T. P. ON LLOYD-GEORGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 828, 19 April 1910, Page 4

T. P. ON LLOYD-GEORGE.

Mr T. P. O’Connor writes in Munsey’s for February on the Battle of the Budget. It is interesting to have the crisis explained for the benefit of American readers by one who knows both so well as the writer. What may be reproduced here is his account of the immense curiosity felt as to Mr George’s first Budget. T.P. says “Up to his entrance into official life he had been known simply as a very daring and almost reckless agitator. For a while he was the most hated man in England. It was naturally assumed that such a firebrand would find himself entirely out of place in the serious responsibilities of office. But Lloyd George had another side to his character. He had done extremely good work as President of the Board of Trade — work of a kind that had not been expected of him.

"But the Board of Trade is a small office compared with the guardianship of the finances of the empire, and success in the minor post did not necessarily mean success in the greater. “Moreover, it was a moment when the finances of England required a master hand. The final result was that he had to face a deficit of not less than eighty million dollars ; and it was clear that some new method of taxation must be found in order to fill up this yawning void.

“Such was the task that confronted a man, who, up to a short time before, had been simply a provincial lawyer in small practice: who had never earned more than five thousand dollars a year, and who had spent what time he could spare from his work in vehement platform oratory. There were people who doubted if Lloyd George had ever seen as much as ten thousand dollars in his life. It was asked whether he could add up a simple sum- this man who had to conjure millions out of the vasty deep. The story of his supposed ignorance of the ordinary rules of arithmetic was assiduously spread and widely believed. Only a few weeks ago it was repeated to me as coming from a greater international financier who usually lives in New York. As a matter of fact, Lloyd George is an unusually good arithmetician—indeed, a magician with figures “ It is not strange, therefore, that when he stood up to propose his first Budget, the crowded audience in the House of Commons was almost dizzy with something of the same feeling as that of a crowd which sees a man swinging from a windowsill three hundred feet above the pavement, and momentarily expects him to fall.”

T. F. ends by saying ; “ The conllict aroused by this Budget possesses an importance which does not end with the shores of England or with the fortunes of English parties. It is a conflict in which the whole world is interested ; in which all mankind are akin.”