The End of Lloyd George

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 295, 25 October 1922, Page 4

The End of Lloyd George

• The first impressions received per cable of Mr. L. George's speech at; Manchester very quickly dispelled. Instead of silencing his critics, He. provoked their anathemas from Land's; End to John o' Groats, and of press there were only two to do him x-everence, "The Daily Chronicle" (his; official organ), and "The Daily Telegraph." ;His sins have found him out. During the whole oi' his career his professed ideals have been falsified by his deeds, and he is now the victim of his own untruth. He "Liniehoused" against the landed aristocracy, only to himself repeal the land tax provisions of his famous Budget; he swore "as the Lord lfveth" that Britain, did not want an inch of .territory during the war, and by the Versailles Treaty he appropriated 1,000,000 square .miles; he cynically reversed/ his promise to British Labour about the Turks, there-;; by condemning the Near East-to a turmoil of war, and when his pro-Greek imperialism collapsed he issued in-' flammatory appeals to the militarist' 1 spirit in the Dominions without for a moment testing the value of negotiation. And but a week or two before he ■declared that the rest of his life would jbe devoted to the security of peace! By the mendacity of his actions he has brought Britain to the verge of ruin. In 1918 he won an election by promising to hang the Kaiser —the Kaiser is comfortable while tens of thousands of British soldiers are unemployed anddestitute—and the same unscrupulous; electioneering in his Manchester utterance'impelled the French press to say that he' was lying to catch votes. At the end of the war he had the. world at his feet, he was supported by a people whom he had -inspired by glittering promises, but tinder his' leadership the "land fit for heroes to live in" has become a desolation, and Europe, which he might have pacified, a charnel ho«se of hate and slaughter. He is an utter and dismal failure, and the English seem determined to be rid of him. They would be hopeless were it not so.