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Page 6
I can see nothing sinister in what some people regard as his plots
against those who disagree with him. He tries, first of all, to win them
to his way of thinking: if he fails, and if they still persist in
attacking him, he proceeds to destroy them. It is all part of life's
battle! But one would rather that the Prime Minister of Great Britain
was less mixed up in journalism, less afraid of journalism, and less
occupied, however indirectly, in effecting, or striving to effect,
editorial changes. His conduct in the last months of the war and during
the election of 1918 was not only unworthy of his position but marked
him definitely as a small man. He won the election, but he lost the
world.
It is a great thing to have won the war, but to have won it only at the
cost of more wars to come, and with the domestic problems of
statesmanship multiplied and intensified to a degree of the gravest
danger, this is an achievement which cannot move the lasting admiration
of the human race.
The truth is that Mr. Lloyd George has gradually lost in the world of
political makeshift his original enthusiasm for righteousness. He is not
a bad man to the exclusion of goodness; but he is not a good man to the
exclusion of badness. A woman who knows him well once described him to
me in these words: "He is clever, and he is stupid; truthful and
untruthful; pure and impure; good and wicked; wonderful and commonplace:
in a word, he is everything." I am quite sure that he is perfectly
sincere when he speaks of high aims and pure ambition; but I am equally
sure that it is a relief to him to speak with amusement of trickery,
cleverness, and the tolerances or the cynicisms of worldliness.
Something of the inward man may be seen in the outward. Mr. Lloyd
George--I hope I may be pardoned by the importance and interest of the
subject for pointing it out--is curiously formed. His head is unusually
large, and his broad shoulders and deep chest admirably match his quite
noble head; but below the waist he appears to dwindle away, his legs
seeming to bend under the weight of his body, so that he waddles rather
than walks, moving with a rolling gait which is rather like a seaman's.
He is, indeed, a giant mounted on a dwarf's legs.
So in like manner one may see in him a soul of eagle force striving to
rise above the earth on sparrow's wings.
That he is attractive to men of a high order may be seen from the
devotion of Mr. Philip Kerr; that he is able to find pleasure in a far
lower order of men may be seen from his closer friendships. It is
impossible to imagine Mr. Gladstone enjoying the society of Mr. Lloyd
George's most constant companion although that gentleman is a far better
creature than the cause of his fortunes; and one doubts if Lord
Beaconsfield would have trusted even the least frank of his private
negotiations to some of the men who enjoy the Prime Minister's political
confidence. Nor can Mr. Lloyd George retort that he makes use of all
kinds of energy to get his work done, for one knows very well that he is
far more at his ease with these third-rate people than with people of a
higher and more intellectual order. For culture he has not the very
least of predilections; and the passion of morality becomes more and
more one of the pious memories of his immaturity.
Dr. Clifford would be gladly, even beautifully, welcomed; but after an
hour an interruption by Sir William Sutherland would be a delightful
relief.
M. Clemenceau exclaimed of him, lifting up amazed hands, "I have never
met so ignorant a man as Lloyd George!" A greater wit said of him, "I
believe Mr. Lloyd George _can_ read, but I am perfectly certain he never
does."
I detect in him an increasing lethargy both of mind and body. His
passion for the platform, which was once more to him than anything else,
has almost gone. He enjoys well enough a fight when he is in it, but to
get him into a fight is not now so easy as his hangers-on would wish.
The great man is tired, and, after all, evolution is not to be hurried.
He loves his arm-chair, and he loves talking. Nothing pleases him for a
longer spell than desultory conversation with someone who is content to
listen, or with someone who brings news of electoral chances. Of course
he is a tired man, but his fatigue is not only physical. He mounted up
in youth with wings like an eagle, in manhood he was able to run without
weariness, but the first years of age find him unable to walk without
faintness--the supreme test of character. If he had been able to keep
the wings of his youth I think he might have been almost the greatest
man of British history. But luxury has invaded, and cynicism; and now a
cigar in the depths of an easy-chair, with Miss Megan Lloyd George on
the arm, and a clever politician on the opposite side of the hearth,
this is pleasanter than any poetic vapourings about the millennium.
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