The fundamental difficulty between Lloyd George and some of his colleagues was that he had ideas about running the country which were at variance with theirs. His Celtic temperament could not tolerate the slow muddling-through process, was impatient for daring new methods. He was disinclined for step-by-step procedure, and found reason for anger in the officials and Ministers who thought the war ought to be conducted according to book. There has yet to be told the full story, not only of all the obstacles which Lloyd George had to remove from his path in organizing the munition supply, but also of the hindrances which fettered the prosecution of the war as a whole with every ounce of strength, every shilling of money, at the disposal of the British nation.
I can imagine that Lloyd George was not a very pleasant colleague in the Cabinet during these intervening months. When the records come to be given it will be seen that he was constantly and furiously striking at the iron bars of custom and routine, that he was trying to turn the lip service of individuals to practical service. At times he reached the edge of desperate action.
It was in the thick of his other work that a crisis arose in South Wales, where the miners, numbering two hundred thousand, responsible for the supply of coal to the British navy, refused to work unless the employers conceded certain demands about pay and conditions. The seriousness of the position was appalling. The president of the Board of Trade, Mr. Runciman, struggled hard to bring about a settlement. He failed. Something had to be done and done at once. The country, looking around for a man to come to the rescue, fixed on Lloyd George. He left the Ministry of Munitions in Whitehall, took a train down to South Wales, had a straight talk with the employers, another straight talk with the men, and in one day settled affairs and got the men to continue their work. I cite this as a passing illustration of how Lloyd George was Britain's man-of-all-work, and of how the nation had to turn to him practically every time it was in difficulty.
While struggling to speed up the Cabinet on a hundred matters Lloyd George became impressed with the necessity of increasing the size of the British army, already millions strong. The voluntary system had hitherto been relied on, and there was strong opposition, both in the Cabinet and in the country, to tentative proposals for conscription. Lloyd George took an early opportunity of showing that he was on the side of the conscriptionists. There was an outburst of protests, but it proved of no avail, and it was largely through Lloyd George that conscription in Britain became an established fact. Even then he was by no means satisfied with the way affairs were being handled, and the newspapers were speculating on his next big attempt, when tragedy descended on the country in the unexpected death of Lord Kitchener by the sinking of the war-shipHampshireoff the coast of Scotland. Kitchener had been Minister for War. Who was to be the new man? There was really only one man in the running, and Lloyd George forsook his munition work, now practically accomplished, and went over to take charge of the War Office. Coincident with his acceptance of this post new arrangements in the organization were made, and it was no doubt largely by his influence that General Sir William Robertson was installed at Whitehall as Chief of Staff, virtually commander-in-chief of the British armies. He was a man after Lloyd George's own heart, a soldier who had risen from the ranks, a quiet man who would stand no nonsense, and one who knew modern war conditions from A to Z.
Here, then, began a new phase of the European conflict. From the shops, offices, farms, and factories of Britain there had sprung up an amateur army, millions strong, and the organization of this new national force was under the supervision and control of a Minister who began life as a village boy in a cottage of a shoemaker, and under the military direction of a commander-in-chief who also sprang from the common people, and as a young man was an ordinary trooper in the ranks. It could never henceforth be said that Britain, the most aristocratic country on earth, had not been content to hand over the reins to democracy in the greatest emergency of her history. Robertson and Lloyd George worked well together, and there can be no doubt that under their joint effects the British forces in the field attained a fighting value which was not excelled by any other army in existence on either side in the great conflict.
Frequently Lloyd George was in the trenches at the front. From time to time he was deep in consultation in Paris or at home with the leading statesmen and commanders of France, Italy, and Russia. All this was only a few months ago. I saw him in the House of Commons at the time. The strain was undoubtedly telling on him, but was not oppressing him. His hair was a little whiter, his face was pallid, and thinner than of yore, but his eyes were like burning coals. He had much to bear apart from the actual work, for there were large sections of politicians and several influential newspapers who openly said that ambition was his curse, that he was undermining Mr. Asquith who had been his greatest political friend, and that all his discontent was directed toward an ultimate dramatic stroke which would make him Prime Minister. Many of the Liberals who used almost to worship him made no secret of the fact that he had lost their allegiance, while the extreme Socialists denounced him as a traitor to the working classes, inasmuch as he was tyrannizing over them by his war measures. Moreover, many of his opponents in the Cabinet must have regarded him with some feeling of distrust. He said no word in defense of Mr. Asquith, whom the Northcliffe press persistently and violently assailed. The conclusion is inevitable that Lloyd George shared some of the opinions then expressed. Taking Lloyd George's nature into account, the situation may be imagined, and it was not hard to see that a climax must come sooner or later.
It was approaching swiftly. Meanwhile the transformation of Britain in which Lloyd George had had so large a hand was proceeding. No longer could it be said that the old country was lethargic. In all directions was the elementary strength of this stolid people manifesting itself. Classes were uniting in the determination that there should be limitless spending of energy, of blood, and of treasure, that the harder grew the fight the stronger should be the will, the livelier the action, till the great danger was trodden finally underfoot. For months past it could have been said:
All the youth of England are on fireAnd silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Now most of the people had reached the decision that nothing but extermination should lead to their defeat.
And leave your England as dead midnight still,Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance,For who is he whose chin is but enrich'dWith one appearing hair that will not followThose cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
It was really a very-much-alive England, though strangely changed, which the amateur fighters had left behind them on their departure for the field of war. Tens of thousands of women unaccustomed to hard labor were tiring their bodies from early morning till night so that there would be more men for the fighting-line. The state had virtual possession of the great industries, of engineering, of railway transportation, and of shipping. The liquor trade had been cut down to narrow limits which, while it benefited the health and efficiency of the population, ruined financially a great many property-owners. The trade-unions had relinquished their rights, so that every hour of the day and night there should be no strong and healthy arm which was not lending aid to the country in its need. Every man in the country up to the age of forty was either in the army or doing some useful war work at home.
Steps had been taken to prevent the price of coal being raised to consumers, and this was shortly to be followed by the Government acquisition of the whole of the South Wales coal-field. Already a movement was afoot to regulate the food-supply and to restrict expensive luxuries. At the head of these tremendous changes was Lloyd George, whose so-called socialistic legislation a few years before had roused spasms of rage among classes which now belauded his every action and announced him as the coming savior of his country. If there is any consistency in human nature at all, it is hardly possible that there were not those who recalled his incendiary speeches, his unsparing legislative action of the Budget days. And yet there were no complaints. Millionaires placed their money at his disposal. The dukes paid him homage. All the while Lloyd George grew harder in the face. Big changes were still necessary if the war was to be brought to an end victoriously and rapidly.
I have indicated the Minister for War as the moving spirit in all those changes of that tangled period, but he was only a single member of the Ministry which set them in motion, although there could be no doubt in the mind of any one really acquainted with public affairs in Britain at this time that his was the driving force behind the reforms, that they were largely forced on by his resistless spirit, even as he was desirous to push them further and quicken the pace. Meanwhile in France, in Italy, and in Russia Lloyd George's name roused enthusiasm wherever it was mentioned. News from America indicated that he was well known and much talked of there. In the Scandinavian capitals which I visited toward the close of 1916 I found that it was Lloyd George whom the statesmen, the professors, the business men, and the common people were eager to hear about above all others. In Germany he was hated and feared more than any other British statesman.
According to all the rules which are supposed to guide the rise of a self-made man, Lloyd George should have been a master of routine, with the orderly mind and undeviating habits without which we are sometimes told no person of affairs can secure permanent success. It is much to be regretted that Lloyd George lends no aid to the well-established maxims. The teachers and preachers who seek to implant in the young the principles of continuousness of purpose and of regularity and of kindred qualities must turn their backs on Lloyd George. They will find nothing from him to go into the text-books, for in the course of his career the Welsh statesman has trampled on every sound rule for securing success. That a man with so many contradictions in him should have ever maintained his upward course is not encouraging to the formalists, though it is very interesting to ordinary people.
There never was a man who could more quickly master the intricacies of a business problem, and yet from his very early days he was quite unbusiness-like in many things. He laughingly says that as a young lawyer down in Wales he showed serious incapacity in his profession, at least in one respect: "I never sent in any bill of costs. The result was I never had any money." Later when his brother, three years younger than himself, joined him in partnership matters improved. "The firm did not then suffer from this serious professional drawback," explained Lloyd George. He is an adept at phrases, and yet all through his life he has hated writing. There is a tradition among some of his friends that even in his less busy periods, if you wanted to get a reply from him on any topic you had to send him two postcards addressed to yourself, on one of which was written, "Yes," and on the other, "No." This, it was said, was the only way you could make sure of a prompt response, or indeed of any response at all. He has been the supreme business organizer of Britain during the war—in finance, in industrial operations, and latterly in actual army work—and in each direction he has sketched out and carried into effect an intensive efficiency which it is not too much to describe as the admiration of the world, yet all the time his office day-by-day arrangements would certainly shock the ordinary merchant or banker. He makes contingent appointments and forgets all about them. Some incidental scheme adopted by him on a Saturday is on Monday thrust into limbo by the pressure of other schemes. If he were to schedule his office day into five-minute appointments he would still be unable to see only a proportion of the important men and executive chiefs who desire to get in touch with him, and yet he will allow himself to be drawn into an hour's keen discussion with persons who have some minor topic which appeals to him. Withal, he gets things done. Some intuition, some instinct for right action, takes him to his goal. The task in hand is always accomplished to the limit of efficiency. You may seek his secret in vain. Probably part of it lies in his natural power of selecting his instruments. All the same I do not envy the lot of his two principal private men secretaries and the girl stenographer whose business it is to follow and, to some extent, direct his erratic course throughout his office hours.
His speeches which in their printed form sell literally by the million, are scarcely prepared at all before he gets on the platform. Sometimes the wording as it appears in cold black and white lacks a little polish, but it has a vital and stimulating force marking it out as distinctive literature. He has a few notes as to facts and figures and weaves them into a picture as he stands before his audience. When his famous speech at Limehouse thrilled England a London newspaper proprietor went down to see him in the House of Commons. "Why didn't you let me know you were going to make that speech?" he said. "I would have had special arrangements made for reporting it and describing it." "There was nothing special in it," said Lloyd George, in genuine surprise. "It was just an ordinary talk about the Budget. I went down to Limehouse and spoke to an audience I found there, that's all."
No one will deny Lloyd George's courage. On a hundred stricken fields he has shown it. Yet he confesses to a timorousness and nervousness whenever he is waiting on a public platform with a speech ahead of him. This proven, stern man of action is just a trembling bunch of nerves, afraid of the people in front of him, afraid of the people by his side on the platform, as he sits waiting the fateful second when the chairman shall announce his name.
Lloyd George's unexpectedness comes from the fact that he is a many-sided man. Success has not atrophied either his manners or his impulses. He is not ashamed to be very human because he has become very important. I remember how, during the stress of the Budget fight, when, if ever, he was at a tension, he went off for a week-end with the Attorney-General and a distinguished journalist. They had a railway compartment to themselves on the journey from London. Part of the time was passed in singing popular songs, the choruses of which Lloyd George trilled out enthusiastically. And yet Lloyd George is not a stranger to the formalities. High office brought to him a marked care for those little chivalries which are part of Parliamentary warfare. In the height of the fight fatigue sometimes overwhelmed even his sturdy frame and spirit, and he would snatch half an hour's respite from the Treasury bench in his own room behind the Speaker's chair. But he would break off this short indulgence instantly when the ticker indicated that his principal opponents had begun to speak. Directly it was shown that Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Balfour, or some other leader was on his feet Lloyd George would hurry into the chamber to listen, even though he might know perfectly well that they had nothing to say that mattered at the moment. He regarded it as important to pay them the courtesy of listening to any speech they made, however casual or trivial.
One of the charges against Lloyd George during his public life has been his inaccuracy in small things, his disregard of detail, and in some ways this is a justifiable charge. And yet the man has a perfect passion for detail when he is aroused and when he believes detail necessary. In instituting the Department of Munitions he made himself in the course of only a week or two a real expert in the hundred intricacies connected with the manufacture of shells. Short of handling the steel himself I doubt if there was any man in the country, who knew more about the nature of all the deadly missiles, from the small rifle bullet up to the great shell which weighs a ton and travels some fifteen miles. Delicate chemical processes connected with high explosives rapidly became an open book to him. As new discoveries were made incidental difficulties connected with the filling of shells occupied the concentered study of the manufacturers. Lloyd George plunged into the new arrangements. One morning he had an appointment in London with a group of half a dozen munition-makers from the north of England and the Midlands for the purpose of investigating some special difficulties in a new process. The matter was one of importance as well as of difficulty. Point by point was taken and lunch-time arrived without a complete elucidation. Lloyd George swept aside all other appointments for the day. The thing had got to be mastered. He took the six experts out with him to lunch and went on with the discussion over the meal. He brought them back to the Munition Department afterward and he went on with the matter all the afternoon. Tea was served, and still he would not let his advisers escape. It was nearly dinner-time before the difficulties were conquered and the tired experts were permitted to go. Lloyd George, cheered by the achievement, had a little food, and then proceeded to work far into the night to clear up some of the arrears of the day's routine. As for the staff, they had to work, too. There are no easy times for those associated with Lloyd George when he is under pressure.
These are examples from recent times, but throughout the whole of his career there have been contradictions which have staggered friends as well as enemies. I do not believe there is a more sincere man in public life; there certainly is no shrewder one, and yet when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the finances of the country he was imprudent enough in an impulsive moment to invest privately some hundreds of pounds in a commercial company, an investment perfectly innocent in itself, but one which a worldly-wise person would have realized must lay open to attack any Chancellor of the Exchequer who had enemies. He never gave the thing a thought. He had always been a comparatively poor man. He saw a good investment and he put some of his savings into it. His opponents became aware of the matter, and in storms of virtuous passion held him up to execration as a corrupt politician who was using his position to make himself rich. There were bursts of unholy joy among the Conservatives. That innocent investment in Marconi shares was perhaps the most stupid thing in Lloyd George's public life. He gave his explanation with vigor and clearness, but, nevertheless, I fancy he must have kicked himself privately about the whole thing. Notwithstanding, however, the disadvantage at which he had placed himself, opponents found that now, as on other occasions, it was not a pleasant exercise to attack the Welshman. He had a horrid habit of defending himself by hitting back, and he usually hit very much harder than his attackers were capable of doing. When the dukes and earls fell on him in all their noble rage and dignity he culled stories from the past about them. One of the attacks on him was by Earl Selborne, who had been a Cabinet Minister in a Conservative administration. Lloyd George permitted himself no false delicacy about the noble earl. "He contends there is no correspondence between his story and mine. He is quite right. I have already pointed out the essential difference. I bought shares in a company which had no contract with the Government, and my purchase of even these shares was subsequent to the acceptance of the wireless tender by the Government. Earl Selborne was a director of a company during the time it was initiating and acquiring a huge contract with the Government, of which he was a member. His story is, therefore, not mine."
There had probably never been a politician in British public life who was so affectionately regarded by all those persons who were brought into personal contact with him, whether they agreed with him or not. Pressmen whose duty it was to berate him in the papers were generally fond of him personally. Opponents in the House of Commons when not engaged in combat had, in most cases, an active liking for him. Business men and persons not connected with politics after once meeting him had nothing but good to say of the "Welsh demagogue." And in face of all this Lloyd George has truly been the most hated man of his generation. He used to chuckle over it—which sent his opponents to the last degree of fury. "The dukes," he would remark, cheerily, "are scolding like omnibus-drivers, and the lords swearing like stable-boys." He would fling out his hand with a humorously despairing gesture about it.
Lloyd George was not very precise in his attacks sometimes. Though he was very rarely, perhaps never, successfully challenged on the general basis of his charges, his vivid wording always brought on him a flood of recriminations. He was called an "ignorant demagogue," an "unscrupulous electioneer," was accused of using "false sentiment" and of "setting class against class." His principal weapons throughout, it was said, were his inaccuracies and offensive personalities. The exasperated Conservatives, only a few months before the war, secured the time of the House of Commons to indict him for some of these sins. Here was the resolution moved from the Conservative benches: "That this House contemplates with regret the repeated inaccuracies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his gross and unfounded charges upon individuals." No motion could have pleased Lloyd George better. Ponderous and dignified were the speeches against him. He replied with a quizzical lightness, and did not refrain from personal remarks even in the course of his defense. He demonstrated the general accuracy of his speeches, ridiculed the indictment against himself, and showed how it arose partly from political prejudices, partly from the mental obtuseness and anger of his opponents. A portion of his speech recalled the things the Conservatives attacking him said about Joseph Chamberlain, now one of their idols. They were remarks made during Chamberlain's radical days.
"One Tory Minister said he spoke 'with customary inaccuracy.' Another Minister talked about 'his habitual incapacity for being accurate.' Another said he was 'setting class against class.' TheTimes, using the language of the gentleman in opposition to-night, said he was 'forgetting what was due to his dignity and responsibility as a Cabinet Minister.' He was compared by the leader of the House to 'Jack Cade.' Another called him 'an unscrupulous demagogue.' Another said he was 'weeping crocodile tears for electioneering purposes.' I seem to recognize some of these epithets. I am amazed at the lack of imagination in the vituperation of honorable men opposite." When the laughter and cheering had died away Lloyd George said that Chamberlain was fifty at the time these things were uttered, the age at which he himself stood. "So there is hope for me," he said. It is difficult to tackle a man like that.
No one would deny that Lloyd George has gone back on many of the opinions he used to hold so firmly. The exhilarating names he called members of the House of Lords have been replaced by invitations to some of them to join him as Ministers in a Cabinet of which he is the head. No doubt he would give good reasons for the change, but the fact remains. His mobile mind is ever adapting itself to what he considers the exigencies of the times, though no one could with less justice be named a time-server. "Other times, other means, other manners" may be described as his attitude of mind. If at the moment the welfare of the community in his judgment demanded certain courses of action no words of his in the past, no principles that he had held, would prevent him from adapting himself or from using whatever powers lay to his hand. As motive forces in social life are almost invariably to be obtained from individuals, Lloyd George without shame and without hesitation has proceeded to use individualities wherever he found them suitable for his purpose. Meanwhile the worshiper of consistency can find in him no idol.
The crowning inconsistency of Lloyd George's career I have not yet described. So far as he owed success in life to any man except himself he owed it to Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister. Lloyd George has all the sensitiveness and affection of the Celtic nature, and must certainly have had within him a well of gratitude to this man who had been so great a friend to him. Yet it came about that he eventually decided it was his duty to pull this man from the throne and take his place there.
In some lights it seems rather a shabby thing that Lloyd George should have ousted Mr. Asquith and taken his place as Prime Minister. Mr. Asquith, with great intellectual attainments and with the highest attributes of an English gentleman, had been at the head of the British Government for eight years, and during this period big achievements had been inscribed on Britain's story. He had been a strong and constant friend of Lloyd George who, under his leadership, had risen from the position of a minor Minister to giant eminence. Then at a crucial moment Lloyd George overthrew him. Stated baldly like that, the thing doesn't read very well. I believe there are some leaders in England who will never forgive Lloyd George. It remains to be said that they are taking a narrow and immediate view of a drama so immense that its proper perspective will only be available many years hence. They are trying to test men's souls under strain in a small mechanical balance. Forces were at work such as are only met with once or twice in centuries. You cannot bring a puny, every-day judgment to bear on issues which may mean misery or happiness to millions of people, and life or death to a great proportion of them. In such circumstances the raw strength of big men comes out, and the spectacle is not always pleasant to the gentle-minded.
I am not one of those who believe that Lloyd George sordidly schemed to become Prime Minister, though I am sure that in some side reflections from time to time he realized quite certainly that one day he would be Prime Minister of his country. I believe that from the moment he decided the war was a right one and must be pressed to victory he concentrated the whole of his heart and soul, all of his bewildering and compelling properties, to the task of securing victory. And that the remarkable success he attained, first in the sphere of finance, then in the provision of munitions, thirdly in the raising of armies and general organization for battle, led him quickly to a vision of the whole contest, a vision unshared by his colleagues, but of dazzling clearness to himself.
His whole being, designed for the emergencies of combat, quivered and thrilled as he saw the hundred directions in which urgency and rapidity and ruthlessness could forge the weapons of success. I believe he was completely selfless about the matter. He made efforts to touch various spheres of war organization with the white-hot spirit which possessed himself, and became partly the terror, partly the admiration, of those among whom he moved. And then, realizing more and more, week by week, what he regarded as the inertia in the departments that ran the country, and seeing the importance of stirring the feelings of his principal Cabinet colleagues to wholesale, passionate, fear-nothing strokes which should bring the end of the war within sight, there grew upon him resistlessly the thought that he must himself secure supreme control of the war in Britain. I believe the idea took hold of him, not from any vulgar motive, but in the way that religion grows upon a man, possessing him utterly, leaving him heedless of the criticism directed against his personal aims.
What was the system he was up against? In the British Cabinet each Minister is the head of his own department, and in normal times the Prime Minister doesn't interfere in the departments, although, as chairman of the Cabinet, his consent has to be given to any big national policy initiated by another Minister. Mr. Asquith had strong and clever men around him, and, quite apart from the fact that he was the most chivalrous of chiefs, he trusted their capacity. Strong and capable as they were, they had not the flashing genius of Lloyd George, certainly had not his genius for war, implying large decisions and great risks. They plodded along and threshed out plans and put some of them into execution. To Lloyd George both the plans and the way they were carried out were half-hearted. To him there was always delay, never the stark action which he believed was everywhere necessary. Decisions were taken too late and were not carried out with promptitude or thoroughness.
For months Lloyd George was in a state of simmering revolt. He received support from powerful organs in the press, notably from theTimesandDaily Mail. The tone of their criticism is best summarized in the suggestion that Mr. Asquith was "an amiable old gentleman," unfitted for the position of leader of a nation at war for its life. Far less than justice was accorded him, but under the stress of war the most stolid people became impatient, and there was undoubtedly manifested in many sections of the public a desire for more strenuous leadership. The difficulties with which Mr. Asquith had had to contend were certainly not fully appreciated, though they will be later on. He was the head of a Coalition Government, and had kept that Government together with a managing skill to which everybody paid tribute. The claim of the Lloyd George supporters was that qualities different from those required for the skilful handling of a Government were necessary in a war Prime Minister. It looks as if Lloyd George shared this opinion. He came to the conclusion that he must make his stroke. One fateful day he presented to Mr. Asquith an ultimatum to the effect that the conduct of the war should be placed in the hands of a small committee of three or four members who should have absolute power, and that Mr. Asquith himself should not be on it, or, if so, should be a member in name only.
Mr. Asquith tried to get him to compromise. Lloyd George would have none of it. If Mr. Asquith would not agree he would resign, he said, and he was supported by the Conservative members of the Government. Mr. Asquith and his supporters would not give way. There were one or two exciting days of secret negotiations, and then, a deadlock being reached, there was but one course to be pursued, and that was for the entire Cabinet to place its resignation in the hands of the King. It must have been a bitter moment for Mr. Asquith. Indeed, it was probably an unhappy time for Lloyd George. Nevertheless, he flinched not.
The whole Cabinet went out of office. The King, who is bound by precedent, sent for the leader of the Conservatives, Mr. Bonar Law, and offered him the position of Prime Minister and the task of forming a Government. Owing to the split-up of the parties and the various cross-currents, Mr. Law felt himself unable to carry out the formal request of the King. Then the expected happened, and the King sent for Lloyd George, who promptly expressed his willingness to try to form a Government, so long as he was assisted in the task by Mr. Bonar Law. He was successful. His Cabinet, rapidly brought into being, consisted of several Labor men, several Conservatives, some notable members of the House of Lords, and also, quite a novel feature, some captains of industry, whom Lloyd George took from their private businesses to run the business departments of the state. A war council was formed, consisting of Lloyd George himself; Mr. Arthur Henderson, the leader of the Labor movement; Lord Curzon, and Lord Milner. (The most recent claims to distinction of the latter two was their violent opposition to Lloyd George's Budget and the Parliament bill.) The sum total of arrangements was that the new Prime Minister became virtually a dictator. He rules England to-day.
What will be his record as Prime Minister? It may be taken as a certainty that his tenure of office will be a memorable chapter in English history. That he will use to the utmost his natural powers in bringing the war to a conclusion satisfactory to his country goes without saying. I am inclined to think that there is no one who yet realizes the lengths to which he will go in order to secure victory. No precedent will stand in his way, no consideration of popularity or unpopularity will deter him. That he may break himself in his attempt is a trifle to him. I do not think he will break himself, for he has reserves not usually found in a single personality. Obloquy may again take the place of the praise which now encircles him. He may yet be assailed by some of the new colleagues whom he has chosen, and the newspapers which have supported him may turn against him. But if he lives and preserves his health he will win the war. He is not entirely admirable, but nothing will obliterate his powers of success but extinction.
He has the imagination to envisage the uncountable forces at his disposal in the British Empire, and if need be he will use these forces to their very limits. Already he has proceeded on new lines. With that intense practicalness which goes with his spiritual exaltation he has appointed a grocer and a provision-dealer to control the food-supplies of the country, has put a ship-owner at the head of the mercantile marine, has given to a man who was a working steel-smelter the unshackled control of labor, has chosen as another Cabinet Minister a young American who has made a fortune in business—staggering appointments indeed for conservative old England. But that is only a beginning. The Prime Minister has hitherto been but the titular head of the various departments of his Government, but now he is going to be the real head, for Lloyd George has set up a Prime Minister's Department which co-ordinates continually all the various Government offices. Lloyd George means to be no mere figure of dignity as a Prime Minister.
What more can he do? There is no end to the war expedients which are to his hand if the conflict with Germany goes on. If more young men are wanted for the army I can see him levying the whole of the women in the country for work on the farms and in the offices or its shops. He may turn his eyes to the overseas dominions, where there are scores of millions of population from which separate vast new armies may be drawn. I have little doubt that erelong the enemies of Britain will come up against the quality of unexpectedness which has so often discouraged his opponents at home. No field of endeavor will be closed to him. I can even see him with a board of inventors and constructors setting to work to provide, let us say, a fleet of one hundred thousand aeroplanes which shall, in truth, make the invasion of Germany possible. There are other novel fields of effort with potentialities of equal or even greater scope.
It was complained of Mr. Asquith that he was too much of a gentleman, too kindly and considerate even to those who harassed him, that he feared to repress those who strove to make his tenure of office impossible. There will not be any nonsense of that kind about Lloyd George. Heaven help those who, however highly placed and whatever their services to him in the past, now stand in his way. Interesting suggestions have been made that his recent alliance with Northcliffe was a fatal mistake for him, because Northcliffe, in pursuit of newspaper sensations, combined with patriotic aims, having helped to place him in the seat of power, will presently turn on him without scruple and without mercy. Well, there may even be an attempt in that direction. I know both men pretty thoroughly, having been brought into personal contact with each, and watched the work and studied the power of both of them for years. If Northcliffe attempts any action of the kind indicated he will find that he has gone out for a walk with a tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith to deal with now. If Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war, Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought. Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the publication of theDaily Mailand theTimes, wrecking a million pounds' worth of private property at least, and ruining Northcliffe on the way, will be twenty minutes' cheery work for Lloyd George in his present mood, if he thinks the interests of Britain demand it.
It will be found from now until the treaty of peace is signed that Lloyd George will be the personal director of democratic Britain, as grim an autocrat as was Oliver Cromwell, and when the plenipotentiaries meet around a table to settle terms there will be among them the blue-eyed Welshman, pleasant of manners and with iron will, putting in some commas and taking out the clauses he doesn't like.
When this war is concluded there must be a new era for the world. Already there are signs of its approach. Generations hence there may again be awful conflicts between nations, spasms of hell in which the blood and anguish of millions will pay their tribute to the beast in man, but it will not be in our time, and in the interval, the beginning of which must be upon us very quickly, a new order of things will arise among the civilized people of the globe. Stricken humanity will insist on happier prospects for its children and its children's children. In the formulation of that new order of things I can see Lloyd George as one of the main instruments.
In the first place, Britain will be a revivified country after the war, chastened in some ways, teeming with new thoughts, pulsing with a new virility for at least a generation. Class prejudice will be lessened, perhaps in some directions will be completely wiped out. There will probably be a centralized effort after the trials which all the people have suffered together to reconstruct the social fabric so that all the people of the country, with the exception of those who are lazy or criminal, shall have the means by which they may be able to secure a decent livelihood and need have no fear of poverty-stricken old age. I foresee the disintegration of the older political parties and the building up of new ones, in which the great contending features will be the means and methods by which the new Britain shall be established. The old party shibboleths will be swept away. Mere words and windy generalities will be displaced from influence and the nation's leaders will deal with facts.
The education of the war has brought everybody in the country up against hard realities. While prejudices and so-called principles have been put in the background, there has been going on a learning of new lessons. Lloyd George will undoubtedly be the main figure in the building up of the national edifice. The war will effect political changes which a generation of Parliamentary efforts could not have brought about. Hundreds of thousands of men drawn from shops, factories, offices, who have been hardened and stimulated by their out-of-doors campaigning, will be averse from returning to their old drab conditions, and coincident with this the rich and beautiful farmlands of England will be made available in holdings for such as wish to settle on the land and to establish themselves there. Cottage dwellings and farm buildings will be put up by the thousand with the assistance of the state. The settlers from the towns will not only find health for themselves and families, but by their activities will add enormously to the food-supplies of the country through their market gardens, their dairy farms, as well as by the extra corn which will be produced by them.
Lloyd George's heart and soul will be in this project, for, country born and bred as he is, he knows not only the troubles, but also the opportunities and the personal joys of the population on the land. I regard a revolution on these lines in England as a practical certainty. It may be asked, Where is the money to come from for all this? The answer is, that loans from the state are inevitable, but they will be remunerative loans which presently will yield returns, not only in the shape of interest, but in new food-supplies and also, not less important, in the benefits of new physical strength and new happiness in life to big sections of the population. Sacrifices will be asked for from the great land-owners, but they will be sacrifices of sentiment rather than of money, because these proprietors will certainly be well recompensed financially for any land that is taken from them.
But this transformation in the countryside will be only one phase of the new Britain. Virtual revolution is certain in town life—and something like forty millions out of the fifty millions of population have their present homes in towns and cities, and not in the country. A great stimulation of production may be looked for under the lessons of war-time. Scores of inventions have been devised under the strain of the war's demands and the discoveries in chemistry, in mechanics, and in other directions will remodel certain industries and create fresh ones. Novel methods of organization have been brought into use and have greatly aided efficiency, but even these developments will be but supplementary to the changes in the methods of British industrial life. The Labor movement of Britain, which has obtained during the war a political power previously unknown in British Government, has altered its modes of procedure, subordinated its laws, and generally transfigured itself. The position can never be readjusted to the old basis. This will carry with it remarkable results. Something like three million trade-unionists constitute the effective Labor movement of Britain, and the unions, with their rights and privileges, have only been built up by half a century of struggle against prejudice, against material interests, against opposition in Parliament. In the last ten years, however, enormous progress has been made. Forty Labor men have seats in the legislature, and the combination of trade-union rules and regulations safeguarding workmen and restricting employers has become as effective as a legal charter. Hours and conditions of labor as well as wage rates in the various trades have been set up and continually strengthened with a view to prevent exploitation by employers, and though there is necessarily a running struggle with regard to isolated matters, there has come to exist, on the whole, amicable relations between the great unions, on the one side, and the great employers, on the other. Under Lloyd George's appeals during the war trade-unions have flung overboard the restrictions they had imposed, have permitted unskilled people to come in and do parts of their work, permitted women to take a hand, allowed employers to increase hours of work, and voluntarily have taken upon themselves the old burdens which they had fought so long to shake off. They have had at least this recompense that, so far as money is concerned, they have not been badly off. In important industries, notably in munition-making, piece-work—payment according to work accomplished—is the rule, with the result that large sums are earned by those who choose to work hard and to work early and late. The general result of all this has been a marvelously accelerated output of material as compared with that which would have been produced under old conditions. The unions have the promise of the Government that all their old rules shall be restored after the war if they want them. It has become inconceivable that incidental advantage secured in these abnormal times shall be thrown away when peace comes just because of a traditional adherence to principle. Employers, also, seeing the tremendously increased results, will be eager to maintain the new acceleration. Are the unions, for the sake of old prejudices, to put back the clock and throw out all the employment of the women who have entered the hitherto-reserved industries, and to abolish the overtime work? Are they, moreover, to return to the old principles of prohibiting an operative from doing more than a certain amount of work in a certain time—a practice quite defensible so far as it arose from the greed of employers who, with their men on piece-work, finding the rate of production increased, promptly put back the rate of payment so that workpeople should never earn more than a certain amount by day or by week? Is there to be a reaction in all these directions? There is not. Unions will not want all their old provisions, but they will want new ones in their places. And the arrangements which will have to be made, and which Lloyd George will undoubtedly have a large share in making, will lead to the establishment of an entirely new system which, while giving employers a wider field of labor and an immensely increased production, will, at the same time, provide working-men and women with greatly enlarged earning capacity, an earning capacity which will be largely based on their own energy, initiative, and persistence. A wide extension of what may be called co-operative payment by results may be looked for.
The good-will among classes introduced by the war will certainly help the changes. The net result to be looked for is a practical abolition of unemployment, the extension of the area of labor to great numbers of women, increased earning powers for individuals, and still more for the families as a whole, and a greater output of all kinds of products, not only manufactured articles, but also food products from the land. Accompanying all this will be higher profits for employers.
That this revolution can be accomplished in a day or even in a year is not to be expected. That it is the direction in which British social life is bound to trend cannot be doubted. I see Lloyd George as the engineer-in-chief of the whole operation. In conjunction with the new national land scheme the industrial reformation will provide a policy with a far-reaching scope and a practicability which will appeal to his long-sighted vision, his active mind, his scorn of past usages which litter the road of progress. That he will attempt to recreate the new social system on the wreckage of that which has been destroyed by the war I think is beyond all question.
But Lloyd George's future destiny is not confined to his work for his own race and nation. The war has lifted him to international prominence. He is now and will be henceforth the most-talked-of British statesman in all other civilized countries. He will still have enemies who will detest him, but no one in the future will attempt to deny his effectiveness. Respect will be accorded him by the statesmen of other nations and the democracy of other nations, the latter of whom will remember his lifelong fight for the poor. Such a man may well be of influence in determining not only the fate of his own people, but also the fate of the civilized community at large. I see approaching him, when this war is over, an opportunity far greater than anything fate has yet placed in his way. The world will be shuddering at the ghastliness of its recent experiences and asking if there is no way of guarding against the possibility of such a catastrophe in the years ahead. Among all the nations lately at war there will be but one desire—namely, the insuring of the enjoyment of peace for the generations to come. If that mood comes to exist, as it surely will, among all the nations when this present conflict is over, there are two men who, working together, may write their names indelibly on the history of the world. President Wilson's uplifting vision of an enduring peace by a mutually protective combination of nations is regarded by many as impracticable even as an illusion. I do not believe Lloyd George will regard it either as impracticable or as an illusion. His spirit will glow at the thought of it. The magnitude of the proposal will encourage him rather than check him. As to the difficulties in the way, he will tackle them with a confident smile. The tenacity and high-mindedness of President Wilson are qualities which will especially appeal to him. He will be able to supplement them with that ingenuity and practicalness which are an integral part of his genius for getting things done. I can see these two men, therefore, as collaborators in days not so very far ahead. In the collaboration Lloyd George will probably find his culminating task.