EARLY DAYS OF MR LLOYD GEORGE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12282, 8 July 1914, Page 2

EARLY DAYS OF MR LLOYD GEORGE.

The second vohime of the "Life of David Lloyd George," l>y J. Hugh Edwards, M.P., which has just been published, deals with the career of the Chancellor from his earliest days down to the time of his first election to Parliament in 1890. The main interest of this part of the work ljes in the way it traces the influences which have made Mr Lloyd George the great force in the life of the nation which he is to-day. We- are shown the home of his childhood, with its narrow means and its atmosphere of piety, independence, and hatred of injustice. Very early the boy became the fighter against established tyrannies and hyproerisies, leading a revolt of his Nonconformist school-fellows against the recital of the creed and Catechism of the Church of England. Later, as a young solicitor, we see him championjng the right of dissenters to have their relatives buried in the Burial ground attached to the churchyard at Llanfrathen. and to have the service conducted by their own minister. How the funeral party, under Mr Lloyd George's advice, forced the gates that were bolted against them, how he defended the resulting action for trespass, and on the verdict being given against him challenged the finding of the judge, carried the matter to a higher court- and won, forms perhaps the most interesting chapter in the book. In the story of the. young solicitor's action on this occasion we see clearly the passionate hatred of injustice, the resource and mental agility, and, above all, the dauntless courage which we know to-day as the leading characteristics of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.