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Page 34
There was no man less embittered by failure and disappointment. He seems
to have had reason to believe that Mr. Lloyd George frustrated his early
efforts as a politician, indeed he told me more than once that Mr. Lloyd
George had deliberately set himself to that end; and yet it was at Mr.
Lloyd George's earnest beseeching that he accepted the office of Food
Controller, and once a member of his Cabinet, he seldom spoke of this
old opponent without the warmest admiration. "You can't trust him a
yard," he said to me on one occasion laughing very good-naturedly; "but
there is not a man in the Government who can hold a candle to him for
courage and inspiration. I know very well that I could never have done
what he has done. More than any man in the country he has pulled us
through the critical days of the war. He is wonderful--nothing short of
wonderful--and sometimes I feel almost fond of him, for he has many
likeable sides to his character; all the same, I know very well he is
not to be trusted. I took office on certain conditions, not one of which
has he observed. He is one of those men with whom you cannot deal
confidently."
This was the bitterest thing I ever heard him say of his former enemy.
As regards the old days in the House of Commons, he told me that there
was room for only one leader in Wales, and that, while Mr. Lloyd George
could speak, he couldn't, and so Mr. Lloyd George, who was consumed by
personal ambition, had won the battle. In saying this he smiled like a
boy, and only grew serious when he added of those wasted years, "The
bother is I had a lot of useful things I wanted to do for the country."
He was convinced that he could have paid off the whole of the National
Debt during those years.
A good judge of statesmen said of Lord Rhondda that he would have made
the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer these islands had ever
possessed. I do not think there can be any doubt of this, for his genius
lay in figures and he had extraordinary swiftness in seeing his way
through expensive chaos to economical order. His mind was constructive,
if not positively creative. He was never happier--except when
birds'-nesting or romping with young people--than when he was in an
arm-chair working out with pencil and paper some problem of
administration which involved enormous figures. He would sit up to the
small hours of the morning over his work, and would come down to
breakfast radiant with happiness, bursting with energy, exclaiming, "I
had a glorious time last night!" Certainly he would have brought to the
Treasury an original mind, and a mind, moreover, profoundly acquainted
with the activities of trade and commerce--those important factors in
national finance which appear to cut so small a figure in the minds of
bankers and officials.
Although a rather dull speaker, few men of my acquaintance were more
lucid and convincing in conversation, particularly when he addressed a
sympathetic mind. This was notably the case when he was unfolding his
ideas on the conflicting theories of Individualism and Socialism. If his
conversations on this head could be printed in a book they would make
difficult work even for the most ingenious apologists of Socialism. He
was persuaded that no theory of Socialism could be put into successful
practice without involving the loss of personal freedom, and that
without Individualism there would be no initiative, no audacity, and no
creative energy in the development of an industry. Whenever he was in
conflict with Socialists he would say to them, "Why don't you buy me out
and run the mines yourselves? You have plenty of money in your unions,
and I am quite willing to sell."
There were several strange and interesting movements in his otherwise
quite simple and boyish nature. For example, he had no religious faith
worth speaking about, certainly no dogmatic faith of any kind; but he
always said his prayers. Then he held the theory that old age was a form
of disease, and so avoided, as much as possible, the society of old
people, fearing contagion; the young people with whom he loved to
surround himself, and on whom he delighted to play many practical jokes,
he called his "young germs."
He was entirely free from all forms of snobbishness, and would make fun
of titles and honours and ridicule aristocratic pretensions; yet he went
somewhat painfully out of his way to get a title from his Party when he
retired from the House of Commons, and was justly indignant at the way
this bargain was broken by the Liberal leaders of that day. I think he
wanted a title at that time chiefly to prove to his constituents that he
had faithfully done his duty by them.
He seldom read a book of any account after he came down from Cambridge,
but hardly a day of his life passed that he did not learn by heart a
number of fine sayings which appealed to him in a book of quotations.
These quotations he would fire off at his family till they cried for
mercy, or another set.
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