Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 1938. MR LLOYD GEORGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 47, 24 January 1938, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 1938. MR LLOYD GEORGE.

One of the most magnetic figures in the British political arena, and one who will go down in history as a great Liberal Prime Minister and statesman, Mr David Lloyd George is, according to a cablegram received from London recently, to celebrate his gulden wedding to-day, along with his wife, on the Riviera. In some months, too, it is stated, he will be celebrating his first election as a member of the House of Commons as another golden anniversary. The precise year in which this outstanding political figure entered the House was 1890, when he was returned for Carnarvon (the seat he still represents), so that he will not attain his golden jubilee until 1940. Most outstanding in his great record of service to the State is, of course, his term as Prime Minister in the War years. His aggressiveness in those dark days will long be remembered, for there was a suspicion that prior to his advent to the chief office civilian authority at Home was not regarding the War seriously enough while thousands of the nation’s men were giving up their lives across the Channel and elsewhere. Whatever ground for controversy there may be as to what share of the credit may be due to him for the ultimate victory of arms —and there has been much argument, particularly since his famous memoirs made their appearance—it cannot be gainsaid that as Premier he was a force, dynamic and driving, with qualities most needed at the time.

Earlier the statesman had made his mark as an aggressive politician, and had given evidence of his incorrigible style and impenitent nature which later —in the last decade —manifested themselves. To the ordinary elector he was best known for his farreaching social legislation covering national health insurance. Since the War he has caused concern on several occasions in Ministerial and party circles by liis provocative methods. It has been said of him that lie has enjoyed an unprecedented license in British politics, very largely, no doubt, because of the poetic imagination which he derives from his racial origin. He has fallen out, too, with almost every Ministerial colleague he ever knew. His portrait, which once adorned the walls of the National Liberal Club, was relegated to the cellar after the War and not redeemed till 1923. In' that year he proclaimed that the Liberal and Labour parties together would be irresistible; in i 925 lie rejected proposals for a Liberal alliance with Labour. Yet, a year later he was still exhorting the Liberal Party to make overtures to the Labourites. In 1917-18 he told

Dominion wartime leaders that never again must Britain neglect preferential trading bonds with the outer Empire. In 1923 he affirmed unhesitatingly that his platform was free-trade. In 1932 he strongly attacked the Ottawa Agreement. And in 1935, in his New Deal plan, he contended that Britain must use tariffs ruthlessly. In 1932 he assailed the Government on its disarmament policy; yet in September of the following year he attacked the League of Nations’ failure to enforce disarmament as the cause of all the post-war trouble. Truly his motives are puzzling. Whether Mr Lloyd George will ever again become a member of the British Ministry is a moot point, but even if he never had occupied either of the Downing Street residences, for his fifty years’ term in continuous service in the House of Commons —a record without precedent—he would long be remembered.