MR. LLOYD GEORGE RETIRES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 307, 28 December 1944, Page 4

MR. LLOYD GEORGE RETIRES

PR half a century and more David Lloyd George has been one of the most dominant, vibrant and picturesque figures in the House of Commons, from which he now retires at the age of 81. The "little Welsh attorney" first entered the House at the age of 2J, and, member for Caernarvon, fair weather or foul his constituents never showed the slightest disposition to desert him. He had none of the advantages of birth or patronage to help him along, but without these, and despite his fierce advocacy of unpopular measures, his uncompromising opposition to the Boer War and the sectional anger which his famous "Limehouse speeches aroused, he rose through a succession of high Parliamentary posts to the nation's leadership in the most critical days of the first World War. He was sharply criticised for what was described by his political opponents as his "desertion" of Mr. Asquith, but the plain fact was that he was utterly impatient with the conduct of the war and was determined to end the wastage of effort and the failure to achieve co-ordination and co-ope*ration in the effort to keep the armies in the field supplied. He won a great victory here, swinging the whole nation into step behind him as it had never been swung befcre, creating a new War Cabinet of an efficiency far surpassing its predecessors, assisting to unify command in the field, and infusing new energy and new methods into the fight against the submarine. He held his high office until after the signing of the peace treaty, but by 1922 the mood of the country was changing. The spirit of unity was dead and buried, the old Liberal party was broken to fragments, the Labour party was indifferently led, the Conservatives had retreated into the shell of "safety first," and their leaders decided that the intruder could be dropped with safety. • They withdrew their support, and on October 23 he resigned. As one critic put it- "He was dispensed with at the height of his prestige, with his immense experience of men and affairs in the prime of his powers. The Tories gave us Baldwin for Lloyd George." Though he was never again to rise to the leadership of the country, Mr. Lloyd George has continued to be a strong force in politics, and he has helped to mould public opinion by his speeches, articles and pamphlets along the lines of that social progress which was the basis of his policy when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but which the war interrupted. A master of rhetoric and a human dynamo of restless energy, Mr. Churchill well said of Lloyd George- "He was the greatest master of the art of getting things done and of putting things through that I ever knew; in fact, no British politician of my day has possessed half his competence as a mover of men and affairs."