Part 27

"Then put up tents," snapped the little man, "and we will work under canvas."

Realising that his principal weapons were machines, Lloyd George took a census of all the machinery in the United Kingdom and got every pound of productive capacity down on paper. He was not long in finding out why the ammunition output was shy. Only a fifth of the lathes and tools used for Government work ran at night. "These machines must work every hour of the twenty-four," he said. Before a fortnight had passed every munitions mill ground incessantly.

These machines needed adequate manning. Lloyd George thereupon created the plan that enlisted the new army of Munitions Volunteers. Nelson-like he issued the thrilling proclamation that England expected every machine to do its duty. It meant the end of restricted output.

With the ban off restriction he likewise clamped the lid down on drink. Munitions workers could only go to the public houses within certain hours: the man who brought liquor into a Government controlled plant faced fines and if the offence was repeated, a still more drastic punishment.

Lloyd George began a censorship of labour which disclosed the fact that many skilled workers were wasting time on unskilled tasks. Lloyd George now began to dilute the skilled forces with unskilled who included thousands of women.

Right here came the first battle. Labour rebelled. It could find a way to get liquor but it resented dilution and cried out against capacity output. The Shell Master again became the Conciliator. He curbed the wild horses, agreeing to a restoration of pre-war shop conditions as soon as peace came. All he knew was the fact that the guns hungered and that it was up to him to feed them.

The wheels were not whirring fast enough to suit Lloyd George. "We must build our own factories," he said. Almost over night rose the mills whose slogan was "English shells for English guns." In speeding up the English output the Welshman was also equipping England to meet coming needs, laying the first stone of the structure that is fast becoming an Empire Self-Contained.

Lloyd George realised that he could not run every munitions plant, whereupon he organised local Boards of Control in the great ordnance centres like Woolwich, Sheffield, Newcastle and Middleboro. Each became a separate industrial principality but all bound up by hooks of steel to the Little Wizard who sat enthroned at Whitehall.

England became a vast arsenal, throbbing with ceaseless activity. The smoke that trailed from the myriad stacks was the banner of a new and triumphant faith in the future.

What was the result? Up and down the western battle front English cannon spoke in terms of victory. No longer was British gunner required to husband shells: to meet crash with silence. He hurled back steel for steel and all because England's Hope had answered England's Call. Lloyd George had done it again.

I first met Lloyd George during those crowded days when he was Commander-in-Chief of the host that fed the firing line. Under his magnetic direction British industry had been forged into a colossal munitions shop. No man in England was busier: not even the King was more inaccessible. Life with him was one engagement after another.

Now came one of those swift emergencies that seems to crowd so fast upon Lloyd George's life and with it arose my own opportunity.

The British Trade Union Congress in annual session at Bristol had expressed Labour's dissatisfaction over its share of the munitions profits. Lloyd George had sent them a letter explaining his proposed excess profit tax, but this apparently was not enough. The delegates still growled.

"Then I'll go down and speak to them in person," said the Minister with characteristic energy.

Thus it happened that I journeyed with him to the old town, background of stirring naval history. On the way down half a dozen department heads poured into his responsive ears the up-to-the-minute details of the work in hand. He became a Human Sponge soaking up the waters of fact.

At Bristol in a crowded stuffy hall he faced what was at the start almost a menacing crowd. Yet as he addressed them you would have thought that he had known every man and woman in the assembly all their lives. The easy, intimate, frank manner of his delivery: his immediate claim to kinship with them on the ground of a common lowly birth: his quick and stirring appeal to their patriotism swept aside all discord and disaffection. As he gave an eloquent account of his stewardship you could see the audience plastic under his spell. The people who had assembled to heckle sat spellbound. When he had finished they not only gave him an ovation but pledged themselves anew to the gospel of "More Munitions."

It was on the train back to London that I got a glimpse of the real Lloyd George. What Roosevelt would have called "a bully day" had left its impress upon the little man. His long grey hair hung matted over a wilted collar: there was a wistful sort of weariness in his eyes. He sank into a big chair and looked for a long time in silence at the flying landscape. Then suddenly he aroused himself and began to talk. Like many men of his type whom you go to interview he began by interviewing the interviewer.

The first two questions that Lloyd George asked me showed what was going on in his mind, for they were:

"What were Lincoln's views of conscription, and did your soldiers vote during the Civil War?"

There was definite method in these queries, for already the Shadow of Conscription had begun to fall over all England. It was Lloyd George, aided by Northcliffe, who led the fight for it.

The talk always went back to the great war. When I spoke of his speech at Bristol his face kindled and he said:

"Have you stopped to realise that this war is not so much a war of human mass against human mass as it is a war of machine against machine? It is a duel between the English and German workman."

You cannot talk long with Lloyd George without touching on democracy. This is his chosen ground. I shall never forget the fervour with which he said:

"The European struggle is a struggle for world liberty. It will mean in the end a victory for all democracy in its fight for equality."

When I asked him to write an inscription for a friend of mine and express the hope that lay closest to his heart, he took a card from his pocket, gazed for a moment at the rushing country now shot through with the first evening lights, and then wrote: "Let Freedom win."

A few days later Lloyd George made still another appearance in his now familiar role of England's Deliverer. The South Wales coal miners, 2,000,000 in number, went on strike at a time when Coal meant Life to the Empire. There is no need of asking the name of the man who went to calm this storm. Only one was eligible and he lost no time.

Lloyd George did not call a conference at Cardiff: he went straight to Wales and spoke to the workers at the mouth of the pit. What arbitration and conciliation had failed to do, his hypnotic oratory achieved. The men went back to the mines with a cheer.

A week later at the London Opera House he made a notable speech to the Conference of Representatives of the Miners of Great Britain. To have heard that speech was to get a liberal education in the art of phraseology and to carry always in memory the magic of the man's voice. In this speech he said: