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.
"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.