it its title,
if they cease to discharge those functions, the time will come to
reconsider the conditions under which land is held in this country.  No
country, however rich, can permanently afford to have quartered upon its
revenue a class which declines to do the duty which it is called upon to
perform.  And, therefore, it is one of the prime duties of statesmanship
to investigate those conditions.

"We are placing the burdens on the broad shoulders.  Why should I put
burdens on the people?  I am one of the children of the people.  I was
brought up among them.  I know their trials, and God forbid that I should
add one grain of trouble to the anxiety which they bear with such
patience and fortitude.  When the Prime Minister did me the honor of
inviting me to take charge of the national Exchequer at a time of great
difficulty I made up my mind in framing the Budget which was in front of
me that at any rate no cupboard should be barer, no lot should be harder
to bear.  By that test I challenge them to judge the Budget."

The passion among the middle classes and the upper classes rose to such a
pitch against Lloyd George's proposals as to cause more than one serious
and religiously minded person to write and express wonder that Heaven did
not strike dead such a wicked man before he could accomplish his fell
purpose in the ruin of the country.

There is a story told about a man who jumped from the pier at Brighton
into the sea to rescue a drowning person.  In describing his experience
the rescuer said: "It was easy enough.  Only a few strokes were necessary
to reach him.  I got hold of him by the collar just as he was going down.
Having turned him over on his back to see that it wasn't Lloyd George, I
then brought him to the pier."

The House of Lords felt they had the country behind them, and they
proceeded to the unprecedented and unconstitutional course of killing the
Budget.  This was exactly what Mr. Asquith and his first lieutenant had
been waiting for.  Lloyd George saw the fruits of his labor destroyed in
a day, but he watched the process, not with despair, but with grim
satisfaction.

The Lords had broken their last Liberal bill, for Lloyd George had
determined to break the Lords.




VI

HOW LLOYD GEORGE BROKE THE HOUSE OF LORDS

A few days later, with Lloyd George sitting by his side, Mr. Asquith,
the Prime Minister, made the following announcement in Parliament: "The
House of Commons would, in the judgment of his Majesty's Government, be
unworthy of its past and of the traditions of which it is the custodian
and trustee if it allowed another day to pass without making it clear
that it does not mean to brook the greatest indignity and the most
arrogant usurpation to which for more than two centuries it has been
asked to submit.  We have advised the Crown to dissolve Parliament at
the earliest possible moment."

The preparations for the general election included a campaign of
vilification against Lloyd George which shook even some of the
Conservatives.  But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the other hand,
was not disturbed, and he did not hesitate to do a little vilification
on his own account.  "What a low creature!" was the instant retort to
any incursions of this kind.

One of the secrets of Lloyd George's career was that he always made his
opponents too angry to appraise him correctly.  They simply couldn't do
it.  A little cold-blooded study of him and his past history would have
served them well.  Because Lloyd George had a peculiarly bitter tongue
and a peculiarly stimulating one he was abused as a fluent demagogue
with nothing but unscrupulous and violent words to give him prominence.
This was not a mere pretense on the part of the upper classes.  They
seriously believed it.  As a result Lloyd George had a tremendous pull
over the whole lot of them.  One secret of his power was that his real
strength lay not in words, but in his capacity for action.  Because he
talked about things with recklessness and force it was assumed that he
could not do things.  The hard fact was that he was more effective in
doing things and in getting them done than in talking about them.  He
secured a wonderful advantage from all this.  While hard names were
being showered on him, and even while he was replying to them, he was
at work quietly.  I have often thought that as soon as his opponents
found him out they felt that this was not fair, that he ought to have
played the game and to have shown himself as exactly the kind of man
they had portrayed him to be.  Yet, at the time, his enemies would
probably have been contemptuous of the suggestion that this ranting
person could possibly be a man who was specially gifted in carrying
plots and plans and big state projects into execution.  They had to
learn to their cost that he was both resolute and stealthy.

Lloyd George had as his chief Mr. Asquith, a man of crystal intellect,
who had won high distinction, first at his university, than at the bar,
where he was a famous advocate, and latterly in the House of Commons,
where his mastery of Parliamentary arts was only equaled by that of the
rival leader, Mr. Balfour.  His speeches were powerful, but they
appealed to the head rather than to the emotions.  Unlike Lloyd George,
he was not by way of being a prophet.  He could not by sheer intensity
sway the House of Commons.  Mr. Asquith, moreover, was quite incapable
of stirring a public audience on the platform outside the House, and he
lacked that terrific energy which distinguished his principal
colleague.  But he was, nevertheless, a first-rate partner.  His
steady, cold brain would carry into effect with precision an intricate,
delicate, and bold plan of operations.  He had hardihood.  Every wile
in public life was known to him.  He had strong will-power.  And in
sheer brain of what may be called the purely intellectual type he was
miles ahead, not only of Lloyd George, but of all the other politicians
of the day.  I should say here that he undoubtedly felt deeply the slur
cast upon the House of Commons by the Lords.  And there is one more
trait that should be mentioned, his unshakable loyalty to those who
served under him, and to his brilliant Chancellor of the Exchequer not
less than to any of the others.

It implies, however, no disrespect to Mr. Asquith to say that he had
become the instrument of Lloyd George.  It was the latter's subtle
brain that evolved the possible consequences which might ensue after
his first stroke in the Budget of April, 1909.  It was his bold spirit
that urged the desperate course which was presently pursued.  He
measured the Lords and decided that if they could not be frightened
into defeat they could be hustled into a wild attempt which would be
equally disastrous to them.

Joyfully he entered the fray as soon as the Lords threw out the Budget.
In a public speech made immediately after the Lords' action he said: "I
come here to-day not to preach a funeral oration.  I am here neither to
bury nor to praise the Budget.  If it is buried it is in the sure and
certain hope of a glorious resurrection.  As to its merits, no one
appreciates them more sincerely than I do, but its slaughter has raised
greater, graver, and more fruitful issues.  We have got to arrest the
criminal.  We have to see he perpetrates no further crime.  A new
chapter is now being written for the sinister assembly which is more
responsible than any other power for wrecking popular hopes, but which,
in my judgment, has perpetrated its last act of destructive fury.  They
have slain the Budget.  In doing so they have killed the bill which, if
you will permit me to say so, had in it more promises of better things
for the people of this country than most things which have been
submitted to the House of Commons.  It made provision against the
inevitable evils which befall such large masses of our poor population,
through old age, infirmity, sickness, and unemployment.  The schemes of
which the Budget was the small foundation would, in my judgment, if
they had been allowed to fructify, have eliminated at least hunger from
the terrors that haunt the workman's cottage.  Yet here you have an
order of men blessed with every fortune which Providence can bestow on
them grudging a small pittance out of their super-abundance in order to
protect those who have built up their wealth against the haunting
terror of misery and despair.  They have thrown it out, and in doing so
they have initiated one of the greatest, gravest, and most promising
struggles of the time.  Liberty owes as much to the foolhardiness of
its foes as it does to the sapience and wisdom of its friends.  At last
the case between the peers and the people has been set down for trial
in the great assize of the people, and the verdict will be given soon."

The country was quickly in the midst of the election.  It cannot be
said that Lloyd George dealt lightly with the House of Lords.  Here is
a typical reference: "Who are the guardians of this mighty British
people?  I shall have to make exceptions, but they are men who have
neither the training, the qualifications, nor the experience which
would fit them for such a gigantic task.  The majority of them are
simply men whose sole qualification is that they are the first-born of
persons who had just as little qualifications as themselves.  To invite
this imperial race, this, the greatest commercial nation in the world,
the nation that has taught the world in the principles of
self-government and liberty--to invite this nation itself to sign a
decree that declares itself unfit to govern itself without the
guardianship of such people, that is an insult which I hope will be
thrown back with ignominy."

Not only the upper classes, but a great many of the lower classes
stormed and raged at these and similar words.  The _Daily Mail_ went so
far as to give a column of titbits from Lloyd George's speeches in
order to show what a really vulgar and detestable person he was, and
how unfit to occupy any leading position in the state.

The election results as they began to come in indicated that while the
Liberals were losing a number of seats which in years gone by had been
Conservative strongholds, they were, nevertheless, going to retain the
confidence of the country.  In the result Mr. Asquith found himself
once again in command of the House of Commons with a majority of one
hundred and twenty-four.

The cards were placed in the hands of the Liberals now, but they had to
be very carefully played.  The House of Lords swallowed its humiliation
as best it could and passed the famous Budget on April 28, 1910,
exactly one year after its introduction into the House of Commons.
They did not make any fuss about it, because, as I shall show, they had
other things to think of.  I remember the day on which the bill became
law in the House of Lords.  There were very few peers present.  Several
of the members of the House of Commons walked across from the Commons
to witness the culmination of their effort.  Among them was Lloyd
George.  He came in under the gallery, sprucely dressed in a morning
coat, his long hair brushed back from his forehead and above his ears
with a neatness which was not observable in his moments of excitement.
To-day he had no work to do: one job was finished and he was only on
the threshold of another.  As he stood at the bar he looked over the
members of the House of Lords with a grave and benignant expression
which reminded one of a fond father regarding erring children.  I
thought of the studious expression which usually characterized the face
of that daredevil boy down at Llanystumdwy all those years ago.  I am
quite sure that the peers who observed him surveying them did not think
he was benignant.  If I am any judge of feelings, they looked upon him,
as he stood there at the bar, as a particularly malignant type of
viper.  With a genial smile Lloyd George exchanged a chatty word or two
with an M. P. at his side.  No one would have guessed that there was
bitterness in his soul at this assembly or that with grim purpose he
was even now marking out the destruction of their powers.

It is the fashion in the House of Lords to give the King's consent to
legislation by proxy.  The consent, moreover, is given now, as for many
hundreds of years past, not in the English language, but in the
language of the old Norman-French conqueror of nearly a thousand years
ago.  A bewigged clerk read out in resonant tones the title of the bill
and from another official there came the answer of the King, "Le Roy le
veult" ("The King wills it").  The Budget of 1909 had become part of
the law of the United Kingdom.  Lloyd George, still chatting cheerfully
with a fellow-member of the House of Commons, walked back to the Lower
Chamber.

If any of the Lords thought that the threats used against them in the
course of the election meant nothing and were only a kind of bluster to
get the Budget passed, they were grievously mistaken.  It must have
been hard for them to realize that Lloyd George meant all the
presumptuous things he said.  He was never more in earnest.  A
cut-and-dried plan had been arranged between him and Mr. Asquith with
regard to the Lords.  The plan was no less than this--to take away from
the peers their constitutional rights to do more than to hold up for
three successive sessions any legislation passed by the House of
Commons.  They were not to have the power of killing bills, though they
might retard them a little.  And so far as money bills were concerned
they were not to be allowed to delay them at all.  The Commons were to
be given power to pass any money bill over the head of the Lords if the
latter did not agree to it immediately it was sent up to them.  In
these cases the King and Commons between them were to be the lawmaking
power, and as the King's assent is always automatically given to the
proposals of Ministers in power the net result would be the complete
supremacy of the Commons in Government.

But how were these changes to be made effective?  They could, of
course, only be brought into force by legal enactment, and it was
impossible to expect the Lords to sign their own death warrant.  It was
settled between Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith to take the House of Lords
by the throat.  Lloyd George was prepared for extreme measures, and Mr.
Asquith, a student of English history, found out a way by means of
ancient precedent.  Twice before in the story of the British Parliament
there had been similar episodes.  In the reign of Queen Anne and in the
reign of William IV. the Prime Minister of the day, encountering
opposition from the House of Lords, had gone to the reigning sovereign
and secured the promise of the creation of enough new peers to turn the
minority in the House of Lords into a preponderance of votes.  This was
the plan now agreed upon, only the audacity of it was far greater than
on previous occasions, because Queen Anne's new peers numbered but
twelve and the number of new peers proposed to be created in 1832 to
pass the Reform bill under William IV. was limited to eighty.  Mr.
Asquith and Lloyd George faced the fact that on this occasion it would
be necessary to create something like five hundred new peers.

I pass over some of the intervening stages--the howls that came from
the Lords, who saw their prestige departing with this wholesale
dilution of their order; the choking attempts which the peer leaders
made to be civil of tongue and to arrange a compromise.  Merciless was
the determination of Lloyd George.  Another general election on the
specific issue of the power of the Lords again resulted in the return
of the Liberals to office.

The Government proposals for the restriction of the future functions of
the Lords were embodied in a measure called the Parliament bill, and it
was for the Lords to pass this measure or else to suffer the immediate
creation of the army of new peers who had been nominated by Mr. Asquith
and who would immediately vote down the existing Conservative majority
in the gilded chamber.

The climax was reached on August 9, 1911, when the bill, having passed
through the Commons, was brought up to the House of Lords for their
decision.  The peers by this time were torn between two impulses.  One,
the most natural, was to defy Mr. Asquith and Lloyd George and all
their wicked companions, and let them create what peers they liked, and
the other to swallow the medicine, pass the Parliament bill, and thus,
while limiting their own powers for the future, preserve their ancient
caste and dignity.

It was touch and go throughout an excited discussion.  Lord Morley,
plain John Morley of the years gone by, made a speech of three
sentences in which he said he was authorized to state that the King
would assent to the creation of the extra peers if the bill were not
passed.  Wild hopes that the King would stand by the Lords were thus
extinguished.  There were dramatic scenes never to be forgotten by
those who witnessed them, and then finally the bill was accepted by a
majority of seventeen votes.  The power of the House of Lords, strong
for centuries, had been broken.  The man who had broken it was Lloyd
George.




VII

AT HOME AND IN DOWNING STREET

In the midst of all the stormy times of the fight with the House of
Lords and afterward up to the present moment Lloyd George's personal
life in its simplicity and happiness has been a standing contrast to
the turmoil and passion of his public energy.  Meet Lloyd George among
his family, and it is hard to realize that such a homely, genial person
could be the man who tackled so rancorously the House of Lords.  I went
to 11 Downing Street one day after the Budget fight was over, and when,
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George was preparing further
legislative changes.  Eleven Downing Street, it should be explained, is
the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and joins
number 10, where the Prime Minister lives.  It is a dingy, ugly-looking
building, attractive only by reason of its associations.  In the year
that America declared her independence number 10 Downing Street was the
residence of Lord North, and it may then, as now, have had connecting
doors which made the two houses into practically one official home.

Lloyd George discussed public affairs in a corner of the old library
lined with books which Gladstone used to consult half a century ago and
his predecessors before him.  A glance round the rows of volumes,
nearly all of them ponderous and many of them venerable, caused me to
ask Lloyd George who was his favorite author.  He gave me no
philosopher, not even a poet, in reply.  "I like romance," he said,
"historical romance.  I am fond of Dumas and of modern writers like
Stanley Weyman."  Possibly Lloyd George has never looked into those
old, handsome, leather-covered volumes at his official residence.  His
secretaries may have pondered over them in securing material for their
chief, but Lloyd George has been too busy doing things to devote much
time to ancient philosophical reflections or to learned economic
theories.  It is easy to understand how his temperament found
satisfaction and relaxation at the same time in the cut-and-thrust work
of Dumas and Weyman.  I ought, perhaps, to add that he explained with a
smile how politics did not leave him much time for serious reading just
then.  They have certainly left him still less since that time.

We were in the thick of talk about the busy political era when a little
girl of twelve, with a ribbon of blue round her tumbling hair, came
running into the room, not knowing that a visitor was present.  She
would have run out again, upon seeing me, if her father had not stopped
her and caught her into his arms.  For the rest of the interview she
sat on his knee, listening with big, live eyes to the conversation.
Once she cuddled closer to her father and laughed merrily as he
confessed to me that his next bill before Parliament was one to
prohibit the holidays of little girls at school from lasting more than
six weeks.  Megan was the darling of her father's heart.  Two or three
mornings of the week you could have seen them hand in hand walking from
11 Downing Street across St. James's Park to watch the ducks feeding in
the lake.  With sparkling blue eyes, a sensitive mouth, and vivacious
manner, little Megan had some of her father's characteristics.  She was
a daughter any father might be proud of.  I guarantee Lloyd George was
prouder of her--and still is--than of his epoch-making Budget or his
historic victory over the House of Lords.  Just now in Parliamentary
session, or indeed out of it, Lloyd George has not very much time for
walks in the parks--but I am sure Megan gets her share of attention in
spite of the European war.

The war has, of course, intensified Lloyd George's life and somewhat
altered its channels, but its main directions are preserved.  At all
hours of day and night he must be prepared for service.  He could not,
however, carry on his work without proper rest and sleep, and the
following is the kind of routine to which he has accustomed himself.
Awakening at seven in the morning, he has a quick glance through the
principal newspapers, not only of London, but those from the provinces
and from abroad as well.  Occasionally while he is dressing, and always
before he leaves his room, he looks through documents and papers which
he has brought up to his bedside on the previous night.  (They are
arranged in their proper order on a table by the side of his bed so
that in any waking fit at night he can put his hand on them readily.)

Visitors begin to arrive early, because Lloyd George has re-established
the practice of Victorian statesmen in having guests to breakfast with
him and his family.  By this means he not only saves time from many
social functions, but gets through a lot of business as well, for his
breakfast guests include politicians, editors, leading officials,
prominent travelers from overseas, indeed practically the whole range
of persons who for state or private reasons he desires to meet.

Soon after ten o'clock he is busy with his secretaries.  These have
already been at work on the morning letters, which in the days when he
was Chancellor of the Exchequer numbered a thousand a day and are now
probably three or four times as many.  Work of a widely different kind
keeps Lloyd George on the go till lunch-time--departmental conferences,
visits from or to Cabinet Ministers, the supervision of answers to
questions to be put to him in the House of Commons that afternoon, the
reception of deputations from various interests affected by current
proposals or future proposals that he is making.  At least once a week,
and sometimes more frequently, there is a Cabinet meeting in the
morning that probably lasts well into the afternoon.  On days when
there is no Cabinet meeting there will be other visitors at lunch-time,
and these are generally of an official character.  Big plans affecting
the social future of England have undoubtedly been worked out over
Lloyd George's lunch-table.  He is a vivid talker himself, but he is
also a good listener, and there is not any one more ready to give an
ear to tactful and helpful advice--only those who offer it must have
something to say.

At a quarter to three in the afternoon the House of Commons assembles,
and from that time onward to eleven o'clock at night Lloyd George is to
be found either on the Treasury bench or in his private room behind the
Speaker's chair.  Endless are the occupations for a busy Minister in
Parliament, and whether he is answering questions, expounding policy,
fighting through details of proposals, or merely listening to the
speeches of opponents, he is pretty well on the stretch the whole time.
Even in his own room there is business to be done, deputations to be
received, "whips" to be consulted, friendly or hostile talks to be gone
through with members, and frequently also the reception of individual
visitors.  All this takes no account of social usages, the little
hospitalities which must not be forgotten--the accompanying of groups
of constituents to the public galleries, the entertainment of other
groups to tea on the Terrace overlooking the river.  Sometimes an hour
may be seized for the House of Lords at the other end of the corridor
when they are dealing with Commons legislation.

I asked Lloyd George how he managed to sleep after such days as these,
and he said: "I never have any difficulty about that.  Downing Street
is only about four minutes' walk from the House of Commons.  If the
House adjourns at eleven I am usually away by twenty minutes past, and
at a quarter to twelve I am in bed--probably asleep.  This power for
quick sleep has always been a great help to me."

The Lloyd George family at home consisted of Mr. and Mrs. George, two
sons, and two daughters.  Of the two boys, both in the twenties, one
was at Cambridge University and the other in a responsible position as
a civil engineer.  Both are now soldiers, fighting in France.  There
are two girls, Megan and her sister, Olwen, a charming girl who has
lately become engaged to a medical officer in the army.  There is
another person who frequently completes the family circle at 11 Downing
Street.  It is Richard Lloyd, the old shoemaker who forty years ago
risked his little all to educate his orphan nephew.  It was one of the
pleasurable anticipations of Lloyd George, when he was appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer with the privileges of this historic
residence, that Richard Lloyd would be able to come and stay there.
"My dear old uncle," he said, "will be so proud to come and stay at the
house in which Gladstone, his great hero, at one time lived."

Lloyd George is wiry, but no man, however strong, could continue
indefinitely to put himself under such a strain as I have indicated
without occasional complete rest.  When he is not under too heavy a
time he will go for a weekend's golf to Walton Heath, some twenty miles
from London, in Surrey, or spend a couple of days at Brighton on the
south coast.  But when he is really exhausted there is only one place
for him, and that is his beautiful home near Criccieth, about a mile
from Llanystumdwy, where he spent his boyhood.  On the hills rising
from behind Criccieth and forming the foot of the Snowdon range he has
built a graceful residence, whence he can look down over the wooded
slopes to Criccieth and thence to Carnarvon Bay.  On the other side the
house faces the snow-capped mountains.  From every window there is a
beautiful scene.  A lane leading from the gates, between towering
hedges, winds through fields and woods down to Llanystumdwy.

With the charm of mountains, countryside, and sea there goes an
invigorating atmosphere.  "When I am exhausted," said Lloyd George to
me once, "I come down here from London and I sleep long nights.  In the
daytime I sit out here on the veranda in a basket-chair with a rug
around me, facing the sea, and here I rest and sometimes sleep.  This
beautiful Welsh air wraps me all round with its healing touch, and I
let it do its work, and I am soon well again."  During these
recuperative days Lloyd George does no business, writes no letters,
receives no visitors, sees no one but members of his own family.  After
about three days of this treatment he is recovering himself.

One day in a lane near Criccieth I met him in tweed suit and soft gray
hat, with field-glasses strapped around him, and a stout walking-stick
in his hand.  He had been at Criccieth a fortnight, and thoughts of
work were again seizing hold of him.  He had in prospect a big scheme
of land legislation that was to continue and develop the movement begun
in the Budget.  (A little later the war cut the project short.)  "I am
going for a walk up to the mountains," he said.  "I can do my thinking
best when I am out walking alone."  Afterward I wondered what new
revolution to startle the landed aristocracy of Britain he devised on
that summer day by himself among the mountains.  Curiously enough,
Lloyd George does not like exercise for his own sake, but he enjoys it
when he has a mental task in hand; he also enjoys it during a game of
golf.  I once heard him say that without golf he would never have
thought of taking a four-mile walk for recreation.  It is worthy of
mention in connection with this that he has been described at second
hand on his own confession as being a very lazy man, and that he has
sometimes absolutely to force himself to a settled task--and, strange
as it may appear, there is nothing in this inconsistent with the public
estimation of him as a person of uncontrollable energy.  Let his heart
be given to an object, and there is no effort he will spare, no degree
of fatigue to which he will not drive himself.

Intensely fond of an open-air life, Lloyd George's days at Criccieth
are always a joy to him.  You will come across him unexpectedly on the
bank of the river Dwyfor with a fishing-rod in his hand, trying for
trout.  You will see him sometimes in the early morning at work in his
garden in his endeavor to demonstrate that fruit trees will grow as
well in Welsh soil as in the warm, red earth of Devonshire.  Sometimes
he and his wife, with perhaps one of his sons, will put a couple of
tents into an automobile, start off up among the mountains, and camp
out in some lonely and romantic spot for days at a time, living the
primitive life entirely by themselves.

Strange it is to observe the attitude of the people of the countryside
where he was brought up and where he built his early fame.  There are a
scattered few of the middle classes who in this remote country spot
cannot understand the heights he has reached in public estimation.  It
is really a weird sensation to come from the outer world and talk to
these people.  No, no, he may to some extent have secured notoriety in
circles even as far off as London, but really there is nothing in the
man.  Why, he was brought up here in the village!  But these quaintly
prejudiced folk are, after all, but a remnant, and the great mass of
people all around in the farms and cottages prize his fame highly.  The
pride with which a villager refers to the fact that he went to school
with Mr. Lloyd George must be one of the highest pleasures experienced
by the Welsh statesman.  It is an event to go to a meeting in the
institute at Llanystumdwy and hear him address a crowded meeting of his
compatriots in their native tongue and with all the old affectionate
familiarity of a long-standing friend and neighbor.  The rolling music
of the ancient language is echoed back from the enthusiastic Celts in a
kind of rhythmic ecstasy which thrills even the ignorant and alien
Sassenach visitor.  Lloyd George is still one of themselves.  It is
indeed hard for them to realize his position in the outside world,
though they are so proud of it.  To Criccieth and Llanystumdwy he is
not so much the prominent statesman of the United Kingdom as just Lloyd
George, the friend who grew up with them.  He will never be anything
else to them.  It is all quite delightful and, one may add, quite
bewildering to his enemies, who cannot understand that such unconcealed
and regardless simplicity is an integral part of the nature of him whom
they regard as a malignant.  I have seen Lloyd George in a hundred
capacities, electrifying a multitude, in the thick of battle with the
cleverest minds of Parliament, attacking to their faces with relentless
ferocity men of the noblest descent in Britain, and yet I know of
nothing in his life which approaches in interest his relations with his
old village friends of long ago.  They like him for himself and not for
what he has become, though they are so proud of him.  One elderly lady,
a friend of the Lloyd George family, when paying a visit to London
heard that Lloyd George was to address a London meeting, and she
thought she would like to go and hear him.  She presented herself at
the hall and was nearly swept off her feet by the surging crowd making
its way in.  After reaching one of the corridors with difficulty, she
got an attendant to take her name in to Mrs. Lloyd George.  The latter,
who was on the platform, hurried out to her old friend and took her to
a seat in the front of the hall.  The building was packed in every
part.  Lloyd George got one of his usual receptions and made one of his
usual speeches.  The old lady was staggered.  She went back to Wales
full of the wonderful experience--and it has to be remembered that she
had known Lloyd George all her life.  "I have heard that he has become
a well-known man," she said, "but I never understood what an important
man he was till I went to that meeting."

There is another reflection about his home life which must occur to any
visitor to the locality.  Big houses and lovely grounds lay off the
main road in the neighborhood, undoubtedly the homes of country
gentlefolk.  And one may venture to surmise their attitude toward this
public firebrand who lives in their vicinity and used to be a village
boy under the care of his uncle, the shoemaker.  Is he on their
visiting-list?  I rather suspect not.  The world must be turning
topsy-turvy for them when they allow themselves to reflect, as they
must at times, that this upstart has the entry to royal palaces and is
one of the principal advisers of the King of England.  I have an idea
that something more potent than gall and wormwood is required to
express their feelings.  All this before the war.  What can possibly be
the attitude of mind of the local squires and lordlings now that this
man has become an international statesman, probably the most forcible
personality among that group of men who sit in conference to direct the
activities and formulate the destinies of great European nations.
Possibly I do them an injustice, and their habits of mind have changed
of late.

During the big Budget fight Lloyd George, by virtue of his official
position, had to attend occasional society functions.  There was a
duchess who could not avoid shaking hands with this person, who to her
and her class was a monstrosity.  After he had gone she spoke of the
encounter to a friend with surprise in her voice.  "I have just met
Lloyd George," she said.  "Do you know that he is really quite a nice
man?"  I have the impression that neither squires nor duchesses trouble
Lloyd George very much, and that when this war is over and victory for
his country secured he will go down to Criccieth and enjoy himself
thoroughly in a golf-match with the local schoolmaster or one of the
farmers of the district.




VIII

A CHAMPION OF WAR

The psychology of a community is as mysterious and subtle as that of an
individual, and Lloyd George, despite all his so-called extravagance,
all his depredations, and all his wounding words, was by way of being
an acknowledged power in the country by the time the war with Germany
burst out of the sky.  The mysterious strength of the man worked on
people against their will.  Besides, there were tangible things which
had to be faced.  He had settled the great railway strike, he had
passed several sweeping Acts of Parliament, he had brought into effect
the iniquitous Budget, he had dismantled the British constitution by
taking away the powers of the House of Lords.  You may sneer at such a
man, you may hate him, but you cannot ignore him.  Sincere and
religiously minded ladies used to write to the papers, wondering in all
sincerity why Heaven permitted such a man to continue to live.  A peer
of the realm told his tenants that he would roast an ox whole for them
in celebration of the day that Lloyd George went out of office, and, on
top of this, the announcement that Lloyd George was going to speak drew
together the unprecedented gathering of sixteen thousand people to hear
him on a special day in the Midlands.  You can sort out these varied
facts to suit yourself, but taken altogether they convey a lesson.  Let
me add another point.  Lloyd George, growing in influence, for years
had been the special mark of attack for the _Daily Mail_, Lord
Northcliffe's popular morning paper.  When, after his House of Lords
fight had been brought to a finish, Lloyd George set himself to a new
colossal piece of legislation--namely, national health insurance--there
was a concentrated attack by the _Daily Mail_ to break the "poll tax"
and Lloyd George with it.  There had been a stream of violent criticism
from the Northcliffe papers during the Budget days and the House of
Lords battle, but the abuse was distributed pretty evenly upon the
Government, though Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith got the major share.
On this occasion all the guns were brought to bear on Lloyd George.
The insurance tax was unpopular, and nothing that ridicule, covert
insult, or open denunciation could achieve was left undone by the
Northcliffe papers to smash Lloyd George and his policy.  There was
plenty of scope for attack.  The Insurance Act was undoubtedly
hurriedly conceived, and its complexities incompletely dovetailed.
Whatever the merit of the conception, there had to be a score of
rectifications when the measure came into operation.  Some of Lloyd
George's best friends complained of the injustices and irregularities
of the Act.  The _Daily Mail_ was in the van of attack.  To me it is
surprising his assailants did not get Lloyd George down over this
matter.  They did not get him down.  He carried the insurance bill, he
forced it into operation, and he had left another milestone in his
career behind him some time before the catastrophe of the European war
appeared.

The country took a deep breath when the first shock of hostilities with
Germany occurred, and then turned a passing attention to the British
Cabinet, from which two or three members, including Lord Morley and Mr.
John Burns, had resigned, presumably on account of their disapproval of
the Government's action in going to war.  Remarks came thick and fast
as to the attitude of Ministers, and for a time it was suggested that
Lloyd George was one of those who were on the verge of resignation.
There was nothing impossible in the suggestion.  A hater of wars, a
fighter against wars all his life, he seemed just the kind of man to go
adrift, and a good deal of movement was in readiness for the event.
Special writers on the Conservative press s