Lloyd George

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The British trade-unions wanted but little persuading under such an
appeal, and rights and privileges struggled for and won at heavy cost
during half a century were cheerfully relinquished for the time being.
There was some friction among small sections in connection with the
powers taken by Lloyd George to punish workmen who struck work, or who
dislocated operations in a workshop by leaving it to seek better money.
But in the passion for victory which coursed through the veins of the
nation the ruthless doings of Lloyd George were welcomed by the
overwhelming majority of the community. He asked the English people to
submit to shackles such as they had not known since the tyranny of the
Middle Ages. They willingly and even enthusiastically agreed.

Lloyd George not only rushed the beginning of national shell-factories,
since completed, but established large new towns of temporary houses in
country districts with something more than the rapidity of camps on a
rich gold strike. Britain, psychologically transformed, was in a large
measure physically altered also.

And yet, when all was said and done, Lloyd George was not satisfied.
He sought to stir the Cabinet to sterner work. The Cabinet was not by
any means ineffective, but there was not enough driving force in it to
please the Welshman. He wanted far wider and stronger measures taken
in order to enlist the whole strength of the British people. Fiercely,
day by day, the Northcliffe journals attacked Mr. Asquith, often with
unfairness, and always did they exalt Lloyd George as the only man in
the Cabinet who was really fit to lead. Then Lloyd George issued a
column prognostication as the preface to a book, and it caused a great
sensation. Here is what he said: "Nothing but our best and utmost can
pull us through. If the nation hesitates when the need is clear to
take the necessary steps to call forth its young manhood to defend
honor and existence, if vital decisions are postponed until too late,
if we neglect to make ready for all probable eventualities, if, in
effect, we give ground for the accusation that we are slouching into
disaster, as if we were walking along the paths of peace without an
enemy in sight, then I can see no hope; but if we sacrifice all we own
and all we like for our native land, if our preparations are
characterized by grip, resolution, and prompt readiness in every
sphere, then victory is assured."

This was a direct attack on the Cabinet, of which, of course, Lloyd
George was a member. His words meant that the Government was
proceeding along conventional paths, and not rising to great
emergencies, and was lacking that desperate resolution so necessary in
war. Thus it was that Lloyd George threw out to the world more than a
hint of the difficulties he had had with different departments.

Northcliffe acclaimed this message heavens high. Some Liberals, on the
other hand, began to see in Lloyd George an intriguer for the position
of Prime Minister, and Lloyd George, not the first time in his life,
throwing past prejudices and principles to the winds, came out as a
strong supporter of conscription for the nation. Every young man must
be serving his country either in the munition-factory or on the field
of battle.

X

AT HIGH PRESSURE

The fundamental difficulty between Lloyd George and some of his
colleagues was that he had ideas about running the country which were
at variance with theirs. His Celtic temperament could not tolerate the
slow muddling-through process, was impatient for daring new methods.
He was disinclined for step-by-step procedure, and found reason for
anger in the officials and Ministers who thought the war ought to be
conducted according to book. There has yet to be told the full story,
not only of all the obstacles which Lloyd George had to remove from his
path in organizing the munition supply, but also of the hindrances
which fettered the prosecution of the war as a whole with every ounce
of strength, every shilling of money, at the disposal of the British
nation.

I can imagine that Lloyd George was not a very pleasant colleague in
the Cabinet during these intervening months. When the records come to
be given it will be seen that he was constantly and furiously striking
at the iron bars of custom and routine, that he was trying to turn the
lip service of individuals to practical service. At times he reached
the edge of desperate action.

It was in the thick of his other work that a crisis arose in South
Wales, where the miners, numbering two hundred thousand, responsible
for the supply of coal to the British navy, refused to work unless the
employers conceded certain demands about pay and conditions. The
seriousness of the position was appalling. The president of the Board
of Trade, Mr. Runciman, struggled hard to bring about a settlement. He
failed. Something had to be done and done at once. The country,
looking around for a man to come to the rescue, fixed on Lloyd George.
He left the Ministry of Munitions in Whitehall, took a train down to
South Wales, had a straight talk with the employers, another straight
talk with the men, and in one day settled affairs and got the men to
continue their work. I cite this as a passing illustration of how
Lloyd George was Britain's man-of-all-work, and of how the nation had
to turn to him practically every time it was in difficulty.

While struggling to speed up the Cabinet on a hundred matters Lloyd
George became impressed with the necessity of increasing the size of
the British army, already millions strong. The voluntary system had
hitherto been relied on, and there was strong opposition, both in the
Cabinet and in the country, to tentative proposals for conscription.
Lloyd George took an early opportunity of showing that he was on the
side of the conscriptionists. There was an outburst of protests, but
it proved of no avail, and it was largely through Lloyd George that
conscription in Britain became an established fact. Even then he was
by no means satisfied with the way affairs were being handled, and the
newspapers were speculating on his next big attempt, when tragedy
descended on the country in the unexpected death of Lord Kitchener by
the sinking of the war-ship _Hampshire_ off the coast of Scotland.
Kitchener had been Minister for War. Who was to be the new man? There
was really only one man in the running, and Lloyd George forsook his
munition work, now practically accomplished, and went over to take
charge of the War Office. Coincident with his acceptance of this post
new arrangements in the organization were made, and it was no doubt
largely by his influence that General Sir William Robertson was
installed at Whitehall as Chief of Staff, virtually commander-in-chief
of the British armies. He was a man after Lloyd George's own heart, a
soldier who had risen from the ranks, a quiet man who would stand no
nonsense, and one who knew modern war conditions from A to Z.

Here, then, began a new phase of the European conflict. From the
shops, offices, farms, and factories of Britain there had sprung up an
amateur army, millions strong, and the organization of this new
national force was under the supervision and control of a Minister who
began life as a village boy in a cottage of a shoemaker, and under the
military direction of a commander-in-chief who also sprang from the
common people, and as a young man was an ordinary trooper in the ranks.
It could never henceforth be said that Britain, the most aristocratic
country on earth, had not been content to hand over the reins to
democracy in the greatest emergency of her history. Robertson and
Lloyd George worked well together, and there can be no doubt that under
their joint effects the British forces in the field attained a fighting
value which was not excelled by any other army in existence on either
side in the great conflict.

Frequently Lloyd George was in the trenches at the front. From time to
time he was deep in consultation in Paris or at home with the leading
statesmen and commanders of France, Italy, and Russia. All this was
only a few months ago. I saw him in the House of Commons at the time.
The strain was undoubtedly telling on him, but was not oppressing him.
His hair was a little whiter, his face was pallid, and thinner than of
yore, but his eyes were like burning coals. He had much to bear apart
from the actual work, for there were large sections of politicians and
several influential newspapers who openly said that ambition was his
curse, that he was undermining Mr. Asquith who had been his greatest
political friend, and that all his discontent was directed toward an
ultimate dramatic stroke which would make him Prime Minister. Many of
the Liberals who used almost to worship him made no secret of the fact
that he had lost their allegiance, while the extreme Socialists
denounced him as a traitor to the working classes, inasmuch as he was
tyrannizing over them by his war measures. Moreover, many of his
opponents in the Cabinet must have regarded him with some feeling of
distrust. He said no word in defense of Mr. Asquith, whom the
Northcliffe press persistently and violently assailed. The conclusion
is inevitable that Lloyd George shared some of the opinions then
expressed. Taking Lloyd George's nature into account, the situation
may be imagined, and it was not hard to see that a climax must come
sooner or later.

It was approaching swiftly. Meanwhile the transformation of Britain in
which Lloyd George had had so large a hand was proceeding. No longer
could it be said that the old country was lethargic. In all directions
was the elementary strength of this stolid people manifesting itself.
Classes were uniting in the determination that there should be
limitless spending of energy, of blood, and of treasure, that the
harder grew the fight the stronger should be the will, the livelier the
action, till the great danger was trodden finally underfoot. For
months past it could have been said:

All the youth of England are on fire
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

Now most of the people had reached the decision that nothing but
extermination should lead to their defeat.

And leave your England as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,
Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance,
For who is he whose chin is but enrich'd
With one appearing hair that will not follow
Those cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?

It was really a very-much-alive England, though strangely changed,
which the amateur fighters had left behind them on their departure for
the field of war. Tens of thousands of women unaccustomed to hard
labor were tiring their bodies from early morning till night so that
there would be more men for the fighting-line. The state had virtual
possession of the great industries, of engineering, of railway
transportation, and of shipping. The liquor trade had been cut down to
narrow limits which, while it benefited the health and efficiency of
the population, ruined financially a great many property-owners. The
trade-unions had relinquished their rights, so that every hour of the
day and night there should be no strong and healthy arm which was not
lending aid to the country in its need. Every man in the country up to
the age of forty was either in the army or doing some useful war work
at home.

Steps had been taken to prevent the price of coal being raised to
consumers, and this was shortly to be followed by the Government
acquisition of the whole of the South Wales coal-field. Already a
movement was afoot to regulate the food-supply and to restrict
expensive luxuries. At the head of these tremendous changes was Lloyd
George, whose so-called socialistic legislation a few years before had
roused spasms of rage among classes which now belauded his every action
and announced him as the coming savior of his country. If there is any
consistency in human nature at all, it is hardly possible that there
were not those who recalled his incendiary speeches, his unsparing
legislative action of the Budget days. And yet there were no
complaints. Millionaires placed their money at his disposal. The
dukes paid him homage. All the while Lloyd George grew harder in the
face. Big changes were still necessary if the war was to be brought to
an end victoriously and rapidly.

I have indicated the Minister for War as the moving spirit in all those
changes of that tangled period, but he was only a single member of the
Ministry which set them in motion, although there could be no doubt in
the mind of any one really acquainted with public affairs in Britain at
this time that his was the driving force behind the reforms, that they
were largely forced on by his resistless spirit, even as he was
desirous to push them further and quicken the pace. Meanwhile in
France, in Italy, and in Russia Lloyd George's name roused enthusiasm
wherever it was mentioned. News from America indicated that he was
well known and much talked of there. In the Scandinavian capitals
which I visited toward the close of 1916 I found that it was Lloyd
George whom the statesmen, the professors, the business men, and the
common people were eager to hear about above all others. In Germany he
was hated and feared more than any other British statesman.

XI

HIS INCONSISTENCIES

According to all the rules which are supposed to guide the rise of a
self-made man, Lloyd George should have been a master of routine, with
the orderly mind and undeviating habits without which we are sometimes
told no person of affairs can secure permanent success. It is much to
be regretted that Lloyd George lends no aid to the well-established
maxims. The teachers and preachers who seek to implant in the young
the principles of continuousness of purpose and of regularity and of
kindred qualities must turn their backs on Lloyd George. They will
find nothing from him to go into the text-books, for in the course of
his career the Welsh statesman has trampled on every sound rule for
securing success. That a man with so many contradictions in him should
have ever maintained his upward course is not encouraging to the
formalists, though it is very interesting to ordinary people.

There never was a man who could more quickly master the intricacies of
a business problem, and yet from his very early days he was quite
unbusiness-like in many things. He laughingly says that as a young
lawyer down in Wales he showed serious incapacity in his profession, at
least in one respect: "I never sent in any bill of costs. The result
was I never had any money." Later when his brother, three years
younger than himself, joined him in partnership matters improved. "The
firm did not then suffer from this serious professional drawback,"
explained Lloyd George. He is an adept at phrases, and yet all through
his life he has hated writing. There is a tradition among some of his
friends that even in his less busy periods, if you wanted to get a
reply from him on any topic you had to send him two postcards addressed
to yourself, on one of which was written, "Yes," and on the other,
"No." This, it was said, was the only way you could make sure of a
prompt response, or indeed of any response at all. He has been the
supreme business organizer of Britain during the war--in finance, in
industrial operations, and latterly in actual army work--and in each
direction he has sketched out and carried into effect an intensive
efficiency which it is not too much to describe as the admiration of
the world, yet all the time his office day-by-day arrangements would
certainly shock the ordinary merchant or banker. He makes contingent
appointments and forgets all about them. Some incidental scheme
adopted by him on a Saturday is on Monday thrust into limbo by the
pressure of other schemes. If he were to schedule his office day into
five-minute appointments he would still be unable to see only a
proportion of the important men and executive chiefs who desire to get
in touch with him, and yet he will allow himself to be drawn into an
hour's keen discussion with persons who have some minor topic which
appeals to him. Withal, he gets things done. Some intuition, some
instinct for right action, takes him to his goal. The task in hand is
always accomplished to the limit of efficiency. You may seek his
secret in vain. Probably part of it lies in his natural power of
selecting his instruments. All the same I do not envy the lot of his
two principal private men secretaries and the girl stenographer whose
business it is to follow and, to some extent, direct his erratic course
throughout his office hours.

His speeches which in their printed form sell literally by the million,
are scarcely prepared at all before he gets on the platform. Sometimes
the wording as it appears in cold black and white lacks a little
polish, but it has a vital and stimulating force marking it out as
distinctive literature. He has a few notes as to facts and figures and
weaves them into a picture as he stands before his audience. When his
famous speech at Limehouse thrilled England a London newspaper
proprietor went down to see him in the House of Commons. "Why didn't
you let me know you were going to make that speech?" he said. "I would
have had special arrangements made for reporting it and describing it."
"There was nothing special in it," said Lloyd George, in genuine
surprise. "It was just an ordinary talk about the Budget. I went down
to Limehouse and spoke to an audience I found there, that's all."

No one will deny Lloyd George's courage. On a hundred stricken fields
he has shown it. Yet he confesses to a timorousness and nervousness
whenever he is waiting on a public platform with a speech ahead of him.
This proven, stern man of action is just a trembling bunch of nerves,
afraid of the people in front of him, afraid of the people by his side
on the platform, as he sits waiting the fateful second when the
chairman shall announce his name.

Lloyd George's unexpectedness comes from the fact that he is a
many-sided man. Success has not atrophied either his manners or his
impulses. He is not ashamed to be very human because he has become
very important. I remember how, during the stress of the Budget fight,
when, if ever, he was at a tension, he went off for a week-end with the
Attorney-General and a distinguished journalist. They had a railway
compartment to themselves on the journey from London. Part of the time
was passed in singing popular songs, the choruses of which Lloyd George
trilled out enthusiastically. And yet Lloyd George is not a stranger
to the formalities. High office brought to him a marked care for those
little chivalries which are part of Parliamentary warfare. In the
height of the fight fatigue sometimes overwhelmed even his sturdy frame
and spirit, and he would snatch half an hour's respite from the
Treasury bench in his own room behind the Speaker's chair. But he
would break off this short indulgence instantly when the ticker
indicated that his principal opponents had begun to speak. Directly it
was shown that Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Balfour, or some other
leader was on his feet Lloyd George would hurry into the chamber to
listen, even though he might know perfectly well that they had nothing
to say that mattered at the moment. He regarded it as important to pay
them the courtesy of listening to any speech they made, however casual
or trivial.

One of the charges against Lloyd George during his public life has been
his inaccuracy in small things, his disregard of detail, and in some
ways this is a justifiable charge. And yet the man has a perfect
passion for detail when he is aroused and when he believes detail
necessary. In instituting the Department of Munitions he made himself
in the course of only a week or two a real expert in the hundred
intricacies connected with the manufacture of shells. Short of
handling the steel himself I doubt if there was any man in the country,
who knew more about the nature of all the deadly missiles, from the
small rifle bullet up to the great shell which weighs a ton and travels
some fifteen miles. Delicate chemical processes connected with high
explosives rapidly became an open book to him. As new discoveries were
made incidental difficulties connected with the filling of shells
occupied the concentered study of the manufacturers. Lloyd George
plunged into the new arrangements. One morning he had an appointment
in London with a group of half a dozen munition-makers from the north
of England and the Midlands for the purpose of investigating some
special difficulties in a new process. The matter was one of
importance as well as of difficulty. Point by point was taken and
lunch-time arrived without a complete elucidation. Lloyd George swept
aside all other appointments for the day. The thing had got to be
mastered. He took the six experts out with him to lunch and went on
with the discussion over the meal. He brought them back to the
Munition Department afterward and he went on with the matter all the
afternoon. Tea was served, and still he would not let his advisers
escape. It was nearly dinner-time before the difficulties were
conquered and the tired experts were permitted to go. Lloyd George,
cheered by the achievement, had a little food, and then proceeded to
work far into the night to clear up some of the arrears of the day's
routine. As for the staff, they had to work, too. There are no easy
times for those associated with Lloyd George when he is under pressure.

These are examples from recent times, but throughout the whole of his
career there have been contradictions which have staggered friends as
well as enemies. I do not believe there is a more sincere man in
public life; there certainly is no shrewder one, and yet when he was
Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the finances of the country he
was imprudent enough in an impulsive moment to invest privately some
hundreds of pounds in a commercial company, an investment perfectly
innocent in itself, but one which a worldly-wise person would have
realized must lay open to attack any Chancellor of the Exchequer who
had enemies. He never gave the thing a thought. He had always been a
comparatively poor man. He saw a good investment and he put some of
his savings into it. His opponents became aware of the matter, and in
storms of virtuous passion held him up to execration as a corrupt
politician who was using his position to make himself rich. There were
bursts of unholy joy among the Conservatives. That innocent investment
in Marconi shares was perhaps the most stupid thing in Lloyd George's
public life. He gave his explanation with vigor and clearness, but,
nevertheless, I fancy he must have kicked himself privately about the
whole thing. Notwithstanding, however, the disadvantage at which he
had placed himself, opponents found that now, as on other occasions, it
was not a pleasant exercise to attack the Welshman. He had a horrid
habit of defending himself by hitting back, and he usually hit very
much harder than his attackers were capable of doing. When the dukes
and earls fell on him in all their noble rage and dignity he culled
stories from the past about them. One of the attacks on him was by
Earl Selborne, who had been a Cabinet Minister in a Conservative
administration. Lloyd George permitted himself no false delicacy about
the noble earl. "He contends there is no correspondence between his
story and mine. He is quite right. I have already pointed out the
essential difference. I bought shares in a company which had no
contract with the Government, and my purchase of even these shares was
subsequent to the acceptance of the wireless tender by the Government.
Earl Selborne was a director of a company during the time it was
initiating and acquiring a huge contract with the Government, of which
he was a member. His story is, therefore, not mine."

There had probably never been a politician in British public life who
was so affectionately regarded by all those persons who were brought
into personal contact with him, whether they agreed with him or not.
Pressmen whose duty it was to berate him in the papers were generally
fond of him personally. Opponents in the House of Commons when not
engaged in combat had, in most cases, an active liking for him.
Business men and persons not connected with politics after once meeting
him had nothing but good to say of the "Welsh demagogue." And in face
of all this Lloyd George has truly been the most hated man of his
generation. He used to chuckle over it--which sent his opponents to
the last degree of fury. "The dukes," he would remark, cheerily, "are
scolding like omnibus-drivers, and the lords swearing like
stable-boys." He would fling out his hand with a humorously despairing
gesture about it.

Lloyd George was not very precise in his attacks sometimes. Though he
was very rarely, perhaps never, successfully challenged on the general
basis of his charges, his vivid wording always brought on him a flood
of recriminations. He was called an "ignorant demagogue," an
"unscrupulous electioneer," was accused of using "false sentiment" and
of "setting class against class." His principal weapons throughout, it
was said, were his inaccuracies and offensive personalities. The
exasperated Conservatives, only a few months before the war, secured
the time of the House of Commons to indict him for some of these sins.
Here was the resolution moved from the Conservative benches: "That this
House contemplates with regret the repeated inaccuracies of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and his gross and unfounded charges upon
individuals." No motion could have pleased Lloyd George better.
Ponderous and dignified were the speeches against him. He replied with
a quizzical lightness, and did not refrain from personal remarks even
in the course of his defense. He demonstrated the general accuracy of
his speeches, ridiculed the indictment against himself, and showed how
it arose partly from political prejudices, partly from the mental
obtuseness and anger of his opponents. A portion of his speech
recalled the things the Conservatives attacking him said about Joseph
Chamberlain, now one of their idols. They were remarks made during
Chamberlain's radical days.

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