The Dominion. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1911. "COMRADE " LLOYD-GEORGE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1041, 2 February 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1911. "COMRADE " LLOYD-GEORGE.

During ths closing days of December,..we published and commented upon a- cabled summary of an interview given by_ Mr. Lloyd-George to a representative of the Paris Socialist organ, the Humanite. It was a truly remarkable performance on the part of the Minister, or the journalist, or both. The fuller report which has reached us by this week's mail shows how completely Hie interviewer adopted the British Chancellor of the Exchequer as a comrade" of the small French faction of extremists, known as Collectivist Socialists. . Mr. LloydGeorge seems to have lent himself with the utmost readiness to the intervipwer'B wishes. He received him at his official residence in Downing Street, thanked him for his congratulations on the "defeat* of the Lords,", and without waiting for further question expressed extreme surprise "at the way in which our efforts here were judgod by the leading organs of the French democracy." "Certainly, not by the Ilumani/.e," replied the .interviewer. No," said the Minister, "I except the Socialists." Then he talked about the "Francophil past of ray party," and said that Mr. Gladstone "used to bo called 'the grand Old Frenchman'." Mention of the South African War s.tarted the Chancellor of v the Exchsquer on a passage of rhetoric in which ho alluded to Me. Chajiberlain . and Lord Rosebery as having "daily" denouncedFrance. "Look you now (ho continued half serious), on the day of the last Judgment tho Great Judge will try each one of us on this question. All those who voted or acted in order to crush the two little free peoples who were defending their liberties—well, they will have a nice reckoning." The interviewer was much impressed by this language. It "recalled the revolutionary mysticism of soldiers of Cf.oiiwell." To other English readers it must have recalled tho fact that tho many conscientious and just-minded citizens to whom this Cromwellian vaticination would apply included tho prophet's own colleagues, Sir Edward Grey and _ Mr. Haldane. A little later tho interviewer administered another generous dose of the stimulus of congratulation. He explained what it was in' Mr. Lloyd-George that had given moat pleasure "to my French Socialist comrades," and had earned tho praise of "Citizen Boland, who represents the most uncompromising tendency in our' party. It i was -your ardent combativoness ; it "was the note, which has so little that is 'official' .in it, which you, a bourgeois Minister strike when you denounce the privileges of tho propertied classes—that reign of tho plutocracy which is at tho foundation of our existing forms of society." That sort of talk is, of course, quite familiar in New Zealand, but we have been accustomed to associate it. with the soap-box and the steps of tlic Queen's Statue, and it is rather strange to read that it was uttered acceptably in Downing Street. Mr. Lloyd-George also said- that he was personally determined to carry out his part of. I the Liberal programme, and he forecasted "groat social transformations" within the next ■ five years. The. interviewer asked him to name his final solution of the land question : "The Chancellor of the Exchequer looked at me with a smile, but I felt that ho is really prepared to go as far as our Socialist solution—the nationalisation of tho land. But he did not say so to me.", ,Wc wonder why not. After so many in-. discretions, one more would not have mattered much. It is only right to remind our readers that the Tlumanite afterwards published a telegram. from Mr. Lloyd-Geokge not disputing tho general purport of tho interview,- but stating that; had tho copy been submitted to him, he would have modified it in form and substance. But something more drastic than "modification" would have been needed to make this, precious production worthy of a British Chancellor of the Exchequer.