After declaring that, in his opinion, the need for compulsion
arose last September, Mr. Lloyd George turned to the suggestion that he had ceased to be a Liberal because he had adopted compulsion. In that case there must be a good many Liberals in the same plight, because barely one-tenth of the Liberal Party had voted against compulsion in the House of Commons. All the rest voted for it. Mr. Lloyd George went on to deal very faithfully with his assailants. After calling his chief assailant an " assassin," he continued as follows:
" Millions of gallant lives have fallen ; the fate of Europe, the fate, perhaps, of the British Empire—perhaps the fate of human liberty for generations—is trembling in the balance, and if any man believes, on the testimony of the person who publishes or invents private conversa- tion in order to malign a friend—if any man believes that I am capable amid such terrible surroundings of making use of them for a base and treacherous intrigue to advance my private ends, let him believe it. I seek neither his friendship nor his support. I reserve my sympathy for those who get either, and my disdain for those who merit it."
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