LLOYD GEORGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 131, 30 November 1939, Page 14

LLOYD GEORGE

CRITIC OF CHAMBERLAIN

WRITINGS IN HEARST PRESS

(Front <;The Post's" Representative.)

NEW. YORK, October, 11,

, Mr. Lloyd George, resuming , his writing for the Hearst Press, is creating a profoundly unfavourable impression in N the United States by his criticism of Mr. Chamberlain and his Government, in their handling of the international. situation. These attacks are especially ill-timed, coming as they do- when American public opinion is being stirred by the neutrality issue.

Charging that Britain has been outmanoeuvred. four or five times .by Hitler, 'Mr. Lloyd George recalls his efforts to secure an abiding peace at Versailles in 1919, and says that the Allies failed to honour their obligations with regard to disarmament and the rights of the minorities. But he is. convinced that the terms of peace in the present struggle will be prescribed not by any combination of dictatorships but by the democracies.

"There is a deep conviction," he says, "that the issue between dictatorship and democracy has' to be fought out. Now that the fight has started, there will be a very general feeling that it is better to have it out at all costs.. •■■■■•

"In- Britain there is .no sense of despondency, but a grim, if somewhat sullen, determination! to go through with.it. I may also add that I have not seen any indications of doubt in any minds that, however long the struggle may last, we shall be as successful in our challenge to universal despotism as we were in, our fights with' Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, and the Kaiser.

"All the same, the Governments of the two Western democracies have a terrible responsibility upon - their shoulders. I earnestly hope they will not come to any conclusion without thoroughly and fearlessly examining the conditions of the struggle, and that they will not imitate the heedless temerities with which they plunged into the guarantees to Poland, Rumania, and Greece without even consulting their military, naval, and aerial advisers as to the best methods and chances of carrying^ them out."