Part 24

But it was not the same Lloyd George who had sounded the call for Military and Industrial Conscription from the Peaks of Empire. Another year of war had etched the travail of its long agony upon his features, saddened the eyes that had always beheld the Vision of the Greater Things. The little man was fresh from the front and full of all that its mighty sacrifice betokened not only to the embattled nations but to the world as well.

Though we spoke of Politics, Presidents and the Great Social Forces that so far as England was concerned acknowledged him as leader, the current of speech always swept back to war and its significance for us.

"Since the war means so much to us," I said, "have you no message for America?"

Throughout our talk he had sat in a low chair sometimes tilting it backward as he swayed with the vehemency of his words. Suddenly he became still. He turned his head and looked dreamily out the window at his left where he could see the throng of Whitehall as it swept back and forth along London's Great Military Way.

Then rising slowly and with eloquent gesture and trembling voice (he might have been speaking to thousands instead of one person), he said:

"The hope of the world is that America will realise the call that Destiny is making to her in tones that are getting louder and more insistent as the terrible months go by. That Destiny lies in the enforcement of respect for International Law and International Rights."

It was a pregnant and unforgettable moment. From the Throne Room of a Mighty Conflict England's War Lord was sounding the note of a distant process of peace.

If you had probed behind this kindling utterance you would have seen with Lloyd George himself that beyond the flaming battle-lines and past the tumult of a World at War was the hope of some far-away Tribunal that would judge nations and keep them, just as individuals are kept, in the path of Right and Humanity.

But before any such bloodless antidote can be applied to International Dispute, to quote Lloyd George again: "This war must be fought to a finish."

These final words, snapped like a whip-lash and emphasised with a fist-beat on the table, meant that England would see her Titan Task through and if for no other reason because the man who drives the war gods wills it so. What sort of man is this who goes from post to post with inspired faith and unfailing execution? What are the qualities that have lifted him from obscure provincial solicitor to be the Prop of a People?

"Let George do it," has become the chronic plea of all Britain in her time of trial. How does he do it?

To understand any man you must get at his beginnings. Thus to appreciate Lloyd George you must first know that he is Welsh and this means that he was cradled in revolt. He must have come into the world crying protest. He was reared in a land of frowning crags and lovely dales, of mingled snow and sunshine, of poetry and passion. About him love of liberty clashed with vested tyranny. These conflicting things shaped his character, entered into his very being and made him temperamentally a creature of magnificent ironies.

But this conflict did not end with emotion. All his life Contrast, sometimes grotesque but always dramatic, has marked him for its own. You behold the Apostle of Peace who once espoused the Boer, translated into the flaming Disciple and Maker of War through the Rape of Belgium. You see the fiery Radical, jeered and despised by the Aristocracy, become the Protector of Peers. No wonder he stands to-day as the most picturesque, compelling and challenging figure of the English speaking race. Only one other man--Theodore Roosevelt--vies with him for this many-sided distinction.

The son of a village schoolmaster who died when he was scarcely three: the ward of a shoe-maker who was also inspired lay-preacher: the political protege of a Militant Nationalist whose heart bled at the oppression of the Welsh, Lloyd George early looked out upon a life smarting with grievance and clamouring to be free. Knowing this, you can understand that the dominant characteristic of this man is to rebel against established order. Swaddled in Democracy, he became its Embodiment and its Voice.

The world knows about the Lloyd George childhood spent amidst poverty in a Welsh village. The big-eyed boy ate, thought and dreamed in Welsh, "the language that meant a daily fare of barley bread." When he learned English it was like acquiring a foreign tongue. He grew up amid a great revival of Welsh art, letters and religion that stirred his soul. He missed the pulpit by a narrow margin, yet he has never lost the evangelistic fervour which is one of the secrets of his control and command of people.

With the alphabet Lloyd George absorbed the wrongs of his people and they were many. The Welsh had a double bondage: the grasp of the Landlord and the Thrall of the Church. All about him quivered the aspiration for a free land, a free people and a free religion. In those days Wales was like another Ireland with all the hardship that Eviction imposes.

The call to leadership came early. As a boy in school he led his mates in rebellion against the drastic dictates of a Church which prescribed liberty of religious thoughts and speech. He became the Apostle of Nonconformity and for it waged some of his fiercest battles.

Always the gift of oratory was his. He preached temperance almost with his advent into his teens: he was a convincing speaker before most boys talked straight.

In due time Lloyd George became a solicitor but it was merely the step into public life. To plead is instinct with him and with advocacy of a case in court he was always urging some reform for his little country. Politics was meat and drink to him and he stood for Parliament. An ardent Home Ruler, he swayed his followers with such intensity that what came to be known as Lloyd George's Battle Song sprang into being. Sung to the American tune of "Marching Through Georgia" it was hailed as the fighting hymn of Welsh Nationalism. Two lines show where the young Welsh lawyer stood in his early twenties: they also point his whole future:

"The Grand Young Man will triumph, Lloyd George will win the day----"

There is something Lincoln-like in the spectacle of his first struggle. This lowly lad fought the forces of "Squirearchy and Hierarchy." The Tories hurled at him the anathema that he "had been born in a cottage."

"Ah," replied Lloyd George, when he heard of it: "the Tories have not realised that the day of the cottage-bred man has dawned."

Before he got through he was destined to show, that so far as opportunity was concerned, the Cottage in Great Britain was to be on a par with a Palace.

As you analyse Lloyd George's life you find that he has always been a sort of Human Lightning Rod that attracted the bolts of abuse. A campaign meant violent controversy, frequently physical conflict. The reason was that he always stated his cause so violently as to arouse bitter resentment.

Into his first election he flung himself with the fury of youth and the eager passion of a zealot. He threw conventional Liberalism to the wind and made a fight for a Free and United Wales. He frankly believed himself to be the inspired leader of his people: often his meetings became riots. More than once he was warned that the Tories would kill him and on several occasions he narrowly escaped death. Once while riding with his wife in an open carriage through the streets of Bangor he was assailed by a hooting, jeering mob. Some one threw a blazing fire ball, dipped in paraffine, into the vehicle. It knocked off the candidate's hat and fell into Mrs. Lloyd George's lap setting her afire. Lloyd George threw off his coat, smothered the flames and after finding that the innocent victim of the assault was uninjured, calmly proceeded to the Town Hall where he spoke, accompanied by a fusillade of stones which smashed every window in the structure.

In this campaign, as in all succeeding ones, Lloyd George used the full powers of press publicity. He made reporters his confidants. Often he rehearsed his speeches before them, striding up and down and declaiming as passionately as if he were facing huge audiences. In fact he acquired an interest in a group of Welsh papers.

Already Welsh chieftainship was being crystallised in the aggressive little fire-eater. Anticipating the coming call of the Mother Country she was laying her burdens on his stalwart shoulders. And what George was now doing for Wales he was soon to do in the larger arena of the Empire.

Once in Parliament Lloyd George was no man's man. He became a free lance and while sometimes he ran amuck his cause was always the cause of his people.