_LLOYD GEORGE_
I stepped out of the taxi, and found myself in front of three
old-fashioned houses. The vicinity was one of distinction; but the
houses before me, dwarfed by the Privy Council Building and the Foreign
Office, and hard by the Parliament Buildings, were the strays of
another century. Westminster Abbey, not far away, gives them an excuse
for staying. Looking up, I read, "The First Lord of the Treasury, No.
10," and knew that I was before the portals of historic "10 Downing
Street," for a century and a half now, with only a few intervals, the
official home of Britain's Prime Ministers, and in reality the "White
House" of the United Kingdom.
I lifted the ancient knocker that for perhaps three centuries has
announced guests and that for at least a century and a half has called
attendants to usher in the statesmen and the politicians of the earth.
The door swung open, and a quiet man dressed in a business suit took my
card.
About me on the high walls of a small square hall hung the antlered
heads of deer. I followed down a long and simple but impressive
passage to another hall, where I ran, head on, into a well-set-up
gentleman of thirty-nine,--Major Waldorf Astor,--who was coming to
meet me. He was delightfully informal. Through another waiting-room
one passes into the Council-Chamber of the War Cabinet. Here all the
British Cabinets have met since the Prime Minister established himself
at "10 Downing Street."
The room is worthy of the greatness it has treasured. There are
bookshelves about its long walls, and the lighting is good. The books
are scarcely visible now, for they are curtained closely with maps
and charts; here the far-flung battle lines of the Empire, which have
become the front of civilization, are daily traced by the fingers of
the men whose hands hold Democracy's destiny. The eastern end of the
chamber is flanked on each side by two chaste Corinthian columns. A
great table commands the centre of the room. It is covered with green
baize and well set off by heavy, formal chairs. The room was furnished
with a larger cabinet in mind; but every session of the War Council is
attended by those responsible for the numberless leadership tasks of
the struggle, and there are seldom vacant places.
There is only one picture in the room now. Above the mantelpiece which
tops the fireplace, on the southern side, and directly behind the chair
of David Lloyd George it hangs, a portrait of Francis Bacon. He was
Lord Chancellor once, although he is better remembered as a master of
human thought.
It is said that the present Prime Minister uses the chamber as his
workshop, that it is his favorite room, and that he is more often in
it than anywhere else. Perhaps because of its convenience--doors open
out from it into the rooms of secretaries; and then, too, it is large
enough to receive special deputations without waste of energy or time.
Perhaps this convenience of the place attracts the leader in whom
are centred now the British Empire's hopes and fears, or is it the
associations of the chamber that call him?
Here sat Pitt and his cabinets. Here, when the word came from
Austerlitz, Pitt said, as he pointed to the map of Europe that hung
then where it hangs now, "Roll it up; it won't be needed for another
ten years!" Here they stood with ringing cheers for Trafalgar, and here
broke the glory of Waterloo. Here Disraeli won the Suez Canal, and
Gladstone's mighty form once filled the chair before the fire. Does
the gigantic little Welshman lift his head betimes and listen for the
voices of the Past? If he does (and his eyes are not the hard eyes of
a man who does not dream), he never fails to hear words prophetic of
triumph, for this room is a Chamber of Conquerors.
As Major Astor greeted me, we turned to the right; and there on the
stairway, with his left hand resting lightly on the banister, and a
smile lighting his face, stood the Prime Minister. I shall always be
glad that I saw him thus. He had just returned from Versailles, where
matters of vast and immediate importance to the western front were
discussed and settled. England did not yet know that he had arrived.
The morrow was to precipitate him into one of the crucial battles of
his ministry.
As he stood there he knew of the impending struggle--and he
smiled!--not a perfunctory tremor of the lips, but a warming glow that
made the great hall a friendly place. The smile was not for me, but for
the gentleman at my side. Mr. Astor is a member of the Prime Minister's
personal staff, and by his own worth a favorite and close friend of his
chief.
David Lloyd George in the moment when I saw him on the stairway
answered any question that may have been in my mind as to the personal
quality of his leadership; he is virile and magnetic. Square of
shoulder and deep-chested, with a straight neck that gives his fine
head an erect setting, he has the appearance of added height that few
stocky men possess. His color is good; his long hair, which is inclined
to curl at the ends, is turning rapidly now; his eyes are clear, and
shine; his voice is rich, and sings. He is one of those irresistible
personalities, a man who not only dominates and rules by the mastership
of his soul as well as by right of his mental genius, but who binds
men to himself. His is the complete opposite of the phlegmatic,
judicial temperament; his keen calculations in debate, his weighing
of an opponent in a political tourney, are the decisions of an almost
unerring intuition, and not the conclusions of a cold casuist.
His oratory and his whole leadership are first of the heart. His
enemies have assailed him at this point, but they have not found it a
vulnerable one. It is the heart of the world that bleeds and fights
and triumphs. Only a master of the language of the soul can speak to
it and for it, can marshal its forces and inspire them to superhuman
activities, can challenge it over a Calvary and lead it to victory.
Perhaps no other man in Europe has been so long familiar to the
American people; certainly no other political leader of the Old World
has been so popular with the masses in America as Lloyd George. When he
risked his life to deliver his soul against the Boer War, the United
States cried, "Bravo!" and in his battle with landlordism, his struggle
with the House of Lords, his championing of the rights of labor, and
his unrelenting efforts to better the conditions surrounding the poor,
he had the heart of America with him.
The story of his life is a familiar one and of the kind that brings
a mist to the eyes and a tightening to the throat, as do the tales
of the boyhood of Lincoln and Hanly and Grant. He was born in a wee
house of Manchester, this Welshman; but an uncle, whose pride and joy
he never ceased to be, reared the future statesman among the hills of
Wales. The childhood of Lloyd George was typical of the simple customs
and the religious faith of his people. He was an active boy. His
inclinations from the beginning were toward the platform and public
life. In Wales, singers and poets and orators are born, not educated;
an education follows, an education in which environment looms large;
but a true Welshman could not, if he would, bury _himself_ in the books
of universities, the sophistries of a profession, or the formalities of
a calling. He remains Nature's child.
The activities of Mr. Lloyd George in connection with the temperance
reform began in his childhood when he "spoke the pieces" and
participated in the programmes of the Band of Hope. The ardor of his
youth fired many an audience of his townspeople with an enthusiasm for
"teetotalism" and a determination to conquer the traffic in spirits.
It was twenty-eight years ago that he said: "I am a simple Welsh lad,
taught, ever since I learned to lisp the words of my wild tongue, that
'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' This traffic,
having sown destruction and death, must reap for itself a fruitful
harvest of destruction and crime."
But it has been since the beginning of the war that David Lloyd George
has delivered his supreme philippics against the "Trade." As Minister
of Munitions and as Chancellor of the Exchequer he had denounced rum as
the super-traitor of them all. It is not to be doubted that the words,
"_We are fighting Germany, Austria, and drink, and so far as I can see
the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink_," more than any other
words spoken in either the Old World or the New have advanced Democracy
toward total prohibition. They were the weights that turned the balance
in Canada and in a dozen States of the American Union. They brought
demoralization to the liquor forces. Their unequivocating charge of
disloyalty against drink has been irresistible.
[Illustration: A LETTER FROM LLOYD GEORGE TO THE AUTHOR, INDICATING
HIS CONTINUED INTEREST IN THE CAMPAIGN FOR PROHIBITION OF THE LIQUOR
TRAFFIC.]
March 25th., 1918.
Dear Dr. Poling,
I am following with great interest the War restrictions on alcohol
actually enforced and those under consideration in the United
States of America.
We have ourselves not been neglectful of the necessities imposed by
War. We have stopped entirely the manufacture of spirits; we have
cut down the brewing of beer by more than two-thirds and the hours
during which it can be sold to less than one third.
Should the exigencies of War necessitate further restrictions we
shall follow with interest your campaign for the enforcement of War
Prohibition in the United States of America.
Yours truly,
D. Lloyd George
We must grant that the Prime Minister has not been fortunate in some of
his words used to deny the petitions of his temperance constituents;
that some of his "explanations" have seemed at least to apologize for
these brave declarations of another time, to discredit them because of
their age. The heart of the church in Britain, where I found it less
than enthusiastically friendly toward the Prime Minister, was a heart
more of sorrow than of bitterness, the sorrow of a disappointment, a
disappointment that was great because so much had been expected.
But I am yet to be convinced that David Lloyd George has turned away
from "the God of his fathers" and the idealism of his youth; and I am
able, I think, to appreciate in a small way the circumstances that have
made a great man sometimes silent in order that he may have from many
discordant voices the _one_ message, "_Get on with the war!_"
Again it is the _war_! There can be but one task now. The Prime
Minister, with appalling responsibility for the life of the Empire,
surrounded by men of all political faiths and representatives of every
class, is no longer merely a spokesman, a prophet, a minister, an
executive; in him concentrate to such an extent the directing agencies
of the country that he has become in fact the administration of the
Government.
When I stepped away from "10 Downing Street," I had these words ringing
in my ears: "_The Prime Minister has not changed_." I believe that the
words are true. I shall continue to believe in the man about whom they
were said. And, when he speaks again, I shall not be surprised.
I walked back to my hotel. On the way I lingered by the Thames, where
only the swift patrol-boats were stirring. There was no moon, and a
deep mist closed the sky channel to the pirate fleet. The city was in
darkness and in peace. Up the Strand I walked to Nelson's monument, and
in the lee of an old building across from it I stood and studied its
shadowy outline. The mighty shaft was a promise from the past in which
justice did not fail, in which freedom was not lost. It made me strong.
The night became as the day, for in it was opened the window of hope.
The sum of the experiences of the past two hours totalled the assurance
of victory.