HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
“Jog, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.”
Autolycus in SHAKESPEARE’S
_The Winter’s Tale_, Act IV, Sc. ii.
BUT, on the whole, it is the future rather than the past that rules the
mind of David Lloyd George.
To him the future has always been an unexplored miracle—ever in travail
with some new birth. To him, behind the veil of the coming time, there
always lies a possibility of some event such as the world has never
known—of some creation such as the world has never seen. He has moods
when he seems “fey” with his belief. “I am out to abolish slums,” he
cried one evening, in 1912, walking across London upon a winter’s night
beneath a starless sky. He meant it. His bitterest enemy could not have
laughed at that utterance if he had heard it.
In such moods he was at that time (1908-12) indeed “The little Brother
of the poor.” He was filled with a certain storming passion of pity, so
powerful that it seemed to destroy all obstacles—to bridge all
difficulties. All the accumulated memories of his own childhood—all the
recollections of the poor cottagers among whom he had been brought up,
all their sufferings and pains, all their oppressions and tragedies,
seemed to be moving behind him like some great tide and driving him on.
I remember his explaining once his own consciousness of the mark which
such an upbringing left on a man’s life. He was talking about the East
End Settlement movement, and of its attempt to bring the leisured
classes nearer to the workers. He was a little doubtful. “It is a gulf
which can never be bridged,” he said. “You people can never understand
what it is to be really hungry or out of work. The difference lies in
security. The poor man is always in danger, and he always knows it.”
It was such a knowledge that inspired him with his enthusiasm for Old
Age Pensions and for his Insurance Schemes. It was just this security
that he wanted to give to the life of the poor. And yet he has never
been a sentimentalist over their troubles. He looks at them, so to
speak, from the inside. The sentimentalism of the philanthropic middle
classes rather annoys him. What he always craves for the poor is
justice, and not charity. In the days of the Insurance Act he was
sincerely afraid of creating a dependent working class. He was surprised
when he received so little help in his contributory policy. “I will
never try to be good again,” he said laughingly one day. “They call me a
demagogue, and next time I will really be one.” Such was his chaff.
In conversation he first expressed the idea of social insurance by a
parallel from the Canadian farmer who insures his wheat against early
winter frosts. That was the image in which he expressed his sense of the
vast power of the modern State to build up a properly organised system
of individual security. Having once conceived this idea, the various
benefits came to him in waves of compassion—sickness, invalidity,
maternity, consumption. He worked all these benefits out from his own
experience of the sorrows of the poor. “I want to make the little
stranger welcome,” he said one day, talking about the maternity benefit.
“It is horrible to think that he should come trailing clouds of trouble
instead of ‘clouds of glory.’” The story of the consumptive benefits is
interesting. He had not felt the need of this benefit until one night he
read through a very powerful medical work describing the ravages of
consumption in modern Britain. The extent of the evil at once fully
dawned on him. He came down in the morning with his mind fully made up.
He went straight to the Treasury, called together his experts, told them
to put aside £1,500,000 to fight consumption,[143] and so created that
famous sanatorium benefit which is still proving only the first step
towards removing a gigantic evil.
He faced all these familiar troubles of modern life with a “divine
discontent” new to modern men. We all knew these things; but most of us
had become so familiar with them that our anger was blunted. Our
reforming temper had grown tired and stale. But this Welshman approached
the matter with some of the ardour of the revivalist. He would not
accept the ordinary excuses; he believed these evils to be curable.
Fresh from the Welsh hills, he flamed with a new surprise at the power
of poverty over modern civilisation. He showed some of the ingenuous
dismay of a surprised Gotama emerging from his garden. He realised that
private efforts had been tried and found inadequate. What he saw with a
flash was that the State alone could cope with the evils produced by the
State; the Government must become the parent and no longer the
stepmother of its own children.
Once he realised this idea he was eager to carry it into effect. He was
passing from one great effort to another—from the Insurance Act to the
Land Campaign—when the Great War burst upon him. Then the very elements
of civilisation had to be defended against an even greater peril.
It is recorded that the rebuilders of the Temple had to build every one
with “his sword girded by his side.”[144] There must have been times
when they had to lay down the trowel entirely and work with the sword
alone. Such a time came to Mr. Lloyd George in 1914; the trowel was only
laid down. Now it is being taken up again.
What struck the observer most in his achievements during those years
(1908-14) was his daring and originality. Plenty of clever English minds
had been working on these problems ever since 1886. But how little had
been done! How long we had had to wait for Pensions and Insurance! How
strangely academic and remote were all those University and West End
speculations on these problems! How quarrelsome were the
philanthropists! How divided were the English Labour leaders! Then from
outside came this zealous Welsh Crusader, and while all these people
were still talking he proceeded to act. When the world had recovered
from its surprise most of the persons concerned turned round and
attacked Mr. Lloyd George. However right he might be in his aim, there
was always sure to be something wrong with his methods. This attitude
frankly puzzled him. “Why! they talk as if I was trespassing,” he used
to say. “Is charity, then, a form of property? Is kindness a monopoly?”
The attitude of the doctors especially surprised him. “I have made a
discovery,” he said one day with a twinkle in his eye. “I have
discovered that disease is a vested interest!”
Throughout all these struggles over social reform Mr. Lloyd George
tempered his enthusiasm with a very even sense of political tactics. He
knew well that, to carry England with him, he must always have a great
political party at his back. There were times when this was not easy.
Neither of the great political party machines in this country is exactly
impassioned for new ideas. It is rather typical of the faithful party
man to view a new proposal with actual dislike. “Why not leave it all
alone?” is a common attitude with all parties.
Then there is the value of a grievance. There is even a type of party
man who actually regrets to see his cause succeed. “If we pass the Bill
we shall lose the cry!” you hear him say. “Mr. Lloyd George is passing
too many Acts of Parliament,” was the common complaint of the period
among the very faithful.
To this type of man the Budget of 1909-10 was rather a distracting
affair. They were always trying to “dilute” it. The Insurance Bill, too,
would certainly have been thrown over if Mr. Lloyd George had not staked
his fortunes on it; and, as to the Land Campaign, that was viewed with
open disfavour in the same quarters. For every party has its priesthood;
and in politics, as in religion, all priesthoods are conservative.
But, in spite of all this trouble within the party, Mr. Lloyd George was
always resolute not to quarrel with the machine. One of his fixed
principles was—“Keep the party machine on your side.” He was certainly
not a typical party man—far from it. He regarded the party as the
instrument and the cause as the end; whereas the typical party view is
that the cause is the instrument and the party the end. But he knew the
power of the machine; he often quoted Mr. Chamberlain as an instance
showing that in the end the machine won. “Mr. Chamberlain fought both of
the machines in turn,” he used to say, “and, in the end, both combined
against him and beat him.” Roosevelt was another case which impressed
him deeply. “Ah!” he commented, when that great man was beaten so
decisively in 1913, “Roosevelt ought not to have quarrelled with the
machine.”
On these grounds he has often accepted the second best in policy.
He has often allowed himself to be convinced against his will. After the
defeat of the Education Bill in 1906, for instance, he was as eager to
go back to the country as Mr. Gladstone after the Lords’ rejection of
Home Rule in 1893. Both these great fighters felt instinctively that a
party which accepts a defeat asks to be defeated again until it is
finally smashed. You cannot expect a country to vote for ever for a
party that accepts defeat as its proper portion. But in this case, as in
others, rather than quarrel with his party, he acquiesced in the
decision to go on.
Still, he was glad when the split with the Lords became irrevocable. It
happened that I had the fortune of announcing to him the resolution of
the Lords to throw out the Budget. It was down at Lord Renders beautiful
house near Guildford, where Mr. Lloyd George was staying for the last
time with that faithful Nestor of Welsh Liberalism. Mr. Lloyd George had
been very anxious. He knew that the wiser Unionist leaders in the Lords
had been in favour of accepting his Bill. He was afraid that the Lords
were going to refuse battle on grounds so favourable to their
assailants. When I told him the news his face shone. “The Lord,” he
cried, “has delivered them into our hands!”
In the same way, he has always been very slow to take the step of
resignation from high political office. How often have his
friends—generally a man’s worst advisers—urged him to resign over some
failure to gain his own way! But he well knows that there is nothing
more difficult in politics than the art of resigning opportunely. You
must have a great issue and you must have your people behind you. “You
cannot be always resigning,” was one of his favourite sayings during the
critical years of 1909-12. It is true that he often came near it, but he
would generally compromise the matter and pass on. He was equally
against Cabinets resigning in a hurry. After the second General Election
of 1910 there was a meeting when the Liberal Cabinet, wearied out with a
long struggle, was on the verge of resignation. Every member who spoke
at this fateful meeting had favoured resignation. Mr. Lloyd George felt
strongly opposed to it, but he was almost silenced by the unanimity of
his colleagues. At last he scribbled a line and threw it across to Mr.
Winston Churchill. “I feel strongly against resignation,” he wrote.
“What do you think?” Mr. Winston Churchill scribbled below: “If you feel
against it, speak against it.” Mr. Lloyd George spoke against it, and
spoke so persuasively that the idea of resignation was dropped.
Even on fundamental issues he would often accept personal defeat for the
time. He had to decide whether to go out into the wilderness or to work
with men to whom he was attached, and with whose ideas he broadly and
profoundly sympathised. When the draft of the new Home Rule Bill was
before the Cabinet in 1910 he moved to exclude Protestant Ulster. He
made the longest speech he had ever addressed to a Cabinet on that
issue. He prophesied what was certainly coming—the resistance of
Ulster; the refusal of Protestant England to join in coercing her; the
hesitation of the Government to carry out their Act. He was in favour of
telling the Irish Party straightaway that the Government of 1910 was not
strong enough to include Ulster in the Home Rule Bill. He would have
left the Irish Party to accept or reject the Bill as it would have then
stood. He himself believed that in such a case Ulster would come in
during the parliamentary discussions on the Bill. He was defeated in his
proposal. Being defeated, he loyally stood by the Cabinet and steadily
supported the Bill. It was not until long afterwards, when he himself
became Prime Minister and responsible for policy, that he revealed to
the world in that dramatic speech which drove the Irish Party out of the
House, the fact that he had always been in favour of the exclusion of
Ulster.
In literature and art Mr. Lloyd George does not pretend to be among the
elect. He gives himself no airs and has no pretensions. He is just
himself. He states, without parley, his own genuine opinions on books
and pictures; and, as that is the rarest habit in the world, it is
always interesting. Nine out of ten literary and artistic judgments are
reflections or echoes—repeated at second-hand from some bolder speaker,
or even vaguely salvaged from the dim abysses of memory. The most
refreshing thing in the world, therefore, is an honest, fresh, and
original judgment. It is characteristic of Mr. Lloyd George that he
never hesitates to give that in any company.
In literature he votes with both hands for Byron, perhaps because Byron
is the poet of liberty, and also because that great writer, with all his
faults, has the quality of daring. But he boldly contends that the Welsh
are among the greatest of modern poets; and he will recite their verses
at large, even to English friends, in order to confirm his claim.
In prose, he is devoted to George Meredith.
In music, he places Handel first among his heroes. There, again, in
great works like the _Messiah_, he seems to discover some quality of
sublimity which elates and inspires him.
But there, again, his living passion is really nationalist and based on
national affections. The only music that profoundly moves him—touches
his soul—is the music of the old Welsh hymns and folk-songs. Not long
ago he spoke up boldly for the music and literature of his own nation
before all the world.[145] There he voiced his own deepest conviction on
these matters. The music and songs of his own people strike the deepest
chord in his nature.
In religion his outlook always seems to be broadly Christian rather than
sectarian. Brought up in his uncle’s creed of the “Disciples of Christ,”
which is really an attempt to hark back to the purity of the early
Gospel teaching, he has an inherited hatred for dogmas. He is very fond
of such parables as those of the Good Samaritan, which he instinctively
regards as the best comment on the claims of priestcraft.
He has a profound interest in all forms of Christianity. There was a
time, many years ago, when he was fond of going the round of the
Churches. He would also listen in the old days with the closest interest
to the discourses of the Salvationist preachers on Wandsworth Common;
and he would often contribute to their collections, and talk to their
officers. And yet, at the other extreme, he has always had a curious
admiration for Roman Catholicism. He would sometimes argue that the
Methodist discipline in Wales was founded on the Catholic model. I
remember going with him into a London Catholic Church where he listened
with rapt attention to the chanting of the Latin psalms. There was
something in the roll of the language which penetrated and held him. But
he was always a great listener. He would never complain at the length of
a sermon. When at Brighton he would take his friends to listen to the
preaching of a young Nonconformist minister at whose feet he sat with
whole-hearted admiration. He would always argue that the standard of
preaching among the Nonconformists had steadily risen and was now higher
than among the Anglicans. He attributed that fact very largely to
post-graduate colleges like Mansfield. He was a great admirer of
Principal Fairbairn, and would listen to that great man’s hour-long
discourses without moving an eyelid.
Wit is his most sparkling characteristic; and there are few companies of
talkers among whom he is not the wittiest. His laugh will change the
mood of the gravest men, just as his smile has been known to affect the
attitude of immense multitudes. And yet wit is not his greatest gift. I
should place higher that power of insight into deep truths which he will
display in sympathetic company. Generally the theme of this insight will
be politics; and there is no subject which he is more swift to
illuminate with telling phrase. In these moods he will seem to be
looking at all parties, and even at himself, from the outside. It is an
extraordinary gift of detachment, literary and artistic in its nature,
and peculiarly rare in a party politician. It goes with a Celtic love of
whimsical paradox, like the talk of a man at his ease, a little
disturbing to the strait sect of the faithful party men.
But it will not always be politics that his mind plays on in this
manner. In moments of relaxation he will take a wider range. Sometimes
it will be this very subject of religion, which is never very far absent
from his thoughts. “Christianity,” he said to me once, “is like a
gold-mine. We are always imagining that it is exhausted, and that no
more gold can come out of it. Then humanity digs a little deeper, and it
always comes across a fresh seam.” He always seems to be digging a
little deeper himself.
His judgments of great men who came before are always just a little
inclined to severity, perhaps as a rebound from the snobbery of history.
Looking round at that great gallery of the Englishmen of Napoleonic days
which adorns the breakfast-room at 10, Downing Street—Pitt, Wellington,
Nelson, Fox, Burke—he said once: “None of them were very great—the
greatest of them all was the man in the little frame in the corner—the
man they honoured least—the Irishman, Edmund Burke.” Perhaps it was the
orator and the thinker in Burke that drew him. Or perhaps, even more,
the Celt.
But it would be unfair to take him too seriously in these judgments. He
is above all things a conversationalist in regard to all such matters.
It is only in politics that he would ask to be taken as an expert. There
he works very gravely and arduously. It is sometimes said that he does
not read much. When he can, indeed, he prefers, like many very busy men,
to acquire knowledge by the ear; and he likes to meet men who know, and
to learn from them. But he can read widely and deeply when he thinks it
necessary. He will read steadily through great Blue-books when he is
preparing a parliamentary case; and when he was preparing for the
Insurance Act he studied deeply and widely the whole literature of
English social conditions, and in the parliamentary debates he displayed
astonishing mastery.
He is a great newspaper reader. It is his habit to read practically the
chief daily newspapers in bed in the morning before he comes down to
breakfast; and it is somewhat disconcerting for his breakfast guests to
discover that he already knows all the news of the day. He never reads
either a newspaper or a letter at any meal. He talks and attends to his
guests, as every civilised host should do.
“He always speaks to me as if I were the only person in the world,” said
one who met him rarely, and was opposed to him in politics. That
utterance explains, perhaps, better than any other the secret of his
social power. He has a profound sense of equality, and will treat the
humblest human being as courteously as the highest. He is always very
popular with humble people who serve him, such as hall-porters or
maid-servants.
Not, indeed, that he suffers from that inverted snobbery which puts its
boots on drawing-room sofas and reserves its insolence for crowned
heads. It is well known that King George V and Mr. Lloyd George are
sincere friends, and bound by mutual respect and admiration. The
friendship began after the death of the King’s father, and has deepened
ever since. They have much in common—habits of arduous industry, the
love of home and family, the passion for simple things. In private he
constantly expresses his deep esteem and regard for the King as a man
and a father. He is thoroughly at home in that happy domestic atmosphere
of the present Court.
He is a splendid travelling companion; he loves the novelty and stimulus
of foreign touring. He likes the friendly open-air life of foreign
capitals; and he is never tired of exploring new cities. They come back
now as radiant memories—those travels over Europe which we took
together in earlier, peaceful days—in France and the Tyrol, over plains
and mountains, through villages and cities.
One experience comes vividly back. We were staying in a little Tyrolese
village named Vent. Some of us, being mountain climbers by election, had
set off at 3 a.m., the climber’s hour, to mount a high snow-peak, the
Similaun. We returned in the afternoon to find that Mr. Lloyd George had
disappeared from the inn.
He returned later and told us his experience. He had tired of his
reading, looked up at the glistening peaks and decided that he, too,
could and would climb mountains. He had taken his stick, set off alone,
and proceeded to attack the nearest peak, without ice-axe or guide. He
surmounted a rock-ridge, crossed a glacier, and reached a distant
height. None of us could comprehend how he managed to return alive.
There it is again, in small matters as in big—this note of daring, of
refusal to accept defeat, of assertive invincibility. It is the key-note
of his character. In every study of David Lloyd George it pursues you
everywhere and all the time.
There never was a time in human history when such a quality was more
needed. Frowning heights lie behind and in front of—roaring cataracts
of catastrophe—gleaming peaks of suffering and sacrifice—frozen
glaciers of death, seamed and crevassed with agony. May he help us to
win through!
-----
[143] As a capital sum for building, in addition to £1,000,000 a year
for maintenance out of the Insurance Fund. Even these sums have proved
quite inadequate.
[144] Nehemiah IV, 8.
[145] At the Welsh Eisteddfod of 1917.