NEWS OF THE WEEK
WITH the death of one whom we have found it hard to call by the name and style of Earl Lloyd George, a great, if to some extent a controversial, figure passes from the stage. In that long and notable career there were two phases clearly demarcated in time and character. The first saw the rise of the village boy to political power, high office and leadership in a social reform cam- paign in which his radical democracy and the intensity of his sympathy for the disadvantaged found congenial and beneficent expression. Of the great social reforms of the great Liberal Govern- ment of 1906—Old-age Pensions, Trade Boards, Labour Exchanges, Health and Unemployment Insurance—Lloyd George claimed credit principally for the last two, but his driving power was behind them all ; and his Budget of 1909, which forced a conflict with the Lords and broke the veto of that House for ever, provided the finance on which the social schemes depended. Those years showed Lloyd George at his best, and in some respects at his greatest, for spec- tacular though his six years' premi=-ship was, it is impassible to eulogise it indiscriminately and uncritically. His organising genius, shown in the appointment of a War Cabinet sitting daily and devoting itself solely to the prosecution of the war, was of inestimable value ; but he split the country by the manner of his accession to office in 1916, and further again by his attitude in the Maurice debate at the beginning of 1918, while his relations with the. Commander-in-Chief and the C.I.G.S. were uniformly unhappy. The General Election he decidedon in December, 1918, made him the prisoner of his own rash slogans ; but once he reached the Peace Conference his innate Liberalism regained control, and he did his best to break his bonds. Though totally ineXperienced in international affairs, he knew how to use those who possessed the knowledge he lacked, and he worked consistently to secure a reason- able peace. If he had taken the courageous decision to ratify the French Security Treaty in spite of the defection of the United States, the peace might have been more enduring. It is the highest tribute to Lloyd George to say that of the three great figures at the Paris Peace Conference he will live in history as the greatest.
