Lloyd George

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"One Tory Minister said he spoke 'with customary inaccuracy.' Another
Minister talked about 'his habitual incapacity for being accurate.'
Another said he was 'setting class against class.' The _Times_, using
the language of the gentleman in opposition to-night, said he was
'forgetting what was due to his dignity and responsibility as a Cabinet
Minister.' He was compared by the leader of the House to 'Jack Cade.'
Another called him 'an unscrupulous demagogue.' Another said he was
'weeping crocodile tears for electioneering purposes.' I seem to
recognize some of these epithets. I am amazed at the lack of
imagination in the vituperation of honorable men opposite." When the
laughter and cheering had died away Lloyd George said that Chamberlain
was fifty at the time these things were uttered, the age at which he
himself stood. "So there is hope for me," he said. It is difficult to
tackle a man like that.

No one would deny that Lloyd George has gone back on many of the
opinions he used to hold so firmly. The exhilarating names he called
members of the House of Lords have been replaced by invitations to some
of them to join him as Ministers in a Cabinet of which he is the head.
No doubt he would give good reasons for the change, but the fact
remains. His mobile mind is ever adapting itself to what he considers
the exigencies of the times, though no one could with less justice be
named a time-server. "Other times, other means, other manners" may be
described as his attitude of mind. If at the moment the welfare of the
community in his judgment demanded certain courses of action no words
of his in the past, no principles that he had held, would prevent him
from adapting himself or from using whatever powers lay to his hand.
As motive forces in social life are almost invariably to be obtained
from individuals, Lloyd George without shame and without hesitation has
proceeded to use individualities wherever he found them suitable for
his purpose. Meanwhile the worshiper of consistency can find in him no
idol.

The crowning inconsistency of Lloyd George's career I have not yet
described. So far as he owed success in life to any man except himself
he owed it to Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister. Lloyd George has all
the sensitiveness and affection of the Celtic nature, and must
certainly have had within him a well of gratitude to this man who had
been so great a friend to him. Yet it came about that he eventually
decided it was his duty to pull this man from the throne and take his
place there.

XII

HOW HE BECAME PRIME MINISTER

In some lights it seems rather a shabby thing that Lloyd George should
have ousted Mr. Asquith and taken his place as Prime Minister. Mr.
Asquith, with great intellectual attainments and with the highest
attributes of an English gentleman, had been at the head of the British
Government for eight years, and during this period big achievements had
been inscribed on Britain's story. He had been a strong and constant
friend of Lloyd George who, under his leadership, had risen from the
position of a minor Minister to giant eminence. Then at a crucial
moment Lloyd George overthrew him. Stated baldly like that, the thing
doesn't read very well. I believe there are some leaders in England
who will never forgive Lloyd George. It remains to be said that they
are taking a narrow and immediate view of a drama so immense that its
proper perspective will only be available many years hence. They are
trying to test men's souls under strain in a small mechanical balance.
Forces were at work such as are only met with once or twice in
centuries. You cannot bring a puny, every-day judgment to bear on
issues which may mean misery or happiness to millions of people, and
life or death to a great proportion of them. In such circumstances the
raw strength of big men comes out, and the spectacle is not always
pleasant to the gentle-minded.

I am not one of those who believe that Lloyd George sordidly schemed to
become Prime Minister, though I am sure that in some side reflections
from time to time he realized quite certainly that one day he would be
Prime Minister of his country. I believe that from the moment he
decided the war was a right one and must be pressed to victory he
concentrated the whole of his heart and soul, all of his bewildering
and compelling properties, to the task of securing victory. And that
the remarkable success he attained, first in the sphere of finance,
then in the provision of munitions, thirdly in the raising of armies
and general organization for battle, led him quickly to a vision of the
whole contest, a vision unshared by his colleagues, but of dazzling
clearness to himself.

His whole being, designed for the emergencies of combat, quivered and
thrilled as he saw the hundred directions in which urgency and rapidity
and ruthlessness could forge the weapons of success. I believe he was
completely selfless about the matter. He made efforts to touch various
spheres of war organization with the white-hot spirit which possessed
himself, and became partly the terror, partly the admiration, of those
among whom he moved. And then, realizing more and more, week by week,
what he regarded as the inertia in the departments that ran the
country, and seeing the importance of stirring the feelings of his
principal Cabinet colleagues to wholesale, passionate, fear-nothing
strokes which should bring the end of the war within sight, there grew
upon him resistlessly the thought that he must himself secure supreme
control of the war in Britain. I believe the idea took hold of him,
not from any vulgar motive, but in the way that religion grows upon a
man, possessing him utterly, leaving him heedless of the criticism
directed against his personal aims.

What was the system he was up against? In the British Cabinet each
Minister is the head of his own department, and in normal times the
Prime Minister doesn't interfere in the departments, although, as
chairman of the Cabinet, his consent has to be given to any big
national policy initiated by another Minister. Mr. Asquith had strong
and clever men around him, and, quite apart from the fact that he was
the most chivalrous of chiefs, he trusted their capacity. Strong and
capable as they were, they had not the flashing genius of Lloyd George,
certainly had not his genius for war, implying large decisions and
great risks. They plodded along and threshed out plans and put some of
them into execution. To Lloyd George both the plans and the way they
were carried out were half-hearted. To him there was always delay,
never the stark action which he believed was everywhere necessary.
Decisions were taken too late and were not carried out with promptitude
or thoroughness.

For months Lloyd George was in a state of simmering revolt. He
received support from powerful organs in the press, notably from the
_Times_ and _Daily Mail_. The tone of their criticism is best
summarized in the suggestion that Mr. Asquith was "an amiable old
gentleman," unfitted for the position of leader of a nation at war for
its life. Far less than justice was accorded him, but under the stress
of war the most stolid people became impatient, and there was
undoubtedly manifested in many sections of the public a desire for more
strenuous leadership. The difficulties with which Mr. Asquith had had
to contend were certainly not fully appreciated, though they will be
later on. He was the head of a Coalition Government, and had kept that
Government together with a managing skill to which everybody paid
tribute. The claim of the Lloyd George supporters was that qualities
different from those required for the skilful handling of a Government
were necessary in a war Prime Minister. It looks as if Lloyd George
shared this opinion. He came to the conclusion that he must make his
stroke. One fateful day he presented to Mr. Asquith an ultimatum to
the effect that the conduct of the war should be placed in the hands of
a small committee of three or four members who should have absolute
power, and that Mr. Asquith himself should not be on it, or, if so,
should be a member in name only.

Mr. Asquith tried to get him to compromise. Lloyd George would have
none of it. If Mr. Asquith would not agree he would resign, he said,
and he was supported by the Conservative members of the Government.
Mr. Asquith and his supporters would not give way. There were one or
two exciting days of secret negotiations, and then, a deadlock being
reached, there was but one course to be pursued, and that was for the
entire Cabinet to place its resignation in the hands of the King. It
must have been a bitter moment for Mr. Asquith. Indeed, it was
probably an unhappy time for Lloyd George. Nevertheless, he flinched
not.

The whole Cabinet went out of office. The King, who is bound by
precedent, sent for the leader of the Conservatives, Mr. Bonar Law, and
offered him the position of Prime Minister and the task of forming a
Government. Owing to the split-up of the parties and the various
cross-currents, Mr. Law felt himself unable to carry out the formal
request of the King. Then the expected happened, and the King sent for
Lloyd George, who promptly expressed his willingness to try to form a
Government, so long as he was assisted in the task by Mr. Bonar Law.
He was successful. His Cabinet, rapidly brought into being, consisted
of several Labor men, several Conservatives, some notable members of
the House of Lords, and also, quite a novel feature, some captains of
industry, whom Lloyd George took from their private businesses to run
the business departments of the state. A war council was formed,
consisting of Lloyd George himself; Mr. Arthur Henderson, the leader of
the Labor movement; Lord Curzon, and Lord Milner. (The most recent
claims to distinction of the latter two was their violent opposition to
Lloyd George's Budget and the Parliament bill.) The sum total of
arrangements was that the new Prime Minister became virtually a
dictator. He rules England to-day.

What will be his record as Prime Minister? It may be taken as a
certainty that his tenure of office will be a memorable chapter in
English history. That he will use to the utmost his natural powers in
bringing the war to a conclusion satisfactory to his country goes
without saying. I am inclined to think that there is no one who yet
realizes the lengths to which he will go in order to secure victory.
No precedent will stand in his way, no consideration of popularity or
unpopularity will deter him. That he may break himself in his attempt
is a trifle to him. I do not think he will break himself, for he has
reserves not usually found in a single personality. Obloquy may again
take the place of the praise which now encircles him. He may yet be
assailed by some of the new colleagues whom he has chosen, and the
newspapers which have supported him may turn against him. But if he
lives and preserves his health he will win the war. He is not entirely
admirable, but nothing will obliterate his powers of success but
extinction.

He has the imagination to envisage the uncountable forces at his
disposal in the British Empire, and if need be he will use these forces
to their very limits. Already he has proceeded on new lines. With
that intense practicalness which goes with his spiritual exaltation he
has appointed a grocer and a provision-dealer to control the
food-supplies of the country, has put a ship-owner at the head of the
mercantile marine, has given to a man who was a working steel-smelter
the unshackled control of labor, has chosen as another Cabinet Minister
a young American who has made a fortune in business--staggering
appointments indeed for conservative old England. But that is only a
beginning. The Prime Minister has hitherto been but the titular head
of the various departments of his Government, but now he is going to be
the real head, for Lloyd George has set up a Prime Minister's
Department which co-ordinates continually all the various Government
offices. Lloyd George means to be no mere figure of dignity as a Prime
Minister.

What more can he do? There is no end to the war expedients which are
to his hand if the conflict with Germany goes on. If more young men
are wanted for the army I can see him levying the whole of the women in
the country for work on the farms and in the offices or its shops. He
may turn his eyes to the overseas dominions, where there are scores of
millions of population from which separate vast new armies may be
drawn. I have little doubt that erelong the enemies of Britain will
come up against the quality of unexpectedness which has so often
discouraged his opponents at home. No field of endeavor will be closed
to him. I can even see him with a board of inventors and constructors
setting to work to provide, let us say, a fleet of one hundred thousand
aeroplanes which shall, in truth, make the invasion of Germany
possible. There are other novel fields of effort with potentialities
of equal or even greater scope.

It was complained of Mr. Asquith that he was too much of a gentleman,
too kindly and considerate even to those who harassed him, that he
feared to repress those who strove to make his tenure of office
impossible. There will not be any nonsense of that kind about Lloyd
George. Heaven help those who, however highly placed and whatever
their services to him in the past, now stand in his way. Interesting
suggestions have been made that his recent alliance with Northcliffe
was a fatal mistake for him, because Northcliffe, in pursuit of
newspaper sensations, combined with patriotic aims, having helped to
place him in the seat of power, will presently turn on him without
scruple and without mercy. Well, there may even be an attempt in that
direction. I know both men pretty thoroughly, having been brought into
personal contact with each, and watched the work and studied the power
of both of them for years. If Northcliffe attempts any action of the
kind indicated he will find that he has gone out for a walk with a
tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith to deal with now. If
Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in
Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war,
Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought.
Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when
Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the
publication of the _Daily Mail_ and the _Times_, wrecking a million
pounds' worth of private property at least, and ruining Northcliffe on
the way, will be twenty minutes' cheery work for Lloyd George in his
present mood, if he thinks the interests of Britain demand it.

It will be found from now until the treaty of peace is signed that
Lloyd George will be the personal director of democratic Britain, as
grim an autocrat as was Oliver Cromwell, and when the plenipotentiaries
meet around a table to settle terms there will be among them the
blue-eyed Welshman, pleasant of manners and with iron will, putting in
some commas and taking out the clauses he doesn't like.

XIII

THE FUTURE OF LLOYD GEORGE

When this war is concluded there must be a new era for the world.
Already there are signs of its approach. Generations hence there may
again be awful conflicts between nations, spasms of hell in which the
blood and anguish of millions will pay their tribute to the beast in
man, but it will not be in our time, and in the interval, the beginning
of which must be upon us very quickly, a new order of things will arise
among the civilized people of the globe. Stricken humanity will insist
on happier prospects for its children and its children's children. In
the formulation of that new order of things I can see Lloyd George as
one of the main instruments.

In the first place, Britain will be a revivified country after the war,
chastened in some ways, teeming with new thoughts, pulsing with a new
virility for at least a generation. Class prejudice will be lessened,
perhaps in some directions will be completely wiped out. There will
probably be a centralized effort after the trials which all the people
have suffered together to reconstruct the social fabric so that all the
people of the country, with the exception of those who are lazy or
criminal, shall have the means by which they may be able to secure a
decent livelihood and need have no fear of poverty-stricken old age. I
foresee the disintegration of the older political parties and the
building up of new ones, in which the great contending features will be
the means and methods by which the new Britain shall be established.
The old party shibboleths will be swept away. Mere words and windy
generalities will be displaced from influence and the nation's leaders
will deal with facts.

The education of the war has brought everybody in the country up
against hard realities. While prejudices and so-called principles have
been put in the background, there has been going on a learning of new
lessons. Lloyd George will undoubtedly be the main figure in the
building up of the national edifice. The war will effect political
changes which a generation of Parliamentary efforts could not have
brought about. Hundreds of thousands of men drawn from shops,
factories, offices, who have been hardened and stimulated by their
out-of-doors campaigning, will be averse from returning to their old
drab conditions, and coincident with this the rich and beautiful
farmlands of England will be made available in holdings for such as
wish to settle on the land and to establish themselves there. Cottage
dwellings and farm buildings will be put up by the thousand with the
assistance of the state. The settlers from the towns will not only
find health for themselves and families, but by their activities will
add enormously to the food-supplies of the country through their market
gardens, their dairy farms, as well as by the extra corn which will be
produced by them.

Lloyd George's heart and soul will be in this project, for, country
born and bred as he is, he knows not only the troubles, but also the
opportunities and the personal joys of the population on the land. I
regard a revolution on these lines in England as a practical certainty.
It may be asked, Where is the money to come from for all this? The
answer is, that loans from the state are inevitable, but they will be
remunerative loans which presently will yield returns, not only in the
shape of interest, but in new food-supplies and also, not less
important, in the benefits of new physical strength and new happiness
in life to big sections of the population. Sacrifices will be asked
for from the great land-owners, but they will be sacrifices of
sentiment rather than of money, because these proprietors will
certainly be well recompensed financially for any land that is taken
from them.

But this transformation in the countryside will be only one phase of
the new Britain. Virtual revolution is certain in town life--and
something like forty millions out of the fifty millions of population
have their present homes in towns and cities, and not in the country.
A great stimulation of production may be looked for under the lessons
of war-time. Scores of inventions have been devised under the strain
of the war's demands and the discoveries in chemistry, in mechanics,
and in other directions will remodel certain industries and create
fresh ones. Novel methods of organization have been brought into use
and have greatly aided efficiency, but even these developments will be
but supplementary to the changes in the methods of British industrial
life. The Labor movement of Britain, which has obtained during the war
a political power previously unknown in British Government, has altered
its modes of procedure, subordinated its laws, and generally
transfigured itself. The position can never be readjusted to the old
basis. This will carry with it remarkable results. Something like
three million trade-unionists constitute the effective Labor movement
of Britain, and the unions, with their rights and privileges, have only
been built up by half a century of struggle against prejudice, against
material interests, against opposition in Parliament. In the last ten
years, however, enormous progress has been made. Forty Labor men have
seats in the legislature, and the combination of trade-union rules and
regulations safeguarding workmen and restricting employers has become
as effective as a legal charter. Hours and conditions of labor as well
as wage rates in the various trades have been set up and continually
strengthened with a view to prevent exploitation by employers, and
though there is necessarily a running struggle with regard to isolated
matters, there has come to exist, on the whole, amicable relations
between the great unions, on the one side, and the great employers, on
the other. Under Lloyd George's appeals during the war trade-unions
have flung overboard the restrictions they had imposed, have permitted
unskilled people to come in and do parts of their work, permitted women
to take a hand, allowed employers to increase hours of work, and
voluntarily have taken upon themselves the old burdens which they had
fought so long to shake off. They have had at least this recompense
that, so far as money is concerned, they have not been badly off. In
important industries, notably in munition-making, piece-work--payment
according to work accomplished--is the rule, with the result that large
sums are earned by those who choose to work hard and to work early and
late. The general result of all this has been a marvelously
accelerated output of material as compared with that which would have
been produced under old conditions. The unions have the promise of the
Government that all their old rules shall be restored after the war if
they want them. It has become inconceivable that incidental advantage
secured in these abnormal times shall be thrown away when peace comes
just because of a traditional adherence to principle. Employers, also,
seeing the tremendously increased results, will be eager to maintain
the new acceleration. Are the unions, for the sake of old prejudices,
to put back the clock and throw out all the employment of the women who
have entered the hitherto-reserved industries, and to abolish the
overtime work? Are they, moreover, to return to the old principles of
prohibiting an operative from doing more than a certain amount of work
in a certain time--a practice quite defensible so far as it arose from
the greed of employers who, with their men on piece-work, finding the
rate of production increased, promptly put back the rate of payment so
that workpeople should never earn more than a certain amount by day or
by week? Is there to be a reaction in all these directions? There is
not. Unions will not want all their old provisions, but they will want
new ones in their places. And the arrangements which will have to be
made, and which Lloyd George will undoubtedly have a large share in
making, will lead to the establishment of an entirely new system which,
while giving employers a wider field of labor and an immensely
increased production, will, at the same time, provide working-men and
women with greatly enlarged earning capacity, an earning capacity which
will be largely based on their own energy, initiative, and persistence.
A wide extension of what may be called co-operative payment by results
may be looked for.

The good-will among classes introduced by the war will certainly help
the changes. The net result to be looked for is a practical abolition
of unemployment, the extension of the area of labor to great numbers of
women, increased earning powers for individuals, and still more for the
families as a whole, and a greater output of all kinds of products, not
only manufactured articles, but also food products from the land.
Accompanying all this will be higher profits for employers.

That this revolution can be accomplished in a day or even in a year is
not to be expected. That it is the direction in which British social
life is bound to trend cannot be doubted. I see Lloyd George as the
engineer-in-chief of the whole operation. In conjunction with the new
national land scheme the industrial reformation will provide a policy
with a far-reaching scope and a practicability which will appeal to his
long-sighted vision, his active mind, his scorn of past usages which
litter the road of progress. That he will attempt to recreate the new
social system on the wreckage of that which has been destroyed by the
war I think is beyond all question.

But Lloyd George's future destiny is not confined to his work for his
own race and nation. The war has lifted him to international
prominence. He is now and will be henceforth the most-talked-of
British statesman in all other civilized countries. He will still have
enemies who will detest him, but no one in the future will attempt to
deny his effectiveness. Respect will be accorded him by the statesmen
of other nations and the democracy of other nations, the latter of whom
will remember his lifelong fight for the poor. Such a man may well be
of influence in determining not only the fate of his own people, but
also the fate of the civilized community at large. I see approaching
him, when this war is over, an opportunity far greater than anything
fate has yet placed in his way. The world will be shuddering at the
ghastliness of its recent experiences and asking if there is no way of
guarding against the possibility of such a catastrophe in the years
ahead. Among all the nations lately at war there will be but one
desire--namely, the insuring of the enjoyment of peace for the
generations to come. If that mood comes to exist, as it surely will,
among all the nations when this present conflict is over, there are two
men who, working together, may write their names indelibly on the
history of the world. President Wilson's uplifting vision of an
enduring peace by a mutually protective combination of nations is
regarded by many as impracticable even as an illusion. I do not
believe Lloyd George will regard it either as impracticable or as an
illusion. His spirit will glow at the thought of it. The magnitude of
the proposal will encourage him rather than check him. As to the
difficulties in the way, he will tackle them with a confident smile.
The tenacity and high-mindedness of President Wilson are qualities
which will especially appeal to him. He will be able to supplement
them with that ingenuity and practicalness which are an integral part
of his genius for getting things done. I can see these two men,
therefore, as collaborators in days not so very far ahead. In the
collaboration Lloyd George will probably find his culminating task.

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