WHY HAS LLOYD-GEORGE SUCCEEDED?

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 80

WHY HAS LLOYD-GEORGE SUCCEEDED?

Some years ago, just after I had started! I a new journal, Lloyd-George was kihd-j 'enough to give me fchesmWterials for writ- , mg,a short 6ketch of Kis.life.-It. was a somewhat touching 'story. His father— a Welshman— was a_ Unitarian clergyman, and an the course of his ministrations was sent to Manchester. There Lloyd-George was - born ; there his father died, when.' Lloyd-George was just two years old. It does not require much,, imagination,. , {o Tealise the forlorn position of the little family the Nonconformist minister left ! behind him. Very poor, very friendless, strangers in .a strange land, the poor •widow, longed to be back among her own pebpk— among Celts this nostalgia, especially in hours of tribulation, '& universal — and she very soon, found herself back in a little- village in Wales. If you want to realise the character and temperament ' of the distinguished son, you must realise " that of the obscure mother. She was one j of those women one meets so often among ! the poorer gentlefolk of the country — very j soft, very feminine, but yet where v the care and rearing of her little flock was concerned, true, strong, tenacious, un* bending as steel. Out of the remnattte «f the little fortune left to her by>her husband, she set to work to bring up her family, and probably, the privationSj were not felt — youth gilds everything. But j what the privations wsre one may- gather ; from the fact that the great luxury of the -week was half an egg' to each child when Sunday morning came. -*' , - { • ' • — Learning French Thirty Years-. • . Ago. — , - .- There -is another figure in this little family gallery who -also deserves to be remembered among the influences that shape the early life of- Uoyd-GeWrge — that is hi 6 uncle on the maternal.. side. > Here also is one of those types of middle-c lasß1 asB and Nonconformist life who make the whole iace lovable. Ke was poor — he -was a shoemaker on a small seale — but out of his -poverty he managed to make the man that Lloyd-George has become. He had' a love of literature — which among Celts, „ perhaps more than among otber races, .goes down deep — and he determined to cultivate the mind of the little nephew whom the father's early death had left so desolate. One' of the most pathetic, and, at the, same time, delightful pictures in the boyhood of Lloyd-George is the story of how the shoemaker uncle taught bim French. There was no school where /it could be learned, and those were not the days when we had tuition by correspondence^ or manuals for learning a language in aix weeks, or Hugo or Berlitz schools. No; the man a,nd, the boy jised to sit down together arid spell out the language slowly and with infinite out of the dictionary and the grammar, unaided and uninspired by comrade or teacheiT. — A Strike Organiser. — The Established Church in Wales— that institution of which Lloyd-George has ever since been one of the most formidable enemies — had its"^ share in cultivating the lad's mind and also in shaping his character to the attitude of defiant aggression J.o power and authority. There was only one school in the, village, and this was the Church school, though nearly all the children were Dissenters; but the atmosphere was Anglican, and-Ahe vicar was narrow and intolerant, and wanted to impose the Anglican catechism on the Dissenting children. Young Lloyd-George began his career 'as a rebel against authority by organising a strike ; the children coinbined to refuse to answer any questions in the examinations, and the vicar was beaten, and allowed the JDissenting children to go their own spiritual way. It is characteristic of the man and of his career that while still a mere child he should have had the ingenuity and the courage to organise^ strike against what he confii.dered a wrong. Brought up thus thriftily, he found it hard to enter any profession. Choosing the law, he had many an anxious moment while y he was getting together "the few hundreds of pounds which were necessary to pay for lectures, and for those visits to Liverpool and London which to the well-to-do are such trifling incidents, and fp the poor are-such momentous, costly, and dazzling enterprises,- And when at last he_wa» admitted "as a solicitor his resources were so exhausted that he had not the guineas to pay for the robes which in Wales, the solicitor is compelled to wear before getting audience in the courts. He ha"d to wait, till lie had got a few cases before he was able to buy the robes. — Defeating Prejudice. — I Settled down in a tiny Welsh town as a solicitor, with no capital, with no influential friends, with a business that in such surroundings was bound to be small and poorly paid, was there . ever a more unlikely start for Cabinet office and " a great and leadingposition at s.o early an age as 45? What a high spring of courage, energy, and self-reliance there [ must have been in this obscure, poor [ countTf lad \o have given, him the, im- ]

T pulse to reach out to so- high a place from one so abysmally obscure ! He might have remained a small provincial lawyer 1 to the end of his days if he had not had • within, him this great spirit. And it waa indeed' his courage and self-reliance that led to his first success, as itha« led to all his subsequent successes. This is hoW X.loy<l-Oeorg& first came into notice: -H poor miner, dying after the death of a daughter he loved, prayed' that he might - ( be buried by her side. Now> the^girl was buried in the Anglican " graveyard, and the miner was a Dissenter. Thd vicar refused to allow the service of the dissenting communion to be said over the grave, ultimately refused the grave iteelf, and condemned the poor miner -io be " buried in an unconsecrated corner where were laid -the remains of the derelict and the -unknown, the corpses from wrecks, the suicides; the pagan — in short, in the Potter's Field of the village. Lloyd. George was consulted ; he gave the .characteristic advice' to pull : down,if needs- be, ■ the walls of the cemetery, and lo oury the dead miner in d^ece'acy, and accc-Tding : to the rights of his. communion. The advice was taken; ; there was a tremendous ' trial," ■amounting to something -like a big • State or political trial hv other lands', I 'and ftt the 'end, when^ his "policy ha 4 ' ' triumphed, Lfoyd-Gebrge Vas no longer an ' obscure" village lawyer; hie name was a household word through Wales, and the „. beginning of his future glory was made. t— Fortun^Favoure the Brave.-^-Soon after this he was elected to th 6 "House* "of Commons, ' beating, " curiously ; enough, the Anglican Squire who was the embodiment of all the things 'he hated ib his early village life. People think nowa-i days that Lloyd-George's progress in life was easy and rapid ; it was not. It took him 'years to perfect himself in the art of speaking. If he had not had that wonderful tenacity which is one of bis charac- • teristics, he might well* have -been daunted 1 .. • rNow one of the finest platformr speakers : and most effective debaters in. the House | of Commons, he had to get there by slow, ! steady, persevering work. And it is possible that he would never have reached his dominating position if it had not .been for one of those crises in political affairs , that test the souls of men. I do not want to' revive any of the bitter memories of the South African war ; i everybody remembers what a fierce tide of feeling ran ,at tbe^time, as, indeed, was ' natural when such mighty and irreconcilable issues divided the hearts of men. To face' a' raging- ~mob filled with the spirit! ox patriotism and the less edifying spirit oj wine-7-to face universal unpopularity and desperate' odds; to face, abwe all, division in one's own ranks ; here, indeed, was an enterprise from which any man, however bold, might shrink, and which laid an especially heavy task on the shoulders of a man young, poor, compelled to make his living in a profession! dependent to a large extent on publia favour. But Lloyd^George, once he had* entered into i>he struggle, never seemed to count the cost. He went down t>a Bir- - mingham, and, as everybody knows, narrowly escaped with his life. But I have seen him do things in the House of Commons which were an even more terrible trial^pf nerve. Before a majority, fight- ' ing a great war and now and then driven to greater fury of passion and also to more dogged purpose by dreadful' dlsastej, this young Welshman spoke tfor an hour, mitigating not a word of his condemnation; pointing out the difficulties with - relentless analysis, listened to in a silence that was -almost 'frozen, and freesing \when one remembered the burning wrath underneath ; iiena ' irhp a ' thing which only a man with supreme courage - could have done. It' was inevitable after such a fight, that when the fortunes of parties turned, Lloyd-George should be one of the first to receive the rewards of victory. — The Success^of Lloyd-George. — Few people, however, anticipated' that Lloyd-George as a Minister would prove the success he has been. The world had got" so accustomed to him^as a fighier-^-and a severe and unmerciful Qne — that it was disposed to regard him *as one of those untameable spirits who would never be able to display m power that spirit of tact, concession, sweet reasonableness which official life demands, and' especially in a department like that of the ' Board of Trade, where the Minister is brought into intimate contact with the stern and gigantic buoirvess interests of the country. But people who formed these inauspicious forecasts of LloydGeorge's career did not know their man. Trained in the school of adversity, as at lawyer accustomed to the giverand-take of life, and to the business akpect of everything, Lloyd-George as a beßwerent , Leader of Opposition showed bui one side of his versatile character ; no man can realise a situation all round # better than he; can understand the spirit of compromise, on which moat of the transactions of the world have to be conducted, more promptly and ,readily than he ; and* na man can be more infinitely patient with even foes, and, what is more trying, difficult friends. Amiability and tolerance of temper, with indomitable courage and tireless tenacity at the back of the character — this is a formidable combination in any . man ; it is the combination you find in Lloyd-George. — His Simple Life. — " I put the question at the head of -this article, Why has Lloyd-George succeeded?, and what I have written is,- to- a certain degree, an answer 'to tue question. But I have to add something about the traits in his character which have contributed to making his great position. And first among these I put his unaffected love of the Simple Life. What others have been preaching liei'has been practising all his life. He has heen content to live in a modest house in the far-off region--' of Dulwich all these years, and he lives there still. Any night after the House rises you may see him walking along Victoria street with some friend to Vic- [ toria Station^ where be takes his cheap,

suburban train to his modest suburban house. I dwell a little on this point, because it is the besetting sin of men — and especially of politicians — who have had a strenuous and self-denying youth, to take something like revenge on early fortune by giving way in the success of middle ag« to the ' tempto-ti-one of eelfindulgenoe — to r . fine > dinners and fine houses, to carriages and footmen. I have known more' than one politician who has ended simply because of this very human and very natural weakness. It is a weakness which 'Lloyd-George has never felt, or if 'he has felt it, it is one to which he has never yielded.

—The Triumph of the Teetotaler. —

I put as another important factor in the success of Lloyd-George that though not a rabid, he is a strict teetotaler. If I were a modern Caesar the men I would dread in political life are not the lean and the hungry, but the men who are the" teetotalers. It may be that the remoral of the soothing influence of wine — that .potent .elixir which brightens and softens jbo many hours — gives the tee- . totaler a keenness of interest, a perennial/ freshness of vigour and effort — whatever the reason, the most formidable and most ambitious politicians in my zxperience are the teetotalers. It is such a safeguard from most of the weaknesses of the flesh—love of pleasure, love of ease, love of luxury ; above all, from that uncertainty of nerve which is as fatal to a politician as to any other athlete who has .to enter the ring daily. With his fresh-complexioned face, his everlasting alertness of air and manner, his clear, quick, searching eye, his perfect equability of spirits, bis equal readiness for peace and for war — above all, with that cense of being always perfectly normal, , LloydGeorge ik a striking example of what compensations Nature gives to the man who has the courage of self-denial. It is singular that in the same issue of this journa 1 , and dealing with such widely different personalities as a Fjrencß Prime Minister and an English Minister of Commerce, I should have to set down teetotalisnx as one ' o£ the chief pauses of the final triumph of both over gigantic obstacles.

— The Rare. Virtue— Courage.— "Finally, Lloyd-George has succeeded because lie possesses the virtue — rare among Parliamentarians' especially — of courage. I£ he had not been -so often to take his political life in his hands, to face tremendous odds and tremendous risks, he 1 -would not be where Tie is to-day. And it is to the credit of our political life that' this quality has ultimately gained him the admiration not only of personal and political friends,' but of foes who, up to a short time -ago, would shudder at the mention of his name. This young man has even jnore brilliant pages m his annals yet to write.— T. P., in P. T. 0.