A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOME of the comments evoked by Mr. Lloyd George's Bangor speech are as interesting as the speech itself. Mr. Lloyd George subscribes unreservedly to what to Free Traders is the arch-heresy, that tariffs can be used as weapons to reduce tariffs, and that straitest of all the sect of the Free Traders; Lord Snowden, sends him a telegram of congratulation. He condemns the reversion to the gold standard in 192 as a costly blunder, and Mr. Churchill, who carried that unfortunate operation through, gives the speech an exuberant welcome. Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express regrets that Mr. Lloyd George said next to nothing about developing our colonial empire. Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail records with greater distress his omission to insist on a larger air-force. There are no doubt a great many things he has not said so far, but, as was observed of him in another connexion, the man's young yet. The return to the platform, I imagine, may slightly retard the publication of his War Memoirs. His next volume is to cover the last phase of the War, that of 1918. It is not without interest—whether or not it is without significance—that the volume of the Official History dealing with that period is published this week, though the history of the 1917 campaign has not appeared yet.
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