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.
APPENDIX
MR. LLOYD GEORGE ON AMERICA AND THE EUROPEAN WAR
On the anniversary of President Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1916,
Mr. Lloyd George sent a remarkable message to the American people
comparing the American Civil War with the European conflict. By the
courtesy of the New York _Times_ this message is presented here.
A LINCOLN DAY MESSAGE
I am very glad to respond to your request for a message for publication
on Lincoln Day. I am glad because to my mind Abraham Lincoln has
always been one of the very first of the world's statesmen, because I
believe that the battle which we have been fighting is at bottom the
same battle which your countrymen fought under Lincoln's leadership
more than fifty years ago, and most of all, perhaps, because I desire
to say how much I welcome the proof which the last few days have
afforded that the American people are coming to realize this, too.
Lincoln's life was devoted to the cause of human freedom. From the day
when he first recognized what slavery meant he bent all his energies to
its eradication from American soil. Yet after years of patient effort
he was driven to realize that it was not a mere question of abolishing
slavery in the Southern States, but that bound up with it was a larger
issue: That unless the Union abolished slavery, slavery would break up
the Union.
Faced by this alternative, he did not shrink, after every other method
had failed, from vindicating both Union and freedom by the terrible
instrument of war. Nor after the die for war had been cast did he
hesitate to call upon his countrymen to make sacrifice upon sacrifice,
to submit to limitation upon limitation of their personal freedom,
until, in his own words, there was a new birth of freedom in your land.
Is there not a strange similarity between this battle, which we are
fighting here in Europe, and that which Lincoln fought? Has there not
grown up in this continent a new form of slavery, a militarist slavery,
which has not only been crushing out the freedom of the people under
its control, but which in recent years has also been moving toward
crushing out freedom and fraternity in all Europe as well?
Is it not true that it is to the militarist system of government which
centers in Berlin that every open-minded man who is familiar with past
history would point as being the ultimate source of all the expansion
of armaments, of all the international unrest, and of the failure of
all movements toward co-operation and harmony among nations during the
last twenty years?
We were reluctant, and many of us refused to believe that any sane
rulers would deliberately drench Europe in its own blood, so we did not
face the facts until it was almost too late. It was not until August,
1914, that it became clear to us, as it became clear to Lincoln in
1861, that the issue was not to be settled by pacific means, and that
either the machine which controlled the destinies of Germany would
destroy the liberty of Europe or the people of Europe must defeat its
purpose and its prestige by the supreme sacrifice of war. It was the
ultimatum to Serbia and the ruthless attack upon Belgium and France
which followed because the nations of Europe would not tolerate the
obliteration of the independence of a free people without conference
and by the sword, which revealed to us all the implacable nature of the
struggle which lay before us.
It has been difficult for a nation separated from Europe by three
thousand miles of sea and without political connections with its
peoples, to appreciate fully what was at stake in the war. In your
Civil War many of our ancestors were blind. Lord Russell hinted at an
early peace. Even Gladstone declared "we have no faith in the
propagation of free institutions at the point of the sword." It was
left for John Bright, that man of all others who most loved peace and
hated war, to testify that when our statesmen "were hostile or coldly
neutral the British people clung to freedom with an unfaltering trust."
But I think that America now sees that it is human unity and freedom
which are again being fought for in this war.
The American people under Lincoln fought not a war of conquest, but a
war of liberation. We to-day are fighting not a war of conquest, but a
war of liberation--a liberation not of ourselves alone, but of all the
world, from that body of barbarous doctrine and inhuman practice which
has estranged nations, has held back the unity and progress of the
world, and which has stood revealed in all its deadly iniquity in the
course of this war.
In such wars for liberty there can be no compromise. They are either
won or lost. In your case it was freedom and unity or slavery and
separation, in our case military power, tyrannously used, will have
succeeded in tearing up treaties and trampling on the rights of others,
or liberty and public right will have prevailed. Therefore, we believe
that the war must be fought out to a finish, for on such an issue there
can be no such thing as a drawn war.
In holding this conviction, we have been inspired and strengthened
beyond measure by the example and the words of your great President.
Once the conflict had been joined, he did not shrink from bloodshed. I
have often been struck at the growth of both tenderness and stern
determination in the face of Lincoln, as shown in his photographs, as
the war went on.
Despite his abhorrence of all that was entailed, he persisted in it
because he knew that he was sparing life by losing it, that if he
agreed to compromise, the blood that had been shed on a hundred fields
would have been shed in vain, that the task of creating a united nation
of free men would only have to be undertaken at even greater cost at
some later day. It would, indeed, be impossible to state our faith
more clearly than Lincoln stated it himself at the end of 1864.
"On careful consideration," he said, "of all the evidence it seems to
me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could
result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the
Union, precisely what we will not and cannot give. His declarations to
this effect are explicit and oft repeated. He does not deceive us. He
affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves; . . . between him and us the
issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can
only be tried by war and decided by victory."
That was the judgment of the greatest statesman of the nineteenth
century during the last great war for human liberty. It is the
judgment of this nation and of its fellow-nations overseas to-day.
"Our armies," said Lincoln, "are ministers of good, not evil." So do
we believe. And through all the carnage and suffering and conflicting
motives of the Civil War, Lincoln held steadfastly to the belief that
it was the freedom of the people to govern themselves which was the
fundamental issue at stake. So do we to-day. For when the people of
central Europe accept the peace which is offered them by the Allies,
not only will the allied peoples be free, as they have never been free
before, but the German people, too, will find that in losing their
dream of an empire over others, they have found self-government for
themselves.
D. LLOYD GEORGE.
THE END