ANOTHER BIOGRAPHY OF MR.LLOYD GEORGE.* Mn. E. T. RAYMOND has
written many biographical pieces which for an intelligible reason have won popularity. He has shown himself able to paint "a speaking likeness" out of any pigments, though these were not always numerous, that happened to be ready to his hand. For a short time he can keep epigrammatic remarks going with case and effect. The short piece is evidently his best medium, for in his full biography of Mr. Lloyd George the colours have become smudgy and unsatisfactory. The book is, in fact, a failure. One might search far in it for a tolerable epigram. Nor does it hold together ; the last chapter is a nondescript thing which reads as though it had been written as an independent article for some newspaper ; it deals in gossip and describes the physical characteristics and the dress of Mr. Lloyd George in the manner of those writers who daily dish up the Parlia- mentary scene with what is intended to be appetizing spice. Mr. Raymond certainly has a facility, but he is sometimes the victim of it.
It would have been right to give Mr. Raymond a good mark if he had been the inventor of the highly fabricated legend about the conduct of the youthful Lloyd George when his uncle was urging him to choose a career. The uncle, according to the story, put the boy into a room for silent reflection, and left him with a basket of apples, a Bible, a box of paints and a penny. When he looked in two hours later, he found that the boy had eaten the apples and was sitting on the Bible painting the penny yellow. That is a strong clue to Mr. Lloyd George's character, if not a fair exposition of it, and it is, of course, a retrospective comment. Choose for your Statesman a man with such a character as that, and you are bound to have a very dangerous though a very resourceful leader of men. Onr chief complaint against Mr. Raymond is that he is not serious or responsible enough in analysing the effects of Mr. Lloyd George's methods upon public life. Ile may have meant to do so, but lie has not done it.
He begins well enough by making a very interesting examination of Mr. Lloyd George's early -opinions about Imperialism and War. He proves that they were compacted of a good deal of ignorance and emotional prejudice, but he also proves that Mr. Lloyd George, though he denounced every act carried through by armed fence in the name of Great Britain, was not at all opposed to fighting as such. Mr. Lloyd George could apparently have named at any time many causes dear to his heart which he would have liked to see triumphing to the accompaniment of drums and the tramp of aimed men. Very interesting, too, are Mr. Raymond's comments on Mr. Lloyd George's early style. The young
politician evidently had the ambition to be a "stylist," and ambition which was more than usually audacious in one to whom English was only a second tongue. Mr. Raymond points out that in a pronouncement about Ireland which Mr. Lloyd George published when he was nineteen there were such words as " riant " and "fuscous." Well, wisdom at all events in this respect came with years, and Mr. Lloyd George learned how much more impressive and how much more eloquent he could be by finding new uses for old words and for immemorial similes. The book, however, gradually tails off until it ends with the gossipy addendum which we have mentioned.
Mr. Raymond whitewashes Mr. Lloyd George in the Marconi affair, praises him for almost everything he did during the War (even for the Paris speech in which Mr. Lloyd George derided his own Commander-in-Chief), and positively believes, in spite of all the indisputable proofs to the contrary, that Mr. Lloyd George foresaw and achieved the Unity of Command expressed in the appointment of Marshal Fouls as Generalissimo. It is a curious and, we are sorry to say, not an edifying experience to re-read some of Mr. Lloyd George's speeches
• Arr. Lloyd Gone : a Riograpkg. By E. T. Raymond. Illustrated. London : W. Collins Sena and Co. L138. mt.,'
at critical moments in his career and to compare the gold in some with the dross in others. He once made a magnificent speech, which we believe has never been bettered, about the moral tone that should be observed by all public men. He freely acquitted the particular abject of his criticism from any malpractice whatever, but he went on to declare that the public man must do more than be actually blameless ; he must avoid all appearance of evil ; he must do nothing which could possibly lend itself to misunderstanding ; he must be careful and scrupulous in every detail, remembering that he temporarily has in his possession a priceless tradition ; he must behave not merely honestly but also with perfect delicacy and discretion. How Mr. Raymond can recall that speech, as he does, and then say that there was nothing to object to in the Marconi episode is beyond our understanding.
Another very curious point of comparison is provided by the similarities in the speech which Mr. Lloyd George made when defending himself in the Marconi affair and in his very recent statements (some of them made at the General Election and some in connexion with his American Press contracts) about the humbleness of his home in the country and his poverty. When describing his share in the Marconi affair, Mr. Lloyd George said :— "I have devoted so much of my time to politics that, although I have a profession, supposed to be lucrative, I never made the most of it ; I only practised it just to make a living. When a man becomes a Minister he is given a substantial salary, and it was very substantial to me, having regard to the life I had led up to that time as a humble solicitor. . . . But remember this. Every Minister knows his position is provisional and his glories transitory, and he has to take that into account, and must think of the time when others, more worthy than himself, will fill the same position. . . . There are those to be considered whom he will leave behind. . . . With regard to mansions, I have only one house which I can call my own. It became clear, because of recent occurrences, that the "great mansion" down at Walton Heath was not mine at all. They blew up somebody else's property before I even had the lease of it. I am sorry to say that some of the Press have been doing their very best to create a wrong impression. I have seen photo- graphs taken at such an angle as to make it look a sort of royal palace. The house, including the land, is worth only 12,000. I have one house in Wales. Cannot a man fifty years of age have one house to call his own ? It is rather hard. I built a house three or four years ago. I was so busy with the Budget that I could not even spend my salary, and built it more or less from my salary. That is my mansion. That is all I have got in the world."
Mr. Lloyd George must have felt that those arguments were effective or he would not have repeated them in essence several times, but one is surprisc:d first by their irrelevance, and secondly by the fact that they should have been made by the author of the " delicacy " speech.
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