A CAMPAIGN OF HARD WORDS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 13938, 11 January 1911, Page 7

A CAMPAIGN OF HARD WORDS.

PERSONALITIES IN THE BRITISH ELECTIONS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, November 30. During the last few days, certain leading figures in the political drama have been busy using personalities. Mr Lloyd George set this particular activity going by a speech at Mile End. I give some selections from the speeches. Mr Lloyd George (at Mile End): "Since when havo the British aristocracy started despising American dollars? (Loud laughter and cries of 'Ask the Duke of Marlborough.') I see you understand that. Many a noble houso tottering to its fall has had its foundations, underpinned, its walls buttressed by a pile of American dollars. (Applause.) Aristocracy is like cheeso —(laughter)—the older it is—(A voice: 'The more it stinks')—(loud laughter) —the higher it becomes. (Laughter)." The Duke of Marlborough, (in Oxfordshire) : "iir Lloyd George has been down to Whitechapel, where, as he said, no Peers reside, and where, as he forgot to say, he does not reside himself. Ho spoke as the confidential adviser of the Crown, and his theme was the abuse of dukes. When Mr George did mo the honour of staying at Blenheim nearly three years ago, I certainly did not suspect that I should eventually become the target of his insolent and unsavoury invective. At that time I must have thought him a gentleman, but he seems to have since reverted to his type and become himself. In his later appearances he is neither a pleasant nor an edifying spectacle. What do the real poor think, what can they think, of this sham poor man, wallowing himself in every luxury -".which £5000 a year can bring, while he stirs up the embers of class hatred? Are Mr Lloyd George's subscriptions io charity larger than another man's? I except, of course from this question the damages which he obtained in his libel actions, and which were to go to charity, but of the precise destination of which I am unaware. And let ine point out to Mr Lloyd George that it is cowardly to attack Lords through their ladies, and that his insults touch at least one of his Cabinet colleagues (Earl Granard, who married Miss Ogden Mills)." Mr E. G. Hemraerde, K.C. (at Portsmouth): "The Duke of Marlborough went to the same school as I, and was born on the same day. He used to clean out my brother's study, and did it badly. (Great laughter.) Look; at his intellectual record at Winchester. He was bottom of the school for three years, and no one ever rivalled that record. (Laughter.) Then he went to Cambridge, where his career was equally distinguished. (Laughter.) Then ho went to America and married a lady who was full of American dollars, and now he comes back and abuses Mr Redmond for receiving the dollars of his compatriots who have been exiled by the villainous land system of Ireland." Mr F. E. Smith (at Burnley): "Germany had built a navy with the express object of challenging ours, and their trade could challenge comparison with ours in expansiveness. (Cries of "Lloyd George!") No, he only knew about horse flesh and black bread — (laughter)—and is a specialist in offal in more senses than one." Mr F. E. Smith (at Highbury): "Mr Lloyd George said that at the last election he made fifty speeches. The Unionist- won 100 seats—two for every speech. He drove Nonconformists like Sir Robert Perkes out of tho party altogether, he went down and delivered a ranting speech in -the constituency on the eve of the poll, and handed it over to the Conservatives; he spoke at Banbury, and the Unionist cause never looked back. He went to Droitwich, I happened -to be there afterwards, and the Unionists said, 'Thank God we are saved now' —and they were. He spoke at Reading, and nearly ruined Sir Rufus Isaacs."

Mr Lloyd George (at -Edinburgh): "Mr Austen Chamberlain was worried about the style of my oratory. He sort of suggested that there was a model I might follow. (Much laughter). I have done my best, - Why should the people of Scotland be* considered tmtit to govern themselves without the direction, let them say, of Lord St. John of Bletsoe?" (Laughter). Who was he? (More laughter). He (the Chancellor) did not know. (Laughter.) Ke only looked up the name in Dod. He was one of the persons who were governing the country. The principal champion of this doctrine that rank and heredity counted without merit was Lord Curzon. Lord Curzon evidently did not think much of the Christian religion. He would have thought more of it if he had been propagated, not by twelve Galilean fishermen, but by a dozen dukes. (Laughter). The heredity system was a kind of apostolic succession of rank and snobbery, a charlatan creed and a despicable one at that. As Mr Chamberlain once said, 'They toil not, neither do they spin.' (Loud laughter). They do not plough— except those who indulge in the caprice of the lonely ,/furrow—(laughter)—and even that furrow is never driven straight. (Roars of laughter). They do not sow, they do not reap, they do not mill the golden grain, they do not convert it into bread. They meet it just when it is daintily spread on their tables.'" (Laughter.) Even our friends across the Channel

seem to be startled by the nature of Mr George's speeches. "The Gaulois" remarks: "English statesmen, until today, would have thought themselves disgraced if they had ever allowed themselves to indulge in personalities. Mr Lloyd George, on the contrary, goes in search of them. His habitual method is directly to attack his adversaries, to infuriate them by his gibes and sarcasms. Made up of brutality, triviality and insolent persiflage, his undeniable eloquence is unlike anything. hitherto heard in England. One of his most striking traits is to be 'shocking.' " The "Journal dcs Debats" : "This man who might by his merit elevate the common people, still very coar.se and brutal, sinks to their level." Far away in Austria the Reichpost, on this "hot blooded English Mirabeau" says: "England, unlike the Continent was preserved in the nineteenth century safe from revolution. Will Mr Lloyd George at last bring it to pass?" And the "Algemeine Zeitung: "It repels one to hear a Minister, and above all, an English Minister, openly sing the praises of revolution." Encouraged by Mr Redmond's speechmaking performances in the United States, Messrs Cohen and Harris have offered the Chancellor of the Exchequer £1000 a Aveek if he will visit America and "Limehouse" twice a day for the benefit of New York audiences. The cable message is as follows:— "David Lloyd George, 11 Downing street, London, England:—Offer you our new theatre and a guarantee of £1000 a week and support for the purpose of organising an American campaign against the Lords. You must speak twice daily from your repertoire on Limehousing lines, which will be a novelty here. (Signed), Cohen and Harris." It is pointed out that the offer to Mr Lloyd George is only a little less than the amount secured for a single performance by Jack Johnson, the champion boxer.