THE REAL LLOYD-GEORGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 805, 29 January 1910, Page 3

THE REAL LLOYD-GEORGE.

AS HE APPEARS TO A COLONIAL.

It was with a ] erfeclly open mind tinged possibly with a little colonial admiration for the hard and plucky work that he has done during late years, that I went to hear the Chancellor ol the Exchequer speak, writes a London correspondent to a contemporary.

The Queen’s Hall is not exactly in Wales, but the occasion was one of the greatest Free Church gatherings that London has seen, and Mr Lloyd-George was, therefore, pretty near home. Let us grant that the enthusiasm —the cheering and psalm-singing —was in the main an outburst — and a wonderful one —of that deep religious fervour that is stirring England to-day as never since the Commonwealth; and think only of the man.

Short and thick-set, with a typically Welsh type of countenance, the Chancellor belies most of the cartoons, in which he is represented as a somewhat cadaverous and neurotic personality. His friends say that steady application to work and little opportunity for exercise are the causes of that peculiar ruddiness of complexion and tendency to flabby adiposity which now distinguish him from the majority of his portraits, both grave and seriousA frock suit emphasises the impression, and the longish black hair overhanging his collar, exaggerates the thickness of the neck, and completes the picture ol a born fighter. As indeed, he is. The tout ensemble resembles only in height and in the moustache the usually published portrait of the man. The benignity of brow, by which in his portraits he so closely resembles J. M. Barrie, is not apparent. Yet there are no lines on the face. It is almost unhealthy in its pink freshness. So far, the real picture is not displeasing. As a speaker Lloyd George is an interesting anachronism in English lile to-day. The voice, attenuated by an obstinate affection of the throat, is almost feeble. It reaches the far corners of the hall because the audience is with him in a whole-souled manner, and because any interrupter is ejected summarily. In face of heckling and uproar he would perforce cut a sorry figure if he were not endowed with the most caustic and resourceful gift of repartee. He does not command a flow of language comparable with that of, say, Lord Rosebery or Churchill, or even Balfour or Austen Chamberlain. He is more of a reasoner and a logician than any of them. And he clinches his arguments in a somewhat jerky and irritating way, a phrase at a time, driven home with the right fist into the left palm, while he revolves regularly from side to side facing alternately the platform audience on his right and 1 eft more often than the body of the hall. Indeed, interruptions are necessary, as a rule, to fasten his attention on the mass of the audience.

He is not a cultured speaker. There are some vowels which are foreign to the speech of English University men, and he says “perfetly” for “perfectly,” “extraornary” and sometimes snaps out “edoocation.” But one or two of these faux-pas are found as affectations even amongst the welleducated English, who delight to appear careless. Moreover, this is beside the question. Eloyd George was educated in a parish school, and his ability, even at that age, was so promising that the clergyman offered to make him a pupil teacher, provided, of course, he would join the Church of England. As be jocularly remarked, he might have been a curate by now if he had accepted the offer. But all these trivialities are overshadowed and made almost imperceptible, except to the close observer, by the overpowering earnestness of the man. Listening to him, one realises some of the significance of Welsh fervour and the patriotism of the Principality, just as later the eloquence of Dr Scott Lidgetl and the Rev C. Silvester Horn carries us back to the Spartan covenanters worshipping their God in the fastnesses of the Scottish forest.

The matter of the speech is of a piece with the manner. Hearing Lloyd George speak, it is at once apparent why Conservative statesmen, willing to concede the honesty and the strength of purpose of the man himself are nettled, and even embittered, against him. Caustic sarcasm is less apt in British controversy than direct and forcible argument. A flippancy which sometimes offends against reverence is distasteful. But the end of all, as Rosebery would say, is a species of vulgarity in which Mr Lloyd George positively exults. It is not continuous, or even general, but it crops up here and there in ways unknown to New Zealand politics, and it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

From every interruption he scored in that quiet, ironical manner which is undoubtedly at the root of much of the bitterness felt against the little champion by his opponents. In such a cause, and on such an occasion, one resents the attack by inference which is so frequent a feature of the speech. He mentions a name, and the audience, realising at once from the tone and the inflection what is meant, hisses or boos. But in commiseration he relents. It is Sir Robert Perks this time. “He has rendered great service to Nonconformity, and I do not want to say a word about him ; but I do wish he would not always speak as if the Noncomformist conscience were locked up in his city

safe.” Thus the censure was pleasantly in it (wiled.

But these instances are ouly picked out from a great speech to show the character of the man and the secret of his enmities. He is rising superior in a remarkable way to the narrowness and the prejudices of a life devoted in its religious and social aspects to freedom of conscience. Somehow or other such crusades do produce their own little mental bondages, and Lloyd Gorge has wrestled gamely with his. How gamely we may understand when we know that until the last lew years he had not seen England. Wales was his world. His brilliant entrance from Wales into the arena and the front rank of British politics is sufficient evidence of the ability and the honesty of purpose of the man.