LLOYD GEORGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1696, 10 April 1917, Page 4

LLOYD GEORGE.

GLUTTON FOR WORK. 4 LORD NORTHCLIFFE’S TRIBUTE. As a personality, David Lloyd George is for many reasons interesting and important to the United States. He is one of the few British statesmen understanding that difficult and intangible psychology of the American temperament, wrote Lord Northcliffe, in an American journal, after Mr Lloyd George had become Prime Minister. He is important to America tor another reason. He is now the head of the five British nations engaged in wax’ —Britain,Canada, Australia, New Zealand' and South Africa, together with India. Winning the war now primarily devolves on these nations. If they and the Allies are beaten it will be America's turn next, for Germany's plans in South America and Germany's hatred of the United States should be known to every American who reads the anti-Am-erican propaganda of the Gennan Government. ‘ Lloyd George is also interesting to your hundred millions because his life has been very much similar to many of you. He began simply, without other assets of life than a good father and mother. He had the same kind of education that an American boy gets. There are millions of American homes like his little home in Wales, wherein he spent his early childhood. His father was teacher' of a school in Liverpool, managed by a committee of Unitarians, including Dr. Harriet Marlineau. His mother was a daughter of a Baptist minister in the Welsh village of Llanystumdwy. COURAGE OOZES FROM HIM. I do not know Lloyd George in private life; T am not in agreement with him on many political affairs. We have been publicly antagonistic on many matters during twenty years. He adopted a line in the Boer War that was not mine, incurring the hatred, even contempt, of millions of his fellow-subjects. It was a brave line, for it demanded more courage to be on the side of the minority opposing the war than to shout with the majority supporting it. Since then Lloyd George has led all sorts of movements at variance with the tenets of the political party to which I belong. Sometimes he has been right —and proved right; Mimetimes he lias been wrong —and proved wrong. But in all he has undertaken he has evinced (he same coin-age shown throughout this one momentous week’s history. SHOWED HIS DISCONTENT. The British people’s fear of helping German propagarda in the. United States prevented English writers from saying how dissatisfied the British people have been with the politicians who have managed our share in the war since lt)14. Lloyd George was (he only member of the Government with the courage to exhibit discontent over our feeble and vacillating conduct of the war.

Occasionally in Parliament and on the platform lie attempted to tell the people a little of the truth, hut on these occasions he always was howled down by members of his party and their newspapers, as unpatriotic and as {jiving comfort to the enemy. The rest did their best to hide the truth. The hide-the-lrnth tactics in the Commons of smaller politicians were shown at the time they were endeavouring to cover up their blunders, and Sir Edward Carson left the Government last year. EOI'ND SITUATION IMPOSSIBLE.

If Lloyd George had resigned with him then the war would have been greatly advanced. He was prevailed upon to remain, but evidently at the end of last week he found the state of torpidity and self-satisfaction of his colleagues —in the fact of his repeated setbacks —impossible to a man of his vision and patriotism.

Of these colleagues, writing as I am an article which will appear in some 800 American and Canadian newspapers, I prefer only to say that they were men who wouldn’t believe the war was coming when it did, and who hadn't an idea of its tremendous portent for our race. In my own newspapers at Homo I have spoken much more plainly —

so plainly, indeed, that I find myself occasionally the best abused man in the country, NO PERSONAL AMBITIONS. When last week Lloyd George decided to smash the party machine wherein he was entangled, he took his courage in both hands. I do not believe he had any personal ambition in jthe matter at all. Events made him Prime Minister —a position almost as powerful as that of your President. But his desire was that this distinction should be conferred on another. Indeed, for some hours it looked as if it would be the Scotsman, Bonar Law, rather than the Welshman, Lloyd George. Fie went out into the wilderness alone, so far as his own party was concerned. He had as a supporter Bonar Law, who had previously opposed him on practically every phase of politics, and an outside helper in (’arson, whose Irish policy was diametrically opposite.

Those three, with Lord Der-by, have produced a miracle, whereof all the world is talking. In a few days they have formed a Government —marred, it is true, by inclusion of some notable former failures, but enriched by the brains of business men and new politicians. ANYTHING BUT “LITTLE.”

The greater part of the work was done by Lloyd George himself. He is constantly referred to here as the “Little Welshman,” but he is not at all “little.” You probably have Ills portrait before you. His head is not that of a little man, mentally or physically. It is the head of a man in which the sparkle of genius is combined with Celtic energy and intense industry.

During the greater part of the week he has been at the War Office until 3 in the morning, returning to the difficult task of trying to make a composite national government six hours later.

I do not often see him, hut ] did just before he made his decision, and he then appeared tired looking —older than his 53 years. "Within a tew hours of his telling Asquith he could no longer re iin in his company he looked Id years younger. Fir MAX DYNAMO. T have seen him at two other crises of the war —first when he got the shells which the Government and the army had forgotten to provide; second, when he nearly—Oh, so nearly —accomplished the unification of Ireland. On each of these occasions, as during the last week, the man revealed himself a human dynamo. Every energy is focused on Ihe immediate task at hand. He combines the persuasiveness ol the Irishman with the concentration of the American and the thoroughness of the Englishman. His critics say he tires too (piickly at his task. That 1 do not believe. He gives every ounce of his attention to achievement of the particular object in hand —then passes*on to the next important effort. ACCOMPLISHED HARD TASK. Making a Government. 1 suppose, is the same the world over, but making a real war Government, such as we are making, is not quite as easy a task as handing out places to hungry politicians in peace times. The Government he has formed will last, but it needs pruning. It contains too many of what are known in the United States as “has beens." It is cumbered with too many fossils representative of a past age. None knows exactly how they got there—but I think 1 know the reason. This quick, determined, energetic Welshman is a little too kind-hearted.

GOVERNMENT THAT WILL LAST.

Nevertheless he lias formed a Government whieli will cause repoicvernment wliieh will cause rejoically anionthe soldiers facing their third winter in the trenches. At the beginning of the week his political opponents didn’t seem able to make a Government. Now they think his won’t last. I hold a different opinion.

1 believe he will be head of the Government that wins the war, brings settlement of the Irish question, and maintains the essential factor —good will between the people of the English-speaking nations of the British Empire and the people of the United States.