DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17436, 7 April 1931, Page 2

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

TKB PAST AND HIS FUTURE ADMIRER'S ESTIMATE ADAPTABLE TO CIRCUMSTANCES "is lie destined to become as dominating a figure on the Left as he was, at one time, on the .Right? Will he succeed in establishing as potent and effeclive an alliance with the Labor Party as he did during the period of his Premiership! "These are the questions that are being eagerly asked—in clear discernment that iu their correct solution will be Jound tha trend of British politics In these coming years. It is obviously certain that he will not bu content, as was the famous Duke of Wellington after his retirement from the Premiership, with the laurels of his past and with the silent salutations of the populace in homage to their glamor."—Mr. J,. Hugh Edwards in "David Lloyd George." There have been more lives and books written about Mr. Lloyd George than any other living man, but the latest, though penned by a great admirer, will probably prove to be the work to which modern historians at any rate will go for a tvue perspective of Mr. Lloyd George's career. Mr. Hugh Edwards, it should he said at once, is not at any time unduly adulatory, as will be shown later, but he, too, is a Welshman, and he has contrived with considerable success to revest the trend of his great countryman's life from his early days to the post-war vears. To take first of all this matter of hero-worship, Mr. Hugh Edwards shows that he can be discriminating as well as eulogistic. Writing of Lloyd George, be savs : "After .the manner of the Stuart Kings, he showed himself, in the great days of his unchallenged power, much too prone to seek his favorites in second and even third-rate men and, in the exercise of his authority, to install them in the front places. "And so it came about that on his chess-board the pawns took rank above the knights and the bishops with the result that, when they failed him in his expectatioas—as it was inevitable that they would—he cast them aside in the most ruthless fashion. PATH LITTERED WITH BROKEN FRIENDSHIPS "Hence the force of the declaration bv, one who has made a most careful study of his psychology, 'he is a good friend while it lasts, but death alone can Secure his lasting praise.' It must further be admitted that there is some truth in the taunt which was levelled at him by one of the most loyal of his former colleagues, when writhing under bis invective, that he would rather placate an enemy than please a friend. "The explanation is obvious. In the pursuit of his purposes the attachment of a foe may sometimes prove to be of much greater* value than the loyalty of a friend, and on the principle that the end justifies the means—a principle which he has invariably observed—he tuts never hesitated to gain the one even at the expense of the other. And therein lies the reason why his path has been Jittered with the fragments of broken friendships and of ruptured allegiances. "After the manner of a highly sensitised plate, he is affected by every change in the atmosphere. Indeed, so sensitive is he to the influence of public opinion—so plastic to the touch of the prevailing circumstances— that he has been likened to 'a captain of a cricket team who disposed his fieldsmen or changed his bowlers according to advice shouted by the crowd.' Still, this bewildering variation of mood, which is so conspicuously characteristic of him, is as valuable a "factor in his accoutrement as is his versatility. Foi< it arises from no uncontrollable waywardness of spirit or of purpose. On the contrary, it makes that spontaneous response to everv vital change in circumstance. LIMEHOXJSE—A CAREFUL CALCULATION!

"In Lloyd George's case, however, this Celtic quality of a ready adaptability to changing circumstances is rigidly subordinated to the most careful calculation of the possibilities of the situation before he embarks upon a hazardous exploit. "In illustration of the truth of this observation, it will suffice to refer to his memorable speech at Limehouse when the controversy over his iirst Budget was being waged with the utmost fierceness. Of all Lloyd George's speeches, there has not been one which has ever roused, such unrestrained resentment or stirred such bitter antipathy to him. It was denounced by his political opponents as the worst form of dogmatic appeal to the passions of the mob. "It was even stigmatised as an unexampled instance of bad taste and an mci'utable proof of bad breeding. Even his own, leader was known to deplore the speech as a grave blunder l in tactics for. so far from easing the way of the Budget to the statute book, it had served only to block its path and even to involve its certain destruction. But that was exactly what he had deliberately set himself to do. Mindful of the occasions on which the peers had, at tin;, instigation of the instinct of selfpreservation, bowed their heads to the storm of public protest, when they had threatened to reject Liberal measures, rather than risk tho loss of their treasured prerogative in the exercise of their all-determining veto, he was determined that so strategic an opportunity for encompassing their defeat should not again be lost in a providential surrender. "He had dug a pit for them, and he was resolved to lure them into it. It was for that reason that he delivered the Limehouse speech with its unrestrained imprecations and its strident note of defiance, in a confident anticipation that by such means he would sueceed in his set purpose of provoking them to such a state of uncontrollable exasperation that they would become absolutely blind to the perils of the situation* His device succeeded in its pnri>ose. The Lords flung out the Uudget, with the, result that the consideration of either its merits or its demerits became lost in the momentous struggle which finally ended in the abolition of the long-cherished veto of the tjprier House. "The Limehouse speech may thus be cited as a striking examde of that Var"f"l calculation of existing resources fr-colc" caution at one, momeot- and, stark *