LLOYD GEORGE AMONG SAILORS

Evening Star, Issue 18053, 22 August 1922, Page 6

LLOYD GEORGE AMONG SAILORS

Xautical metaphors constitute a large part of Mr Lloyd George’s oratorical stock-in-trade, notes Mr Alan Bott in '‘Blackwood.’ They were .well represented in his conference speeches at Genoa. “ Stormy seas, priceless cargoes, sheet-anchors of sot purpose, charts of honest endeavor — these and many other marine analogies he had applied to the preposterous voyage ou which he had embarked.” Then he visited the wharfside. “I am .delighted to come to the Seamen’s Rest in Genoa," ho said. “I am something of a mariner_ myself.” At which point a bibulous mariner from north of the Tweed, who did not know what was happening, called from the stairway “Is Harry Lauder inside?” “Here in the conference, ’’ Mr Lloyd George continued, “we have encountered storms and cross-currents and contrary winds. Sometimes ,wc have had to tack in order to continue the voyage. . . . We may make port—l hope '»e shall. But if we do not, the attempt will have been worth while, and it will be something to go down like men.” The sailors were impressed. Mr Lloyd George had tears in his voice, but .Mr Bott says that ho has never seen 3’irn more seemingly happy. The scene was unmistakably suggestive of Sunday afternoon in a small Welsh chapel. After a tiring and soul-sickening day among high politics that had gone all awry, Mr Lloyd George, on instinctive impulse, was stimulating new moral .courage in himself by speaking on moral courage to half a hundred sailors.