Politicians From Wales

"First came Lloyd George—a man of immense strength of character. But, like Clemenceau, he only believed in force. To him the Covenant, with its provisions for the settlement of international disputes by pacific means in the first place, was unreal. Though he supported it as well-meaning and even attractive, yet he was not prepared while he was Prime Minister to subordinate all else to the replacement of war by law, for in his heart he did not think that could be done. In his closing years he seemed to move nearer to the League. But it was then too late."

"Winston described LG as the greatest political genius of the day. He says LG has more political insight than any other statesman. He told me that he and LG had resolved upon the necessity for a constructive social policy."

"He was the greatest master of the art of getting things done and of putting things through that I ever knew; in fact no British politician in my day has possessed half his competence as a mover of men and affairs. When the English history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is written, it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man. It was he who gave to orthodox Liberalism the entirely new inflexion of an ardent social policy. All the great schemes of insurance have entered for ever into the life of the British people, originated or flowed from him. He it was who cast our finances intently upon the line of progressive taxation of wealth as an equalizing factor in the social system. He it was who in the darkest year of the War seized the supreme power and wielded it undauntedly till overwhelming victory was won. He it was who for good or for ill settled the Irish question, or at least shifted it out of the main path of the British Empire."

"I must, however, say that I did not think the speech of my right hon. Friend was particularly helpful at a period of what he himself called discouragement and disheartenment. It was not the sort of speech which one would have expected from the great war leader of former days, who was accustomed to brush aside despondency and alarm, and push on irresistibly towards the final goal. It was the sort of speech with which, I imagine, the illustrious and venerable Marshal Petain might well have enlivened the closing days of M. Reynaud's Cabinet."

"The Coalition Government of 1918 onwards really was pretty bad, and it is a discreditable episode in our history that Lloyd George, a great man who came into public life as a great Radical and who, as his later history showed, retained so much of real radicalism in his heart, should at that moment, of all moments, have chosen to hang on to personal power at the price of giving way to the worst elements in the community — only to be cast out by the Tories like an old shoe, when he had served his purpose, killed the Liberal Party, and deceived the working class so thoroughly that they would never trust him again."

"I am very certain that his visit to America has been a piece of good fortune for both his country and our own, and for the cause of international accord. During his stay among us, though it has been all too brief, Mr. Lloyd George has voiced the appeal for that better understanding among the nations which must be at the base of all good relations. It has been a fine thing for our people to become better acquainted with this eminent leader in civilization's struggle to maintain itself, and I hope he will feel, when he leaves us a few days hence, that his effort in bringing his message to us has not been an entirely vain one."

"In 1920 I met Lenin. I was a very difficult person to get on with, and Lenin advised me—I remember it so well—to study David Lloyd George. He held the opinion that David Lloyd George was the greatest political leader this country had known."

"My father took me to a dinner of the Honorable Cymmrodorion Society — a Welsh literary club — where Lloyd George, then Secretary for War, and W. M. Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister, both spoke. Hughes was perky, dry, and to the point; Lloyd George was up in the air in one of his "glory of the Welsh hills" speeches. The power of his rhetoric amazed me. The substance of the speech might be commonplace, idle and false, but I had to fight hard against abandoning myself with the rest of his audience. He sucked power from his listeners and spurted it back at them. Afterwards, my father introduced me to Lloyd George, and when I looked closely at his eyes they seemed like those of a sleep-walker."

"The iron entered into my soul, when Ll[oyd] G[eorge]'s Government after the war let down and corrupted public life at home and destroyed our credit abroad."

"The Briton who made the deepest impression on me was Lloyd George. Eden speaks a repulsive, affected type of English, but Lloyd George was a pure orator, and a man of tremendous breadth of vision. What he has written on the Treaty of Versailles will endure for ever. He was the first man to declare that the Treaty would lead inevitably to another war. The idea that a people like the German people can be destroyed is madness, he said. Britain, he added, had no alternative but to live on terms of friendship with Germany."

"Sincere congratulations. No one has done more to bring about this splendid victory than you."

"Dawson and I have often exchanged intimacies about Ll.G. whom we both regard as the most remarkable figure of our acquaintance. S. B. and J.R.M. got on together because they both hate and fear Ll.G. He is rarely for long out of their minds. The speeches they make, the times they make them, especially when the House is sitting, are largely determined in relation to the movements of Ll.G. known or guessed."

"I told S. B. of how when the other day L. G. was singing the praises of Stalin, Megan had asked her father if there were a revolution on which side would he be. He replied: "With the Revolutionists, of course." Megan asked, "Whom would you shoot?" L. G. "Well, would it be worth while shooting anybody? There are Ramsay and Baldwin—but they are such worms, such insects." Megan, "But you'd have to shoot somebody." L. G. "Well, of course, there is Montagu Norman.""

"To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that party."

"How can I convey to the reader who does not know him any just impression of this extraordinary figure of our time, this syren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity?"

"Lloyd George is rooted in nothing: he is void and without content; he lives and feeds on his immediate surroundings; he is an instrument and a player at the same time which plays on the company and is played on by them too; he is a prism, as I have heard him described, which collects light and distorts it and is most brilliant if the light comes from many quarters at once; a vampire and a medium in one."

"The nation needs for leadership something more than the lawyer's power of putting his case and managing the Court and jury. It needs force, foresight, the glow of conviction and the sense of disciplined energy... Only Mr. Lloyd George had "that glow in the soul" so necessary for victory."

"Why don't you join the Labour Party? 'Labour and the Nation' is only Socialism reduced to everyday expedients. You are willing as an outsider to help us to put these expedients into operation. Your help would be invaluable, as one of us... People have said you are opportunist, and will take any line that suits you. At times I have thought and said so. But these past months' experience and your observations last night compel me to believe you are sincere as any of your critics... I want you in the best place for doing good work, and that I am sure is in the Labour Party... [Y]our coming would crown a progressive life."

"He can be Prime Minister for life if he likes."

"I at least will never forget, and will always be ready to assert, that in my view in the greatest crisis of our history he did a service for which the nation can never be too grateful."

"Lloyd George was a wonderful orator. I have heard my father say that when he came to address meetings in Scotland you had to hold on to your seat not to be carried away. And in his early years he was deeply concerned to make life more tolerable for the poor. He fought for his social security legislation with all his boundless energy and adroitness; the only thing he was not prepared to do for the poor was to become one of them. He needed money, lots of money, to maintain a home for his wife and family in Wales and another in England for his secretary, who became his mistress. In our part of the world Lloyd George was no hero. We did not forgive or forget the Khaki Election of 1918. Nor his treatment of pacifists during the war. Nor the Marconi Scandal. Nor the way he played fast and loose with the Suffragette Movement, doing nothing to oppose forceful feeding or to undo the notorious Cat and Mouse Act. What Lloyd George failed to understand was no man, however gifted, is a major political power in himself. He can teach, he can preach, he can make a significant contribution, but power politics is a struggle between social forces, not a duel between individuals. Once the war was over the Tories had no more use for him. He was an outsider, an upstart Welsh lawyer who had got above himself."

"David Lloyd George was the best-hated statesman of his time, as well as the best loved. The former I have good reason to know; every time I made a pointed cartoon against him, it brought batches of approving letters from all the haters. Looking at Lloyd George's pink and hilarious, head thrown back, generous mouth open to its fullest extent, shouting with laughter at one of his own jokes, I thought I could see how it was that his haters hated him. He must have been poison to the old school tie brigade, coming to the House an outsider, bright, energetic, irrepressible, ruthless, mastering with ease the House of Commons procedure, applying all the Celtic tricks in the bag, with a talent for intrigue that only occasionally got away from him. I always had the greatest difficulty in making Lloyd George sinister in a cartoon. Every time I drew him, however critical the comment, I had to be careful or he would spring off the drawing-board a lovable cherubic little chap. I found the only effective way of putting him definitely in the wrong in a cartoon was by misplacing this quality in sardonic incongruity — by surrounding the comedian with tragedy."

"The Parliament of 1924–9 was dominated by a few leading personalities, of whom by far the most exciting to a new Member like myself was Lloyd George... When he rose to speak, the House filled up... To us young Members, who had never or seldom heard him, it was a stirring experience... [H]e kept us all enthralled. I can see him now: the wonderful head, the great mane of white hair...; the expressive features, changing rapidly from fierce anger to that enchanting smile, not confined to the mouth, but spreading to his cheeks and eyes; above all, the beautiful hands, an actor's or an artist's hands, by the smallest movement of which he could make you see the picture he was trying to paint."

"What Baldwin failed to understand was the genius of the greatest war leader that Britain had known since Chatham, only destined to be equalled and surpassed by Churchill. With Lloyd George's departure, a certain dynamic energy disappeared from Whitehall, which never returned until Churchill took control."

"Lloyd George had known tragedy with the death of a much loved daughter, as well as moments of considerable strain when personal scandals and political controversies had threatened to ruin his career. He had worked under enormous pressure during the previous four years, first as minister of munitions then as war minister. At the end of 1916 he had taken on the burden of the prime ministership, at the head of a coalition government, when it looked as though the Allies were finished. Like Clemenceau in France, he had held the country together and led it to victory. Now in 1919 he was fresh from a triumphant election but led an uneasy coalition. He was a Liberal; his supporters and key cabinet members were predominantly Conservative. Although he had a solid partnership with the Conservative leader, Bonar Law, he had to watch his back. His displaced rival, the former Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, sat brooding in his tent, ready to pounce on any slip. Many of the Conservatives remembered his radical past as the scourge of privilege and rank, and as they had with their own leader Disraeli, they wondered if he were not too clever, too quick, too foreign. Lloyd George also faced formidable enemies in the press. The press baron Lord Northcliffe, who had chosen his title because it had the same initial letter as Napoleon, was moving rapidly from megalomania to paranoia, perhaps an early sign of the tertiary syphilis that was to kill him. He had been convinced that he had made Lloyd George prime minister by putting his papers, which included The Times and the Daily Mail, behind him. Now he was angry when the man he thought his creation refused to appoint him either to the War Cabinet or to the British delegation in Paris. Lloyd George also had to deal with a country ill prepared for the peace, where the end of the war had brought huge, and irrational, expectations: that making peace would be easy; that wages and benefits would go up and taxes down; that there would be social harmony, or, depending on your point of view, social upheaval. The public mood was unpredictable: at moments vengeful, at others escapist. The most popular book of 1919 was The Young Visiters, a comic novel written by a child. While he was in Paris, Lloyd George had to take time out for labour unrest, parliamentary revolts and the festering sore of Ireland. Yet he entered into the negotiations in Paris as though he had little else on his mind."

"Lloyd George's strengths were more remarkable than his weaknesses. For he really did try to answer the questions that mattered. He saw, more clearly than any other political leader, that Britain could survive in a changing world only if she changed herself... [H]is answers cut across the "false dichotomy" [between capitalism and socialism]. They were neither "capitalist" nor "socialist"; they were designed to use the power of the state to make capitalism work properly. As such, they were much more modern in conception than anything else on offer at the time. But in the climate generated by the struggle between "capitalism" and "socialism" they did not look modern. They looked irrelevant, opportunistic and, in an odd way, out of date. So, by a terrible paradox, the most creative and adventurous statesman of the day, who might have resolved the progressive dilemma if he had had the chance, appeared to most of his countrymen as a querulous and self-seeking voice from the past."

"Lloyd George, the hero of the First World War, had also been a lone wolf in Parliament. Baldwin hated and feared him, and the Tory Party treated him as a brilliant back number. The Labour Party deeply distrusted him because of the Black and Tans and as the author of the Versailles Treaty. Nobody I ever knew had his skill or brilliance as a natural leader in bad times and yet he could do nothing but manoeuvre... He continued to put forward schemes for economic reconstruction such as those on which he had fought the election of 1929. If he had been listened to, England would have been saved from ten years of miserable deflating. Walking in his orchard at Churt he would tell me of his plans for another New Deal."

"When Lloyd George came back to the party, ideas came back to the party."

"The greatest War Minister since Chatham."

"This wide view of his position and responsibilities is reflected throughout his career as Minister of Munitions, and his vision of the character and probable length of the conflict that lay ahead not only had a profound effect on the munitions programmes actually adopted in his period, but enabled the Ministry to meet much larger programmes later on. He laid the foundations of the Ministry's productive capacity on a scale so vast that it was almost sufficient—as far as guns, gun ammunition, rifles, machine guns, and trench warfare supplies were concerned—to carry the country to the end of the war."

"Everything I have said of our success is a tribute to him. He chose the great leaders of industry who formed the pivots of our machine. He formulated the needs of the moment to labour, and persuaded them to agree to meet our necessities. He realised the scope which our operations should embrace in all the essentials of the production of munitions, and his tireless energy and vigorous personality were the inspiration of the whole vast fabric."

"His political career...is now increasingly being subjected to searching revision. More and more, the criticisms hurled at him seem hard to sustain. Above all, it is difficult to see in him just the "rootless opportunist", "vampire and medium in one" portrayed by Keynes and others. In methods, certainly, he was endlessly flexible, often deliberately indirect. But opportunism of method was always linked to general consistency of objectives. Indeed, it could be argued that his career was determined by long-term objectives to a degree unusual among British politicians. He was steadfast in his sympathy for the national cause of Wales. He was consistent in his concern for social reform... He was consistent in his belief that Britain ought to be made a more democratic and egalitarian society. He was consistent in his view that British imperial and foreign policy should be linked to the search for international harmony. The architect of victory in 1918, he was essentially a conciliator, a man of peace. His objectives, then, were consistent and progressive."

"[H]e's got what Carlyle said of the Hindu god—he has a fire in his belly, but his weakness is looseness of mind... Principles! Do you talk to me of his principles? What are they? But he is not dishonest, he's only tricky. Some shabbiness perhaps."

"It was during this period [c. 1929] that I grew to know Lloyd George well and to appreciate gifts unique in his generation, which at this conjunction of events at home and abroad might again have been of immeasurable benefit to our country. This was not to be allowed in any situation short of the catastrophic. All the dull people combined to get Lloyd George down. They succeeded—but they got the country further down: the epitaph of an epoch."

"Lloyd George himself was then [January 1919] at the height of his powers and prestige, the "man who won the war". His appearance was striking: the fine head, piercing blue eyes, a great mane of hair, already nearly white, more than offset his small stature. "L.G." was the sort of man people admired or loathed; there were no half measures either in him or in people's opinion of him. He was above all things clever, with a mind extraordinarily quick and versatile. With this went a buoyancy and courage that were almost brazen, a tendency to ruthlessness and tyrannical behaviour, and a readiness of decision and action which terrified some, but carried others to heights they would never have scaled alone. With him, the end was more important than the means: his methods were personal, improvised, and on occasion unscrupulous; he liked to cut through the rules. There was also a sort of sixth sense, a "medium-like sensibility" to persons around him, a personal charm and intuition which anticipated thoughts and saw the quickest way to persuade an adversary or tackle a problem. He was a genius with a double dose of everything, good and bad; he could do as well with his left hand as his right. Yet it was wrong to deduce from all this, as Keynes did, that he was "rooted in nothing" and without principles. A deep patriotism was his, and a hatred of oppression."

"Thus ended the [Lloyd George] Coalition. And thus ended the reign of the great ones, the giants of the Edwardian era and of the war; and the rule of the pygmies, of the "second-class brains" began, to continue until 1940. Lloyd George remained in public life, admired, distrusted, unused, and stonily watched the country sink in the hopeless morass of depression and unemployment, while lesser men frittered away Britain's power in the world. "We have no one of that calibre now," sadly remarked a high official in 1938."

"The only two men who really seem to understand that we are at war are Winston and Lloyd George. Both have faults which disgust one peculiarly at the present time, but there is a reality about them and they are in earnest, which the others aren't."

"There followed a scene of drama when, with passionate voice and pointing finger the young Welshman assailed the Father of the House across the floor. "Better to have slightly dearer coal than cheaper colliers," flamed Bevan. "... We say that you cannot get from the already dry veins of the miners new blood to revivify the industry. Their veins are already shrunken white, and we are asking you to be, for once, decent to the miners ... not to use all your Parliamentary skill, all your rhetoric, in an act of pure demagogy to expose the mining community of this country to another few years of misery." Lloyd George sat opposite, listening intently, crossing and re-crossing his legs. It was one of the very few times that veteran journalists of the Press Gallery could ever remember having seen Lloyd George obviously disconcerted. Said one of them: "He was confronted with the ghost of his own angry youth.""

"He is a remarkable combination of forces; a poet, an orator and a man of action. His energy, power of work, and power of recuperation are remarkable. He has an extraordinary memory, imagination, and the art of getting at the root of a matter... He possess every sort of courage, daring, patience, bravery in the face of personal danger and in the face of responsibility... He has no respect for tradition or convention. He is always ready to examine, scrap, or revise established theories and practices. These qualities give him unlimited confidence in himself. He has a remarkably quick, alert and logical mind, which makes him very effective in debate. He is one of the craftiest of men, and his extraordinary charm of manner not only wins him friends, but does much to soften the asperities of his opponents and enemies. He is full of humour and a born actor. His oratory has a wide range. On the whole he is a good judge of men."

"He is anxious to improve labour conditions, but he is not really in sympathy with labour. As I have always said, he does not understand the point of view of the worker. Just now he is angry about the strikes and keen on putting the strikers into the Army. They stand in the way of the prosecution of the war, and so must be coerced. He says very little concerning the commercial and manufacturing classes who have been, and are, making fortunes out of the war."

"L[loyd] G[eorge] with all his powers does not understand or sympathise with working men. His point of view is that of the solicitor or shopkeeper. The general attitude of the upper and middle classes is that "you must give these fellows a lesson"."

"I notice that L[loyd] G[eorge] is steadily veering over to the Tory point of view... He is also at heart opposed to the claims of Labour, and would like to fight the working classes if he dared. He knows they do not trust him and he dislikes their independent spirit."

"In a sense it is not my affair, but as one of your admirers and sympathisers I wish to congratulate you upon the action that has been taken in getting a Coalition Cabinet, and especially upon your part therein. More than all I wish to congratulate you upon what you have done in connection with this war. When the War is over, you will again take up the work of dealing with the Labour question, with Irish Home Rule, with many other matters. But the prime business at present for you to do is to save your country; and I admire the single-hearted manner with which you have devoted yourself to this great duty."

"Give my heartiest regards to Lloyd George. Do tell him I admire him immensely. I have always fundamentally agreed with his social program, but I wish it supplemented by Lord Roberts's external program. Nevertheless, my agreement with him in program is small compared with the fact that I so greatly admire the character he is now showing in this great crisis."

"I believe that there are millions of people in this country who think that unemployment is far more important than political parties, and they would vote for any man regardless of party, if they believed he would do the job. I am not flattering you when I say that you are the only person capable of carrying this job through, and I want to make the people feel that just as the country needed you in the war, they need you in their jobs."

"Lloyd George was the most effective popular advocate of Liberalism—the only man perhaps who could really fire the party and win over the masses of unorganized voters."

"He is nothing if not a Radical yet circumstances have made him appear as the leader of the right wing of the party—of the "bad Liberals". I put it to him that he had really nothing in common with these people and that the only course open to him was to lead the Radicals. That is what he wants to do, but meanwhile his supporters in the party are on the Right and his opponents on the Left. Asquith who is really a Whig is accepted as a better Liberal than he."

"Lloyd George had a passion to win the war which none of the other members of the Cabinet seemed even to understand."

"He could talk about the world history of his own time and about the future with a beautiful detachment. I have always remembered one night in the great drawing-room of the Antibes hotel.... L.G. was talking of his place in history. Of how he would be regarded mainly as one of those who tried to soften the class-struggle. And people who wanted the class-struggle naked would come down against him, and others would be for. He would get some attention for his part in the Great War — the 1914-1918 war (this conversation took place in 1938). But nothing of that counted much, L.G. was saying, against the great movements in history. None of our struggles mattered much, wars or revolutions or what you will, as compared with the sheer biological and geographical facts. Whatever happened, in two hundred years, perhaps sooner, the balance of the world would have changed. The industrialization of Russia was taking place: India would follow: perhaps China, within a hundred years.... Whatever Government presided over the operations, these changes would make our local concerns look no more significant than the Wars of the Roses."

"The most amazing thing about D. since he went out of Office is his gradual conquest of Labour. At first they had a regular system of howling him down, and boasted that they would break his authority in the House... But gradually the interruptions became less frequent, & their attitude more friendly, as they saw that he was really the same D. and prepared to fight for the underdog... Now he speaks almost as the Leader of the Opposition, with the Labour & Liberal benches around him, the former hanging on his words and loud in their praises. The other day after a similar performance, Kirkwood and Jack Jones said in the Lobby that he was the real leader of the Labour Party."