NEW LLOYD GEORGE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLIII, Issue 92, 1 June 1917, Page 6

NEW LLOYD GEORGE.

The 'Morning Post,' for many years a severe critic of Mr Lloyd George, says:— We are bound to offer Mr Lloyd George the tribute of an unwilling admiration. In the words of the song, "We do not want to do it." But he seems to us to be one of those rare men who have become great with great events. He has learnt and he has unlearnt; which process has been the moro useful to him and to the nation we do not desire to decide. It is sufficient to say that the war has taught him realities; if it is giving us, as lie says, and as we hope, a new England out of its fiery crucible, it is also giving us a new Lloyd George. "And the new Lloyd George is to us very much more attractive than the old. And for this reason mainly, that whereas before he spoke for a faction or a party or a class, now he speaks for the nation. It is this authentic note of national leadership which makes us hope that the Prime Minister is discovering in the prosecution of the war a true British policy, a national policy, such as this kingdom possessed when it was making itself great, but had lost in the recent lamentable period of faction, stagnation and declension. In the 'Strand Magazine' Mr T. P. O'Connor, M.P., writes of the Prime Minister:— Take him for all in all, he has more than the usual complexity of the Celtic chractor. He is often unwilling to begin work; but, once he begins he finds it) difficult ever to givo up. Ho can work immensely, but he gets very tired; but then he can sleep anywhere and at all times. He is ordinarily cheer, ful, and more equable as years have gone on, but he has moments of depression; and in his youth he was said to be haunted by the vision of early death, like that of his father. He is very soft; he can be very hard. He is the most pliant and most obstinate of men; he can be broad of vision, and under the strong and tenacious will ho can put his mind in blinkers; he has weird insight as a prophet; he never looks back; he is confident of the future. Such is the man in whoso hands our lives and fortunes, are now placed. Ir he cannot win for us no man can.