The life romance of Lloyd George

Front matter

THE LIFE ROMANCE OF LLOYD GEORGE

A lithographic reproduction, size 20 X 15 {by Mr. W. H. Caffyn), of the portrait of Mr. Lloyd George which appears on the cover of this book can be obtained at all Booksellers and Art Dealers at \s. net, or on superior paper {mounted on linen) signed by the Artistlithographer at 5j. net. Copies can also be obtained direct from 'EWEB.YUA.ti, 11, Warwick Lane, at Is. 3d, or 5j, Zd. post free.

THE LIFE ROMANCE OF LLOYD GEORGE

Introduction

CHAPTER

I. THE MAN AND HIS METHODS II. EARLY INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS

III. THE NATIONALIST

IV. STRENUOUS TIMES

V. PARLIAMENTARY FREE LANCE

VI. PEACE PROTAGONIST

VII. LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE

VIII. CABINET MINISTER -

IX. SOCIAL REFORMER

X. MINISTER OF MUNITIONS

XI. MR. LLOYD GEORGE's FUTURE

PAGE

vii

I

54 66 88

105 138 158 181

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ARCH-DRUID OF DOWNING STREET Frontispiece A COUNTER-ATTACK - - - To face

MR. LLOYD George's early home at

LLANYSTUMDWY

MR. WILLIAM GEORGE, FATHER OF MR. LLOYD GEORGE

MRS. GEORGE, MOTHER OF MR. LLOYD GEORGE - - - -

MR. RICHARD LLOYD, UNCLE OF MR. LLOYD GEORGE . . - -

MR. LLOYD GEORGE AT HOME

MRS. LLOYD GEORGE

SIR HENRY DALZIEL, MR. HERBERT LEWIS, AND MR. LLOYD GEORGE, AT BUENOS AIRES . . - -

CAPTAIN RICHARD LLOYD GEORGE MISS LLOYD GEORGE IN WELSH COSTUME - LIEUTENANT GWILYM LLOYD GEORGE MISS MEGAN LLOYD GEORGE MR. WILLIAM GEORGE, MR. LLOYD GEORGE's ONLY BROTHER . - -

MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND HIS SON GOLFING A HUNGRY BROOD

VI

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M n

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THE ARCH-DRUID OF DOWNING STREET

A Musical Correspondent at the Eisteddfod writes : " Mr. Lloyd George then oblig-ed with ' Land of my Fathers.' The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his rendition of the famous Land song", gave its full site value to every note."

By kind permission of the proprietors of " Punch:'

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Beriah Evans has acquitted himself with conspicuous ability of a most difficult task. He has given us a lifelike portrait of a most complex and a most perplexing personality, and his study is equally characteristic of the judicial detachment of the critic, and of the sympathy and insight of one intim.ately acquainted with the subject.

If Mr. Evans's task has been a difficult one, it must also have been a most congenial one. And if Mr. Lloyd George has been fortunate in his biographer, the biographer has been no less fortunate in his hero. Whatever may be our final estimate of Mr. Lloyd George's achievements, his opponents will agree with his admirers that he is the most picturesque figure, as he is the most potent force, in British politics, and that his life story is one of the most arresting romances of political biography. Both the character and the life story are made up of bewildering contrasts and contradictions. A man of the people and a democrat to the core, he has yet the autocratic instinct of the born leader of men. The spokes-

vii viii INTRODUCTION

man of an oppressed nationality, he has yet become one of the rulers of the very race which for centuries suppressed the aspirations of his native country. Brought up in the narrow dogmas of a sect, his creed has expanded into the comprehensive faith of the citizen of the world. Whilst his affections are centred in his Welsh mountains, his heart is throbbing with the passion of universal humanity. A champion of peace, and for the sake of peace risking his political existence, he finds himself to-day directing the fortunes of the most gigantic war of all times. Once the most hated poHtician of the United Kingdom, he has lived to become the most popular statesman of Europe. The humble solicitor who started his career in a little Welsh town may be before many months are over the plenipotentiary of the British Empire in the World Congress which will decide the destinies of nations for generations to come.

II

MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT

Mr. Beriah Evans has dealt mainly with the national and Imperial aspects of Mr. Lloyd George's career. In the following remarks I would like to deal with the international aspect.

INTRODUCTION ix

I would like to foreshadow what part Mr. Lloyd George is probably destined to play as the Ambassador of the British People to the future Congress of Peace.

It does not require any special gift of prophecy to be able to predict that as soon as the Germans realize that the game is up, they will make a desperate effort to create misunderstandings amongst the Alhes, in the expectation that when the day of settlement comes the misunderstandings may eventually widen into an open breach. Those German tactics have already begun. Only a few weeks ago the most influential journalist of the German Empire, Maximilian Harden, published in the Zukunjt a stirring appeal to the French people, "An die Franzosen!" "The German quarrel was not with France, but with Great Britain. Why then should the French still submit to being used as a catspaw of the English. Even before the war the German people had nothing but sympathy for the French. They had now also learned to respect them. The French who are holding 500 miles of the Western front are making all the sacrifices, while the English who are holding barely 30 miles will reap all the benefits. An alliance with Great Britain was an unnatural union which could not survive the war."

X INTRODUCTION

III

We need not take those German tactics too seriously, and we may retain every confidence that the Allies will hold together until the end. The danger will only begin after the war is over, when the Allies will dictate their terms. It is true that a solemn covenant has been entered into that the Allies shall make no separate peace, and there is no reason to believe that any one of the Allies will deliberately break such a covenant. But we must face the fact that the international settlement will be the most formidable task that ever confronted European diplomacy, that conflicting interests are bound to arise, and that it may prove almost impossible to reconcile those interests to the satisfaction of all the States concerned. When those conflicts do arise, then will be Germany's opportunity. Let us learn from the lessons of the past. A hundred years ago an international agreement not to conclude a separate peace was signed by the Allies of the European coalition, and the covenant was couched in almost the identical terms. Yet Mephistopheles Talleyrand had not taken his seat for one week at the Congress of Vienna before dissension broke out, before conflicting groups had been constituted, before one ally after another was bartering with the common enemy. The majority

INTRODUCTION xi

of the Ambassadors at Vienna were truly honourable men. They were perfectly sincere, but they were not equal to the tremendous pressure of circumstances and to the temptation of defending national interests at the expense of general interests. The statesmen of the Holy Alliance believed themselves to be good Britishers, good Russians, good Frenchmen. They were not, unfortunately, good Europeans — with the result that the Congress of Vienna sowed the seeds of infinite trouble, they sowed the dragon's teeth from which the future legions of countless hosts were to arise.

IV

Considering then the vital importance of complete understanding amongst the Allies, considering the future dangers which must threaten that harmony, considering the immense difficulty of the task which will confront British statesmanship when the day of settlement comes, it will be of supreme importance that Great Britain should be represented in the future European Areopagus by statesmen who shall have the ear of Continental nations, who not only speak with authority, but whose every word, whose very personality shall call forth the sympathy and inspire the confidence of the Allies, who not only shall speak for the British xii INTRODUCTION

people, but who also speak for and to all the European nations. We are perhaps still too much inclined to forget that with regard to the prosecution of the war Great Britain has become an integral part of Continental Europe, and that moral sympathy and community of spirit, moral and political co-operation are indispensable to efficient military co-operation, and will be even more indispensable for harmonious diplomatic co-operation.

For all those reasons, it is of singularly good omen that the most popular statesman of the British Empire should also be the one British statesman who commands the complete confidence of France, Russia, and Italy. To-day, so far as Europe is concerned, it is not Mr. Asquith or Sir Edward Grey or Mr. Balfour, it is Mr. Lloyd George who is the representative statesman of the British people. To French, Russians, and Italians alike, Mr. Asquith is but a distant name. Mr. Lloyd George is as one of themselves. His is the one name to conjure with, his is the one international asset in the Cabinet. Three years ago, at the outbreak of the Agadir crisis, Mr. Lloyd George's Mansion House Speech was the trumpet call which both roused and reassured French

INTRODUCTION xii

opinion. To-day every word of the Minister of Munitions calls forth an immediate and sympathetic response on the other side of the Channel.

And the reasons for Mr. Lloyd George's influence with the French people are not far to seek. France is the most consistent democracy of the Continent, and Mr. Lloyd George is the most consistent democratic statesman of the British Empire. His name is identified with democratic legislation, with democratic aspirations, with democratic methods in a way no other name is. Napoleon was the armed soldier of the Revolution. Gambetta was the chosen tribune of the Third Republic. Mr. Lloyd George is the orator of the new Social Order.

But there is another and deeper reason why Mr. Lloyd George should stand for French policy. France is a Celtic country, and Mr. Lloyd George is the inspired voice of another great Celtic country. Any reader of Renan's famous Essay on the Poetry of the Celtic Race will realize why there should be between the French temperament and the Welsh temperament elective affinities which make sympathy and understanding singularly more easy. In the speeches of Mr. Asquith there is a restraint and a frigidity which do not appeal to the French or to the Slav mind. On the contrary the sentiment, the fervour, the metallic xiv INTRODUCTION

ring, the imagery of Mr. Lloyd George's utterances stir the Frenchman even more than they do the Enghshman. So profoundly am I convinced of the value of Mr. Lloyd George's eloquence in our relations with France and Russia that in my opinion one of the best services which the Government could render just now to the cause of European solidarity would be a widespread diffusion of French and Russian translations of Mr. Lloyd George's War Speeches.

VI

But it is especially when the day of settlement comes that Mr. Lloyd George will be called upon to play the decisive part. I earnestly hope that the anticipation referred to at the beginning of the Introduction may be realized, and that Mr. Lloyd George will be the plenipotentiary of this country at the future Congress of Brussels. That Congress of 1916 will be very different from the Congress of Vienna or the Congress of Berlin. The " Peace with Honour " which the British plenipotentiary will bring back from Brussels will be very different from the " Peace with Honour " achieved by Lord Beaconsfield in 1878. Even as the war is essentially a war of the nations, so the new diplomacy will have to be a diplomacy of the nations, the statesmanship of a nation which shall not merely

INTRODUCTION xv

be the statecraft of a caste. Mr. Lloyd George's ideals and aspirations are the only ideals which can evolve the new international order of to-morrow. Nor will the personal courage and magnetism which have enabled Mr. Lloyd George to settle many acute industrial disputes be less valuable for the settlement of the difficulties of the European Tribunal. And last, not least, the profound understanding of the value of nationality which has been such a marked characteristic of the Welshman will be of infinite value in the conduct of negotiations. For the future peace of Europe can only be lasting if it is established on the firm foundation of the principle of nationalities in foreign policy, and of self-government in domestic policy, if in every case and against every temptation it protects the rights of the small and the weak against the ambitions and encroachments of the strong.

THE LIFE ROMANCE OF LLOYD GEORGE

Chapter I

It is no reflection upon the genius of the most picturesque figure in British pohtics to-day to say that Mr. Lloyd George owes his inspiration to the sufferings, and much of his success to the sacrifices, of others. The " pitiless publicity " that, like a glaring searchlight, probes every hidden recess of his career, and which is only part of the price he has to pay for occupying the heights he has attained, reveals facts enabling us the better to understand the developments of his thirty years of public life, and of his Parliamentary career of a quarter of a century.

In the light of this publicity it will be seen that, from earliest childhood, he has been peculiarly susceptible to the influences of environment. Any exhibition of tyranny in the exercise of power always aroused him; the cry of the oppressed ever appealed to him. That sight and that cry greeted him in childhood ; they greet him still to-day. The Welsh evictions of 1868 made him a land agitator; the German Rape of Belgium twelve months ago as manifestly transformed him into one of the strongest advocates of the World War of to-day, as did the Invasion of the Transvaal make him an equally ardent Apostle of Peace fifteen years ago. And it is the cry of the British soldier in the trenches which has now further developed him into the Minister of Munitions, creating great guns and high explosives almost literally by the words of his mouth.

These, and other, successive developments will be dealt with more fully later; but here it should be premised that it requires close personal intimacy with him to realize Mr. Lloyd George's actual personality. For he is far from being or indeed resembling, the man that friends and foes alike in the public press picture him to be. For instance, he is neither the Little Englander whom a Birmingham mob, made mad by a warped patriotism, would have murdered fourteen years ago, nor the heaven-born descendant of Thor, whom, in a no less insane enthusiasm, they would gladly worship to-day. He is neither the traitor to

Britain once denounced by Lord Curzon and the Earl of Derby, nor the Saviour of the Empire who is now the subject of their benediction. He is no more the reckless spendthrift gambling his country's credit, as he appeared in the eyes of those who detested his Budgets, than he is the astute financier whom the " City," having failed to crucify, would now crown with a ducal coronet. In a word, he lacks alike some of the genius of Machiavelli, some of the wiles of Mephistopheles — and, forsooth, some of the " attributes of divinity " — with each and all of which he has in turn, and by the same persons, been credited.

Nor is it political foes alone who have, on occasion, grossly misconceived the man and his methods; his political allies have not at all times escaped the contagion. The editorial columns of the leading Liberal organs of a short political generation ago would afford interesting reading just now, particularly if their severe denunciation of the Welsh firebrand then were placed in parallel columns with the current comments of the same journals on the selfsame man to-day. Indeed, time was when his words and his deeds, his plans and his policy, were as scornfully tabooed by the Liberal press, as they are now recklessly applauded by the syndicated Northcliffe papers.

In striking contrast to the ruthless sub-editing to which his speeches used to be subjected, is the fact that none but Mr. Asquith to-day shares with him the honour of being given *' verbatim " in the great Enghsh daihes. In America — both Canada and the States — he is the only British statesman whose speeches the leading dailies deem it worth while to give in extenso.

What then are the methods by which the man has attained success ? A prominent statesman who has closely followed his career, and has been in intimate political association with him for some time past, when asked this question, said that Mr. Lloyd George owed his success to four main causes — courage, oratory, astute use of the press, and supreme smartness.

If his career from reckless boyhood to ripest statemanship be followed, it will be found that each of the four things named has at times materially helped in shaping his destiny. His courage has never been called in question. Let us take only a few of the best known instances. It was the courage that dared the ravening crowd at the Birmingham Town Hall which, long before that, inspired the schoolboy revolt against teacher, and parson, and squire, at Llanystumdwy. The same temerity was manifested by him as a fledgeling advocate in his first case when he bearded the bench at Pwllheli, and which at the Carnarvon

County Sessions shortly after, compelled the withdrawal from the court of the hitherto unchallenged autocrat chairman. It repeated itself on his first entry into Parliament, impelling him almost ere the echoes of his maiden speech had died away in the House of Commons, to strike the shields, not of any ordinary knights, but those of two out of the three most formidable debaters of the age — Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain. But each of these daring deeds aimed at establishing some fundamental principle. Moreover, they all " paid." The schoolboy revolt gave him the acknowledged leadership in the village, and made him indispensable to the whole countryside in the great political revolt of Welsh Nonconformity so soon to follow. The successful overthrow of the dictator at Carnarvon not only established his professional reputation but placed the Liberal nomination for the Carnarvon Boroughs within his grasp. The duels with Mr. Balfour, and particularly with Mr. Chamberlain, laid the foundation for a Parliamentary reputation which has shaped his whole subsequent career. And this attribute of courage possesses the Celtic characteristic — traditionally displayed by the French soldiers of the past — of being more brilliant in attack than defence. It stands prominently manifested in his almost invariable practice, when attacked, of unexpectedly launching a counter-attack as the best defensive measure possible under the circumstances. In his earher days these tactics seldom failed to inspire his friends or to confound his foes. Their adoption on more than one occasion in recent Parliamentary warfare has been the saving of the situation — were it only from the fact that they served to obscure altogether the original issue.

Of his oratory, its power and its influence, the whole kingdom is by to-day too cognizant to render any demonstration necessary. It should, however, not be forgotten that the whirlwind declamation of the platform is not the only, nor, indeed, the most effective, manifestation of this brilliant gift. In Committee or Conference room, the persuasive silver tongue assisting the agile intellect and ready wit, has oft-time proved more deadly still to opposition. It is to this power of persuasion in private discussion, still more than to the demagogic display on the platform, or than even to his pre-eminent skill in debate in the Commons, that he owes his present — and future — position in the Coalition Ministry.

No public man of the age is more indebted to the press, or knows so well how to use it. Not that he himself can be classed as a gifted, or even a facile, writer. His power is emphatically that of the tongue rather than of the pen. It is true that his " Parliamentary Letter," written in Welsh for the

Genedl Gymreig — of which paper he controlled the proprietary interest — was in many respects admirable as pen-and-ink sketches of the House of Commons of that day. But writing has ever been distasteful to him. From his first entry into St. Stephen^s, at least until he reached a position enabling him to keep a private secretary to look after his correspondence, his locker in the House of Commons was always full of letters, many of them unopened, all of them unanswered. In those days he was wont to say that an unanswered letter as a rule answered itself within a week or ten days. It was a standing joke among his intimates that the only way to get an answer from Lloyd George was to enclose in the letter two addressed and stamped postcards, one bearing the word "Yes," the other " No," or their equivalents to suit the case, one of which he would surely return by post. Even this plan, however, had its dangers — for he has been known to re-post both cards simultaneously.

A striking proof that he has not even yet quite got over this early weakness was afforded during his great speech in the House of Commons (June 23rd, 191 5), when he said that inviting all business men in any particular town to organize themselves and to assist the Government to develop the resources of the district " saves a good deal of correspondence, which I have always thought was the worst way of doing business." Those who know him and his methods will feel no surprise to learn that the statement, though made with all gravity, was greeted with " loud and prolonged laughter."

Bearing in mind this innate distaste for writing, we can readily understand that Mr. Lloyd George did well to choose politics in preference to journalism as a profession. His serious contributions to either literature or journalism, with the exception already mentioned (and even they ceased over twenty years ago), have for the greater part been only fugitive in character. The best, and best known, of these contributions was a solitary article on " The Welsh Political Programme " in one of the leading English Reviews, and published shortly before he first became a Cabinet Minister. That article, alas ! only serves to-day as a tombstone to mark the grave of buried Welsh hopes.

But no man living has made more effective use of the press — from The Times upward and downward. This is neither the time nor place to reveal professional secrets, but it is permissible to say and to demonstrate that working journalists all over the kingdom owe him a debt of gratitude for lightening their task of recording his speeches. That he, too, owes them more than he perhaps recognizes, is certainly no less true.

The modem slaves of the pen are beginning to realize that they cannot now, as of yore, count upon enjoying the privilege of a private rehearsal of his great speeches. Formerly a small " ring " of journalists would meet him by appointment just before the meeting ; and to them he dictated what he proposed saying — not reading from any manuscript, but only at best referring to pencilled notes on the back of an envelope, pacing up and down the room while speaking. Latterly, when having some weighty pronouncement to make, his private secretary is accustomed to meet the pressmen and dictate from a typewritten copy what Mr. Lloyd George will say. More recently still, at Manchester (June 3rd, 191 5), in delivering his first speech as Minister of Munitions, he made a further departure from earlier custom. He prepared no copy in advance for the press, but stipulated that no report of his speech should appear until he had himself revised it. He spoke for within four minutes of the full hour. Three hours after he finished speaking, a typewritten copy of his speech, making four full columns of the Manchester Guardian was submitted to, and carefully revised by him, he making a number of corrections therein.

This, however, is no solitary instance of the extreme care he exercises to ensure that what appears in the press accurately represents what he lo LIFE ROMANCE OF LLOYD GEORGE

wished to say. His speeches in Wales are, as a rule, dehvered in his native Welsh — a better medium for his frequently poetic imagery than is the more prosaic English. And even when the main address is in English, his peroration, in which he reaches his highest flights, is most frequently delivered in Welsh — which he claims, no doubt justly, to be the language of Paradise. But if the speech is a really important one {e.g.^ his great speech at the Carnarvon Pavilion, six years ago, on his first historic Budget), he will not run the risk of having his peroration mauled and his views possibly distorted in translation, but supplies his own " authorized English translation " of the Welsh portions of his speech.

He has utilized the press, too, in other directions and in other spheres as no legislator ever did before. If he has not exactly legislated by leaflet he has certainly instructed by pamphlet. In creating a specialized literature to launch the administration of the Insurance Act, he established a precedent which his successor at the Exchequer is now following with reference to National Thrift and the new War Loan. But never was there in the whole history of British legislation such a campaign as that of Mr. Lloyd George to explain the provisions and effect of the Insurance Act. In Erse and in Gaelic, in Welsh and in English, the

THE MAN AND HIS METHODS ii

whole kingdom was, by means of the printing press, instructed in the complexities of one of the most intricate legislative measures which ever tried a people's patience.

The Nation, in a recent issue (June 19th, 191 5), paraphrased the fourth of the causes to which the statesman already referred to attributes Mr. Lloyd George's success into " a brilliant but hasty intelligence." The Nezu Statesman of the same date puts it more bluntly as " sheer political adroitness " producing " a record of enormously energetic and courageous muddle" An epigrammatic colleague, on the other hand, has summed up his methods and disposition as being " cool and callous." A popular magazine has paid him the doubtful compliment of picturing " The Human Side of Lloyd George " — as though, Kaiser-like, the Minister of Munitions possessed also either, or both, a " Divine " and an " Inhuman " side. Where great specialists thus notoriously disagree, it hardly becomes a mere general practitioner to express an opinion. Still, when in later chapters I come to deal with some of the fruits of this " brilliant but hasty intelligence," the reader will be better able to determine which of these estimates of Mr. Lloyd George's abilities is the most approximately correct.

Chapter II Early Influences And Inspirations

It was the environments of his childhood that shaped, if they did not create, the environments of Mr. Lloyd George's manhood. Though born in Manchester, he is essentially a child of the Welsh cottage, a son of the soil of Wales — but of a Wales very different from that we see to-day, and of a Wales in the transformation of which he has played a most prominent part.

By heredity the son of a village schoolmaster; by adoption and tuition the son of a village shoemaker; politically the son of a village nationalist; in religion the product of the humblest of village meeting-houses — all his immediate formative environments, influences, and instructors, have been essentially of the village. But the village has ever been the backbone of Britain's power on sea and land, in court and schools — as it is to-day the heart that pounds the life blood pulsing through the veins of Welsh Nonconformity.

And each of these four village parentages, typical of all that is best in village life, exercised the influence of heredity upon the village boy, and upon his development into the Imperial Statesman. The first and earliest of these influences was that of the mother, so early widowed, so sorely tried, so greatly blessed. Mrs. George proved herself as ideal a mother as she had been a faithful helpmate in the fullest sense of the word. She was one of those rare and beautiful characters who surround themselves with an atmosphere of faith and hope, of courage and beneficence, possessing a compelling inspiration for those with whom they come into intimate contact. A friend who knew Mr. Lloyd George's parents intimately during their happy but all too brief married life, thus estimates Mrs. George's character at that period : —

'* She was so cheerful, bright, and sweet at all times, without a shade or shadow, but always serene. She had, moreover, that kind of refinement which, with the grace of God in her heart so apparsnt and so real, was lil^e a halo enveloping her, and influencing to such a degree all who had the privilege of her friendship, that to live with her was to enjoy heaven."

Her days of married happiness proved short. Her husband succumbed to an acute attack of pneumonia, and after a week's illness left her with two orphaned children — a third and posthumous child, named William after his father, adding to her responsibilities shortly after her return to her old home at Llanystumdwy. During the period of her long widowhood the estimate given above of her character was put to a very severe test. The world, which has a rough and ready method of judging by results, knows that she must have played the difficult part Providence assigned her, with a high appreciation of the responsibilities cast upon her by her husband's death and a noble devotion to the future interests of her children. But, withal, so quiet and unassuming, so retiring and self-effacing was she in all her ways, that it is only the privileged few who know even yet of the truly heroic spirit in which this fine Christian woman, with her good brother's assistance, brought up her children in the paths of righteousness and in the fear of the Lord.