LLOYD GEORGE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 559, 16 April 1913, Page 2

LLOYD GEORGE.

INTERESTING STORY OF HIS LIFE.

If it iB ever justifiable to publish the life of a living man who is still in the midst of his career, and of whom it may reasonably be predicted that his greatest wo»k has yet to be done, that justification surely applies to Mr Lloyd George. His career has been so rapid and remarkable, and hid personality is so magnetic and so interesting even to his opponents, that anything written about him is sure to find a large body of readers. In the four-volume life by Mr J. Hugh Edwards, M.P., of which the first volume has judt been published by the Wavsrley Book Company, the story of the Chancellor's career is evidently to be told with much fullness, with no literary art, and with an enthusiasm which so inspiring a subject demands. So much we can safely say from a perusal of Volume VI.; but as it is not until the last page of the book that we read the record of our hero's birth—"a sturdy, healthy little fellow, stronger and much more lively than his sister; he has fine curly hair"—it is clearly not possible yet to pasß judgment on the biography The fitßt volume, however, has its own distinction and interest. It is mainly a comprehensive and well-written story of the Welsh people. As Mr Lloyd George is the great representative Welshman of his day, such a story is by no means out of place as an introduction which he contributes to the work: "No account of Lloyd George's wonderful career up to the time when, at the early age of fortyfour, he became in 1908 Chancellor of the Exchequer, can be quite intelligible without a general knowledge of the past of the Welsh people and their present condition." It is not so very long ago that Wales was hardly deemed to have any existence ecxept as a geographical expression. In the ninth edition of the '*-Encylopaedia Britannica," the searcher for information about the Welsh nation receives the curt and almost contemptuous direction: "Wales—see England." Of course the editors of the" latest editions have given full recognition to the fact that Wales has a separate history and a separate literature,w hich are neither negligible nor uninteresting. And in this change of attitude the editors no doubt rightly reprasent, the general view of all liberal and instructive minds. THE IDOL OF DEMOCRACY. Writes Mr Hugh Edwards:— For this change the credit is mainly due to Mr Lloyd George, who by sheer force of his genius has so markedly changed the centre of gravity of British politics, . and become the idol of the British Democracy. From admiring the block which has become the chief corner stone in the centre of their politics, the British public have readily and naturally turned attention to the racial quarry from which the stone has been hewn for Mr Lloyd George, in his own terse praise is "first and foremost a Welshman." To him belongs the distinction of being the first Welshman who has so expressed the authentic voice of Wales as to make it resonant beyond the borders of the Principality. He is the chief interpreter of the Cymic race, and the foremost champion of its interests. And this role is his by the subtle force of an inborn affinity. No man more fully shares its moods or more eloquently articulates its aspirations than he. He epitomises the Welsh people, and in all the distinctive features of his career his tenacity of purpose, his defiance of difficulties, his horror of oppression, his fervour of emotion, the passionate throb of his Democratic sympathies, and even his suscepttibility to appreciation —one clearly traces the line aments of the Cymric race. One may, therefore, Bay with perfect apposite ness: "Lloyd George—see Wales." His career, with all its glow of romance, can only be seen from a true perspective when viewed in the light of the history of his race. For this reason a biography of one who is so essentially and preerrriently the product of his race postulates something more than a mere reference to that race, the full picture necessitates a Cymric setting if all its characteristic lights and shades are to be clearly seen and appreciated. This Cymric setting ia given by Mr Edwards in a series of very interesting chapters, ; in which the personalities and achievements of many of the great leaders of the Welsh peotile against their powerful neighbour, including such heroic and romantic episodes as the rebellion ot Owen Glyndwyr, leads up to the story—different, though hardly less romantic—of the re-birth of the nation in modern times. The religious revival at the close of the eighteenth century, by which "the aoul of the nation, no less than its native speech, had been saved," led_ to a great national awakening in all directions. In literature, in politics, and in education, the Welsh people took a foremost place and the powers of the peasantry, hitherto atrophetf for 'want of expression, became triculate. "All that remained was the opportunity for the enunciation of their demands, and that was inevitable."