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Lloyd George's power in Europe was dissolving.

Nor was he any longer carrying things victoriously before him at home. In Ireland the distressing epoch of the Black-and-Tans had been, of necessity, brought to a close. A pact of peace with the Sinn Fein leaders was signed in London at the end of 1921, and a few months later the constitution of the Irish Free State was promulgated. Lloyd George now says that alone he did it. But it must be plain to everybody that the surrender to nationalist Ireland could not have been possible at that time, when the House of Commons contained an immense majority of anti-nationalists, unless the prime minister had been able to compel the support of the Conservative party chiefs. None the less was it Lloyd George who had to pay the political price for the Irish treaty. Moreover, the Coalition, misled by Winston Churchill, was responsible for a series of military adventures in Russia, at once costly and futile, and it was deeply involved in the tragic muddle of the Near East, when Mustafa Kemal organized the forces of Turkish nationalism against the Treaty of Sèvres and the Greek invasion of Asia Minor. It happened that at the crucial moment the damning facts came out with reference to Lloyd George's reckless verbal encouragement of the Greeks. A dying government could not survive that disclosure, especially when public sentiment was dead against England's being drawn into another war in the Near East. The actual death-blow, therefore, to Lloyd George was not delivered in Eng

land. It was delivered, some say, at the Genoa Conference.. It was delivered, say others, by Michael Collins from Dublin. It was delivered, said the famous editor, J. L. Garvin of the "Observer," by Mustafa Kemal from Angora.

So far then for the international forces working toward the overthrow of the once all-powerful prime minister. Where, after his six years of spectacular authority, was Lloyd George at this time in the political world of England? After the TurkoGreek crisis of the summer of 1922 the English Conservatives came to a virtually unanimous resolve. They determined to desert Lloyd George, to break up the coalition, and to appoint their own prime minister. The affair was clinched by Stanley Baldwin, then hardly known to the public, at a party meeting which settled the business. Stanley Baldwin knew his own mind and expressed it. He reminded his colleagues that Lloyd George had destroyed the Liberal party, and told them there was grave danger of his destroying the Conservative party likewise, if its leaders did not effect their release. The appeal was successful. But the Baldwin speech was the occasion rather than the cause of a decision that, to all appearance, has insured for England a long stretch of Conservative rule. The English Conservatives had made all the use possible of Lloyd George's talents and personality; and they in turn had been exploited by him. He is no Conservative, and could never act like one. He went.

There is no need to dwell here upon his position after the great defeat. In the fleeting Parliament of

1922-23 he was of almost no account. He felt, naturally enough, that a change was imperative; and it is to the American public and the American atmosphere that he is indebted for a remarkable restorative. His visit to the United States and Canada in the fall of 1923 was undertaken in the belief, which seemed thoroughly well grounded, that Stanley Baldwin, the new Conservative prime minister, would be content to enjoy his singular good fortune. But he was not. He dissolved Parliament, appealed to the country on a tariff platform, lost his place, and in consequence had to make way for Ramsay MacDonald and the Labor government.

This election, of 1923, was an event of consequence to Lloyd George as to the general body of Liberals. It was preceded by a formal union of the two branches of the party and a public reconciliation between the titular party leader, H. H. Asquith, and Lloyd George, the returned prodigal. The Liberals regained a considerable portion of their lost ground in the constituencies, but the result brought home to them the disturbing fact that their party was now a definite minority and seemingly a permanent minority of the electorate. They had to recognize that the power and appeal of political Liberalism was a thing of the past. A year later the Liberals fell into an almost unlimited disaster. The MacDonald government crumbled amid circumstances of extravagant unreality, and the election of 1924 showed that, between Conservatives and Labor, the Liberal party was being ground to fragments. Its memberIts member

ship in the House was reduced to a miserable remnant of forty, for more than half of whom George was an object of hearty dislike and distrust. Stanley Baldwin, in 1923 the despised of all parties, not excepting his own, was now the all-powerful prime minister, and leaders of opposition were nowhere. And meanwhile Lloyd George, who never needs to be reminded that politics is not static, but that leaders and parties must always be up and doing, was making a characteristic effort to reach back to that earlier stage of aggressive Liberalism in which his fame was made. He formed a new organization and instituted a fresh inquiry into the land problem. The result was an elaborate report, followed by an ambitious scheme of land reform and rural reconstruction, to which Lloyd George began to devote his mind and energy, and a large part of his accumulated fund. He dreamed of arousing England in 1925 as he had aroused her in 1910.

This was the situation when, in May of the present year, the country was plunged into the general strike. That experience of nine remarkable spring days has had many surprising results, but none more so perhaps than the bringing back of Lloyd George into national prominence, with what appears to be a certainty of leadership in the near future of the party which he struck down eight years ago but which he steadily refuses to leave. It happened in this way.

From the first hour of the general strike the Conservative government reiterated that it was a revolutionary move, a strike against the com

munity, an act of war against the state. The orthodox Liberal leaders agreed with the government, and their statements were printed in the official newspaper. Lloyd George, although his view of the main matter was almost indistinguishable from theirs, succeeded in getting it over to the public that he looked upon the quickest possible ending to the general strike, by a negotiated settlement, as the primary need of the nation. Lloyd George in office would have fought the general strike as the government fought it, and with precisely the same weapons. But he was chairman of a small opposition party in Parliament, and was entitled to criticize the government's tactics and temper. No one could doubt that he was anxious to conciliate the Labor party; but, as he showed by an article written for his American syndicate, he had grossly misread the signs of the hour and had hazarded a prediction as to the probable length of the stoppage that was absurdly wide of the mark. We need not waste time over the motives which actuated Lloyd George in speaking and acting as he did during that searching crisis. His attitude was, in my judgment, a better Liberal attitude than that of the Liberal old guard; but it would be absurd not to admit that he envisaged the end of the strike in some relation to the next chapter of his own career. And there was one other aspect of the affair which was everywhere debated. A detailed detailed story was circulated to the effect that not only was Lloyd George considering the chances of forming some kind of connection with the Labor party, but also that he had held con

fidential counsel with two or three of the Labor leaders in the privacy of a Surrey cottage. The story was circumstantially denied from both quarters. It was pointed out that there exists no way by means of which Lloyd George could link on to the Labor party except through the regular gate of entrance, which is plainly not for him. But political wiseacres remain obstinately unconvinced. Lloyd George, it is continually asserted, is thinking, and must be thinking, about coöperation with Labor.

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Mark, now, what follows. The general strike over, the titular leader of the Liberal party, Lord Oxford (better known to us and to you as Mr. Asquith), was led to believe that the proper moment had arrived for the reading of a solemn service of excommunication over his brilliant and harassing lieutenant. He addressed him in a letter which had, and could have, only one meaning; namely, that Lloyd George was no longer acceptable as a Liberal and must accordingly depart. The thesis of the letter was indefensible, and the occasion was as badly chosen as it could be. I do not believe that it was of the old leader's own choosing. Nor had Lord Oxford himself any heart in the business. He had been driven into it by a band of his own adherents who, justly incensed by Lloyd Lloyd George's conduct toward themselves and the party during the Coalition period, had been against his readmission, had stood aloof from the reunion of 1923, and were infuriated whenever they remembered that he holds in his own hands a huge campaign fund. They had

been vigilantly awaiting the moment for dealing him the death-blow, and they made in the end a shocking miscalculation. The whole affair was a lamentable blunder. It displayed the open breach in the Liberal ranks. It showed that the reunion was, as regards the leading group, a pretense; that Lord Oxford and his friends would not work with Lloyd George; and that the personal feuds were such that there could be no further hiding of the facts.

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The first hasty inference of the political public was that the dismissal could hardly fail to be effective. After all, it was argued, the old Liberals were in control of the party, and if they would not have Lloyd George it was difficult to see how he could remain in the fold. The actual result, however, was far otherwise. It amounted to a heavy defeat for the Asquithians. In his reply to the castigation Lloyd George gained a dialectical success, mainly due to the excessively weak position into which Lord Oxford had allowed himself to be maneuvered. The leader of an opposition party has no right of censure, and certainly no power of excommunication, and Lloyd George made the most of this obvious fact. His later moves were much more in character. By means of a skilfully arranged visit to the North of England, where Liberals still exist in large numbers, Lloyd George was able to make a mock of the notion that he could be drummed out of the party. He had the delight of seeing, what he cannot very well have anticipated, that almost the entire Liberal press was coming out on his side, and that the men who

had misled the old leader were being unmercifully hammered. Within a few days of the storm the Liberals met in their annual national convention. They sent to Lord Oxford a message expressing unabated confidence in his leadership. They served notice upon the socalled shadow cabinet that these unseemly wrangles must cease. And then they shouted a wild welcome. to Lloyd George, and gave themselves up to the enjoyment of a speech of the kind that he can always make on these occasions-a speech all sparkle and audacity, good humor and familiar tricks. The wizard, as they call him, was sitting on the top of the world.

Here now is the situation as Parliament is prorogued and members disperse for the autumn vacation. The old-guard Liberals, who believed that Lloyd George had been delivered into their hands, by circumstances and his own folly, are made to realize that their blundering has given him new strength and a new following. They cannot do with him; they are not allowed to do without him. They themselves occupy a few seats only in the House of Commons, and command the allegiance of only one London newspaper, the "Westminster Gazette." Their hold over the constituencies is slender. Their two most eminent men are in the House of Peers. Lord Oxford is seventy-five. He has the Liberal mind of 1880. His political life was virtually ended ten years ago, and we may look for his final retirement before the close of the present year. Lord Grey belongs to the pre-war epoch, and is almost sightless. Sir John Simon

and Walter Runciman are Whigs and have no contact with the England of to-day. When it comes to a platform campaign or to the energetic discussion of programs they all fade away before the one consummate master of the great game.

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But since, when all this is said, we come back to Lloyd George the man, the politician, the possible head of a political combination, we are merely once again in touch with the enigma. Lloyd George's position in English Liberalism is essentially unreal, not to say absurd. The little remnant of the party in Parliament is not for him. He keeps his place as chairman only by the support of the right-wing section, which is moving steadily toward the Conservatives, while the only ground of his appeal to progressive Liberalism outside is a radical platform and a renewed assault upon the fortress of social privilege. The great majority of the active Liberals in the country have no faith in him. His immediate circle, since his fall from power, has consisted of nonentities. He does not attract men of weight and character; although, it should be said, in the present confusion he has won over to his side a group of Liberal intellectuals, including some men of splendid talents, as variously gifted as Charles Masterman, W. T. Layton the economist, and even, it may be, J. M. Keynes. He has a very large campaign fund, out of which he is enabled to finance both research and propaganda, and which he refuses to transfer, even in part, to any political organization. Nor

will he, unless the Liberal leadership should come to him in full, make any surrender of his separate organization within the party. He is made up, in not unequal portions, of rhetorician and intriguer. The story of his machinations during the past four years would, if written with inside knowledge and detail, sound like an incredible romance. Colleagues to him are counters. Parties, like principles, are materials, infinitely malleable, for the endless and exhilarating business of traffic in power. The good average Englishman would sum it all up in the simple statement that Lloyd George is a Celt. I am a good average Englishman, but the explanation seems to me only a fraction of the truth.

"Lloyd George is a bad boy." So said to me a short time ago a man who had worked closely with him for many years. "He is not a bad man; not an evil character, like A. and B., and others we could name. He is just a bad boy!" That also is a brief and bright judgment which does not satisfy me. When I look back over the past fifteen years; when I remember the Marconi incident, and the making of the Coalition in 1916; when I think of the armistice election, of Paris and Versailles in 1919, of Ireland and Russia in 1920-21, I am not conscious of any inclination to dismiss Lloyd George as a bad boy. He was a man of destiny. And the newer faith, like the old one, does not permit us to tolerate the idea of a universe of men from which mind and purpose have been taken away.

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