L. G. THE PIONEER
By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES
MR. LLOYD GEORGE will be eighty on Sunday—an anniversary which tempts one to look back on some less remem- bered moments in his career. There is one episode in that career which in this country was never fully appreciated. That was his visit to the United States and Canada in the autumn of 1923, a year after his fall from power. He had a triumphal reception in New York. He spoke almost every day and sometimes twice or thrice in a day to colossal audiences in the East, in Canada, in the Middle Western States, and in the South. The people of America instantly took him to their hearts. The crowds fell under his spell. Hard- boiled American journalists who travelled with him loved him and spoke in hushed, almost reverential, tones of "the man who is with us." So great was the hold he gained over American public opinion in a single month that by a skilful succession of speeches he led the American people to the point of giving full backing to the Administration in a step it dared not have ventured upon before—that of participating in Europe in a scheme for solving the Reparations problem. The prophet was honoured out of his own country.
The streamers that flew across the skyscrapers of New York and in other cities of America shouted welcome to "The Man who won the War." But at the end of the tour the legend became "The Man who can win the Peace." For it was not about war that Mr. Lloyd George talked in those speeches which, won America, but about peace—one felt the voice of the L. G. who had thrilled multitudes in Britain and had already, before 194, left an indelible mark upon British democracy and British society. Today many persons think of him primarily as the powerful organiser of the last war, the maker, or at least part-maker, of the Treaty of Versailles, and the chameleon, sometimes free-lance, Opposition statesman whose func- tion has been to make politics interesting and exciting. Yet the fact is that if Mr. Lloyd George had disappeared from public life in 1914 he would still have figured in history _as the most remarkable political portent of his time, the man who did more than any other to ameliorate the condition of the masses by State action.
If Mr. Lloyd George had lived at any time he would certainly have emerged from obscurity. No man with his immense energy, his passion for life, imagination, gift of speech, knowledge of men, and ambition could have hid his light under a bushel. None the less we feel that he is a particularly happy example of the union of the man and the moment " ; his genius was harnessed to the irresistible
forces of a peculiarly interesting and fruitful period in British history. Britain was emerging from the self-satisfied, superficial prosperity of Victorian times, And her thinkers and social reformers were asking searching questions about the meaning of democracy, the validity of privilege, and the condition of the masses of the people ; and the consciousness of a new social duty, that of giving freedom a meaning for the poorest of the poor, gave 'birth to a sort of crusade which found expression in literature and in politics ; and in politics the protagonist was Mr. Lloyd George. He may not have been aware that just this was to be his role when he first entered Parliament for Carnarvon Boroughs. As a Welshman he thought first of Welsh independence. As a Nonconformist he thought of the rights of the Nonconformists in education. He attacked the vested interests which he knew with fearlessness, fianluiess, and dialectical skill, adorned his language with glowing images, and could lift his speech at the right moment to the note of passion. Already the "little wizard" was at work. But it was not long before his interest widened ; from association with people who knew, and from divina- tion of the needs of the popular audiences who acclaimed him, he instinctively found himself not merely the champion of freedom for the Welsh or the Boers, but the spokesman of those who sought to "give warmth and glow to the grey lives" of the poor, "something that will help to dispel the hunger, the despair, the oppression and the wrong which now chill so many of their hearths." It became his mission, as someone ha,.; put it, to "enlarge the borders of Libera- tion," to turn it, without too much consideration of Liberal doctrine, from laissez faire and humanitarian charity to practical State action by which the community should be compelled to do its duty to the weakest of its citizens.
Lloyd George was the gadfly of the Liberal Governments from 1906 to 1914, with irresistible persistence stinging them into action which made that period the most fruitful in constructive social reform of any decade in British history. He became the most loved arid most hated man in Britain. His colleagues failed to tame him. He profited by the attacks of the Opposition. It was he who carried through Old-Age Pensions (though the initiative here had been taken by Mr. Asquith), contributory Health Insurance, un- employment insurance and labour exchanges, graduated income-tax and death-duties, and would have made far-reaching changes in the system of land tenure if the war had not intervened. He tacked measures of reform on to Budgets so that the House of Lords might not interfere, and when it did interfere challenged the constitutional conflict which ended in the Parliament Act and the limitation of the powers of the hereditary Chamber. To his political enemies he seemed a demon compounded of cunning and rhetoric ; for his friends, such as Russel Wallace, he was one who "has opened a new door for England, that future generations will be stronger for his action." His achievements then must surely overshadow all the animosities that sprang out of later differences between him and some of his earliest colleagues.
Is it strange that so simple a man should have done so much ? Simple! Some people will laugh at the word. He is adroit to the point of uncanniness. He has a wonderful flair for seeing what' is coming round the next corner. He lays his plans deeply, and prepares pitfalls for his enemies. He has been said to be "possessed of five or six senses not available to the ordinary man," which he may use for the cause of what some woulc! call righteousness and others devilry. He loves certain sorts of manoeuvre which have given him a reputation for intrigue just as another man might love a game of chess—but always with the sublime assurance that his cause, in the long run, is infallibly right. Yet he is simple. He has a simple, over-mastering belief in himself. Whoever differs from him and opposes him in regard to certain fundamentals is merely wrong, perhaps wicked, and in either case asking for trouble. He is simple in his creed. He is often accused of inconsistency and opportunism. He is certainly an opportunist in the sense that he is willing to sacrifice many small points to attain one major end— that is what made him so successful a conciliator in dealing with strike movements or critical conferences. But always in his political advocacy he has fallen back upon the few simple articles of his creed—his belief in liberty, whether it be that of British citizens or foreign nations—after the war he was feeling his way towards self-determination for India, Egypt, Russia and, in spite of the Black and Tans, for Ireland. His interest in the land which began in attacks upon hereditary privilege developed into a genuine passion for the reform of agriculture. Early and late he had a hatred of cant, a contempt for the letter that killeth, an admiration for certain simple human qualities which he found in a Cromwell or an Abraham Lincoln or some village friend in the county of Carnarvon. While he delighted in his conversations with men like Birkenhead or Charles Masterman, he was equally at home in talking, as I have heard him, with a ship's captain, or with an American journalist who asked him "what it felt like to be a great man." He is simple in his vanity, such that after a crowded day in which he has received the unmistakable approbation ot 50,000 people, he is still pleased at the end of it to hear one other person tell him that he has had a success.
He is simple in his love of the country and rural beauty. Passing In a train through the region round Lake Champlain he once called my attention with delight to its similarity to Wales. He has a naive joy in the telling phrases which give sparkle to his speeches—on one occasion when a reporter garbled one of his bons mots he exclaimed, "I could kill that reporter." His rich capacity for pleasure in the small things that give colour to life is one of the qualities that endear him to those about him. It is a mistake to suppose that he is not a reader of books. He is an omnivorous reader of history and biography, and used to get through a good many novels. His style shows his intimacy with the Bible. Some twenty years ago he, who had always been an intense believer in the efficacy of the spoken word, addressed himself to the task of becoming a writer, and set himself to win his spurs as an author es he had won them as a politician.
Now he is eighty years of age—not perhaps strong enough for ten hours a day of administrative work, but with judgement unimpaired, vision still fresh, and incomparable experience behind him which ought to be put, perhaps more often than it is, at the disposal of the State.
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