The income tax alone will serve to show the enormous increase in tribute. From .04 per cent on small incomes to 13 per cent on large ones before the war it has risen to 1 per cent on small incomes to over 411/2 per cent on big ones. Again, 60 per cent of all excess profits earned since the war are surrendered to the State.

I can give no better evidence of the result of this taxation than to repeat what Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, said to me in London last August:

"The English position is so sound," he declared, "that if the war ended at the end of the current financial year, that is, on March the 31st, 1917, our present scale of taxation would provide not only for the whole of our peace expenditures and the interest on the entire National Debt but also for a sinking fund calculated to redeem that debt in less than forty years. There would still remain a surplus sufficient to allow me to wipe out the excess profit tax and to reduce other taxes considerably."

When I asked him to make this more specific, he continued:

"The total revenue for the current year is $2,545,000,000. Our last Peace Budget was $1,000,000,000. Assuming that the war would end by next March 1st, you must add another $590,000,000 for interest and sinking fund on the war debt together with a further $100,000,000 for pensions which would make the total yearly expenditure for the first year of peace $1,690,000,000. Deducting this from the existing taxation you get a surplus of $855,000,000. Thus after withdrawing the $430,000,000 received from the excess profits tax there still remains a margin of $425,000,000."

Indeed, to analyze British war finance to-day is to find something besides debits and credits and balances. It is a great moral force that does not reckon in terms of pounds or pence. There is no thought of indemnity to soothe the scars of waste: no dream of conquest to atone for friendly land despoiled.

Money grubbing has gone, if only for the moment, along with the other baser things that have evaporated in the giant melting pot of the war. In England to-day there are only two things, Work and Fight. They are giving the nation an economic rebirth: a new idea of the dignity of toil: they have begot a spirit of denial that is rearing an impregnable rampart of resource.

Even more marvellous is the financial devotion of the French who present a spectacle of unselfish sacrifice that merely to touch, as alien, is to have a thrilling and unforgettable experience.

When you look into the French method of paying for the war you get the really picturesque and human interest details. In place of taxation you find that the war is being paid, in the main, out of the savings of the people. Instead of mortgaging the future, the Gaul is utilising his thrifty past.

Never in all history is there a more impressive or inspiring demonstration of the value of thrift as a national asset. It has reared the bulwark that will enable France to withstand whatever economic attack the war will make.

The difference between the English and French system of war financing is psychological as well as material. The average Frenchman has a great deal of the peasant in him. He is willing to give his life and his honour to the nation but he absolutely draws the line at paying taxes. This is why the French have made it a war of loans.

Go up and down the battle line in France and you get startling evidence of the French devotion to savings. More than one English officer has told me of tearful requests from French peasants for permission to go back to their steel-swept and war-torn little farms to dig up the few hundreds of francs buried in some corner of field or garden. Equally impressive is the sight of farmers—usually old men and women—working in the fields while shells shriek overhead and the artillery rumbles along dusty highways.

Thus the French war debt will be met because of the almost incredible saving power of the French people. It is at once their pride and their prosperity. When all is said and done, you discover that with nations as with individuals it is not what they make but what they save that makes them strong and enduring.

One afternoon last summer I talked in Paris with M. Alexandre Ribot, the French Minister of Finance: a stately white-bearded figure of a man who looked as if he had just stepped out of a Rembrandt etching. He sat in a richly tapestried room in the old Louvre Palace where more than one King had danced to merry tune. Now this stately apartment was the nerve centre of a marvellous and close-knit structure that represented a real financial democracy.

"How long can France stand the financial strain of war?" I asked the Minister.

Light flashed in his eyes as he replied:

"So long as the French people know how to save, and this means indefinitely."

Although the invader has crossed her threshold, France continues to save. Every wife in the Republic who is earning her livelihood while her husband is at the front (and nearly every man who can carry a gun is fighting or in training), is putting something by. It means the building up of a future financial reserve against which the nation can draw for war or peace.

One rock of French economic solidity lies in her immense gold supply. The per capita amount of gold is $30.02 and is larger than any other country in the world. The United States is next with $19.39, after which come the United Kingdom with $18.28, and Germany $14.08. Let me add, in this connection, that a good deal of the French gold is still in stocking and cupboard.

By the end of 1916 the war had cost France $11,000,000,000, which means an annual fixed charge of $600,000,000, to which must be added $200,000,000 for pensions, making the total fixed burden of $800,000,000.

All this cannot be paid out of savings, although in normal times France saves exactly $1,000,000,000 a year. But the Government has one big trump card up its sleeve. It is the large fortunes of her citizens. They have been untouched by the war because practically no income tax has been levied.

While the average Frenchman will sacrifice his life rather than submit to taxation, the upper and wealthy class will do both. The annual income of the people of France is $6,000,000,000. Therefore a 12 per cent tax on this income would very nearly produce the entire fixed charge on the war debt. France looks into the financial future unafraid.

Financially, Russia ambles along like the Big Bear she typifies. In one respect her method of financing the war cost differs distinctly from her Allies in the fact that she has received heavy advances from England and France. From England alone she borrowed $1,250,000,000 which was expended for arms and ammunition and field equipment. The Czar's Empire has put out five internal loans while the rest of the money needed has been raised out of the sale of short term Treasury Bills, paper money issues and tax levies.

Except for the few millions of dollars obtained in the United States, Germany's financing—like her whole conduct of the war—is self-contained. Through five Imperial 5 per cent loans ranging from one to three billion dollars each, she has established a war credit of $12,500,000,000. This money—to a smaller degree than in France—has come from the great mass of the German people.

Other sources of revenue that are enabling the Kaiser to pay for the war are Treasury Bills sold at home and a taxation that is moderate compared with the colossal pre-war taxation which spelled Germany's Preparedness. At the time I write this chapter her war expenditure had passed the $14,000,000,000 mark. Tack on to this Germany's peace debt of $5,000,000,000 more and you begin to see—with all the uncertainty of the war's duration—the immense burden that the Fatherland will have to carry. The war's drain on the German future is perhaps greater than that of any other country because all her war loans are long term. She has also loaned nearly $1,000,000,000 to Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria.

The Teutonic war cost has one distinct advantage over all others in that it is confined within the German borders. Hence Germany can do as she pleases with regard to its settlement. If the Mailed Fist obtains after the war she can clamp it down on her loans, wipe them out as she chooses and no one can offer a protest.

Now let us dump all these statistics that represent so much blood, agony and sacrifice into the middle of the table and strike a final balance sheet.

On one hand you have the assets of the warring countries as represented by their national wealth. For the Allies, including Roumania, they show a total of $273,000,000,000: for the Central Powers they register $134,000,000,000. If wealth is the winning factor then the Allies have the advantage in weight of buying metal.

Take the other side of the ledger and you see that up to November 1, 1916, the four principal allied countries, England, France, Russia and Italy, had spent on direct war cost approximately $34,000,000,000, while the total Teutonic war expenditures have been $21,000,000,000. To this actual war cost must be added the peace debts of the belligerent nations which would supplement the allied expense account by $17,465,000,000 and that of the enemy nations by $9,808,000,000.

Striking a grand total of liabilities, you find that if the war mercifully ends by August 1, 1917 (as Kitchener predicted it might), the fighting peoples would face a debt burden of all kinds that had reached $105,773,000,000.

After this colossal scale of expenditures you may well ask: Will it ever be possible for European finance to see straight or count normally again?

Be that as it may, no one can doubt that the battling nations, individually or with the marvellous team-work that kinship in their respective causes has begot, are able to pay their way while the struggle lasts. Grim To-day will take care of itself under the stress of passion born of desire to win. It is the Reckoning of that Uncertain To-morrow that will prove to be the problem.

You cannot bankrupt a nation any more than you can ruin an individual so long as brains and energy are available. Peace therefore will not find a ruined Europe but it will dawn on a group of depleted countries facing enormous responsibilities. War ends but the cost of it endures. Just as present millions are paying with their lives so will unborn hosts pay with the sweat of their brows.

Meanwhile our Financial Stake in the Great Struggle is secure. How much more we will have to put into Europe's Red Pay Envelope remains to be seen. In any event, we have learned how to do it.



VII—The Man Lloyd George

The door opened and almost before I had crossed the threshold the little grey-haired man down at the end of the long stately room began to speak. Lloyd George was in action.

I had last seen him a year ago in the murk of a London railway station when I bade him farewell after a memorable day. With him I had gone to Bristol where he had made an impassioned plea for harmony to the Trade Union Congress. Then he was Minister of Munitions, Shell-Master of the Nation in its critical hour of Ammunition Need.

Now he had succeeded the lamented Kitchener as Minister of War; sat in the Seat of Strategy, head of the far-flung khakied hosts that even at this moment were breasting death on half a dozen fronts. Just as twelve months before he had unflinchingly met the Great Emergency that threatened his country's existence, so did he again fill the National Breach.

England's Man of Destiny whose long career is one continuous and spectacular public performance was on the job.

But it was not the same Lloyd George who had sounded the call for Military and Industrial Conscription from the Peaks of Empire. Another year of war had etched the travail of its long agony upon his features, saddened the eyes that had always beheld the Vision of the Greater Things. The little man was fresh from the front and full of all that its mighty sacrifice betokened not only to the embattled nations but to the world as well.

Though we spoke of Politics, Presidents and the Great Social Forces that so far as England was concerned acknowledged him as leader, the current of speech always swept back to war and its significance for us.

"Since the war means so much to us," I said, "have you no message for America?"

Throughout our talk he had sat in a low chair sometimes tilting it backward as he swayed with the vehemency of his words. Suddenly he became still. He turned his head and looked dreamily out the window at his left where he could see the throng of Whitehall as it swept back and forth along London's Great Military Way.

Then rising slowly and with eloquent gesture and trembling voice (he might have been speaking to thousands instead of one person), he said:

"The hope of the world is that America will realise the call that Destiny is making to her in tones that are getting louder and more insistent as the terrible months go by. That Destiny lies in the enforcement of respect for International Law and International Rights."

It was a pregnant and unforgettable moment. From the Throne Room of a Mighty Conflict England's War Lord was sounding the note of a distant process of peace.

If you had probed behind this kindling utterance you would have seen with Lloyd George himself that beyond the flaming battle-lines and past the tumult of a World at War was the hope of some far-away Tribunal that would judge nations and keep them, just as individuals are kept, in the path of Right and Humanity.

But before any such bloodless antidote can be applied to International Dispute, to quote Lloyd George again: "This war must be fought to a finish."

These final words, snapped like a whip-lash and emphasised with a fist-beat on the table, meant that England would see her Titan Task through and if for no other reason because the man who drives the war gods wills it so. What sort of man is this who goes from post to post with inspired faith and unfailing execution? What are the qualities that have lifted him from obscure provincial solicitor to be the Prop of a People?

"Let George do it," has become the chronic plea of all Britain in her time of trial. How does he do it?

To understand any man you must get at his beginnings. Thus to appreciate Lloyd George you must first know that he is Welsh and this means that he was cradled in revolt. He must have come into the world crying protest. He was reared in a land of frowning crags and lovely dales, of mingled snow and sunshine, of poetry and passion. About him love of liberty clashed with vested tyranny. These conflicting things shaped his character, entered into his very being and made him temperamentally a creature of magnificent ironies.

But this conflict did not end with emotion. All his life Contrast, sometimes grotesque but always dramatic, has marked him for its own. You behold the Apostle of Peace who once espoused the Boer, translated into the flaming Disciple and Maker of War through the Rape of Belgium. You see the fiery Radical, jeered and despised by the Aristocracy, become the Protector of Peers. No wonder he stands to-day as the most picturesque, compelling and challenging figure of the English speaking race. Only one other man—Theodore Roosevelt—vies with him for this many-sided distinction.

The son of a village schoolmaster who died when he was scarcely three: the ward of a shoe-maker who was also inspired lay-preacher: the political protege of a Militant Nationalist whose heart bled at the oppression of the Welsh, Lloyd George early looked out upon a life smarting with grievance and clamouring to be free. Knowing this, you can understand that the dominant characteristic of this man is to rebel against established order. Swaddled in Democracy, he became its Embodiment and its Voice.

The world knows about the Lloyd George childhood spent amidst poverty in a Welsh village. The big-eyed boy ate, thought and dreamed in Welsh, "the language that meant a daily fare of barley bread." When he learned English it was like acquiring a foreign tongue. He grew up amid a great revival of Welsh art, letters and religion that stirred his soul. He missed the pulpit by a narrow margin, yet he has never lost the evangelistic fervour which is one of the secrets of his control and command of people.

With the alphabet Lloyd George absorbed the wrongs of his people and they were many. The Welsh had a double bondage: the grasp of the Landlord and the Thrall of the Church. All about him quivered the aspiration for a free land, a free people and a free religion. In those days Wales was like another Ireland with all the hardship that Eviction imposes.

The call to leadership came early. As a boy in school he led his mates in rebellion against the drastic dictates of a Church which prescribed liberty of religious thoughts and speech. He became the Apostle of Nonconformity and for it waged some of his fiercest battles.

Always the gift of oratory was his. He preached temperance almost with his advent into his teens: he was a convincing speaker before most boys talked straight.

In due time Lloyd George became a solicitor but it was merely the step into public life. To plead is instinct with him and with advocacy of a case in court he was always urging some reform for his little country. Politics was meat and drink to him and he stood for Parliament. An ardent Home Ruler, he swayed his followers with such intensity that what came to be known as Lloyd George's Battle Song sprang into being. Sung to the American tune of "Marching Through Georgia" it was hailed as the fighting hymn of Welsh Nationalism. Two lines show where the young Welsh lawyer stood in his early twenties: they also point his whole future:

"The Grand Young Man will triumph, Lloyd George will win the day——"

There is something Lincoln-like in the spectacle of his first struggle. This lowly lad fought the forces of "Squirearchy and Hierarchy." The Tories hurled at him the anathema that he "had been born in a cottage."

"Ah," replied Lloyd George, when he heard of it: "the Tories have not realised that the day of the cottage-bred man has dawned."

Before he got through he was destined to show, that so far as opportunity was concerned, the Cottage in Great Britain was to be on a par with a Palace.

As you analyse Lloyd George's life you find that he has always been a sort of Human Lightning Rod that attracted the bolts of abuse. A campaign meant violent controversy, frequently physical conflict. The reason was that he always stated his cause so violently as to arouse bitter resentment.

Into his first election he flung himself with the fury of youth and the eager passion of a zealot. He threw conventional Liberalism to the wind and made a fight for a Free and United Wales. He frankly believed himself to be the inspired leader of his people: often his meetings became riots. More than once he was warned that the Tories would kill him and on several occasions he narrowly escaped death. Once while riding with his wife in an open carriage through the streets of Bangor he was assailed by a hooting, jeering mob. Some one threw a blazing fire ball, dipped in paraffine, into the vehicle. It knocked off the candidate's hat and fell into Mrs. Lloyd George's lap setting her afire. Lloyd George threw off his coat, smothered the flames and after finding that the innocent victim of the assault was uninjured, calmly proceeded to the Town Hall where he spoke, accompanied by a fusillade of stones which smashed every window in the structure.

In this campaign, as in all succeeding ones, Lloyd George used the full powers of press publicity. He made reporters his confidants. Often he rehearsed his speeches before them, striding up and down and declaiming as passionately as if he were facing huge audiences. In fact he acquired an interest in a group of Welsh papers.

Already Welsh chieftainship was being crystallised in the aggressive little fire-eater. Anticipating the coming call of the Mother Country she was laying her burdens on his stalwart shoulders. And what George was now doing for Wales he was soon to do in the larger arena of the Empire.

Once in Parliament Lloyd George was no man's man. He became a free lance and while sometimes he ran amuck his cause was always the cause of his people.

In those earlier Parliamentary days you find some of the traits that distinguished him later on. For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work: he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings. His forte was talking. He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports. He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture. His intelligence has more than once been characterised as "brilliant but hasty."

But offsetting all this is the man's persuasive and pleading personality which always gets him over the shallow ground of ignorance. This is one reason why Lloyd George has always been stronger in attack than in defence. His tactic has always been either to assault first or make a swift counterdrive. He is a sort of Stonewall Jackson of Debate.

Then, as throughout his whole career, he showed an extraordinary aversion to letter-writing. He became known in Parliament as the "Great Unanswered." He used to say, and still does, that an unanswered letter answers itself in time. This led to the tradition that the only way to get a written reply out of Lloyd George was to enclose two addressed and stamped cards, one bearing the word "Yes" and the other "No." More than once, however, when friends and constituents tried this ruse they got both cards back in the same envelope!

Not long ago a well known Englishman wanted to make a written request of Lloyd George and on consulting one of his associates was given this instruction: "Make it brief. Lloyd George never reads a letter that fills more than half a page."

There is no need of rehearsing here the long-drawn struggle through which he made his way to party leadership. In Parliament and out, he was a hornet—a good thing to let alone, and an ugly customer to stir up. Whether he lined up with the Government or Opposition it mattered little. Lloyd George has always been an insurgent at heart.

The crowded Nineties were now nearing their end, carrying England and Lloyd George on to fateful hour. Ministries rose and fell: Roseberry and Harcourt had their day: Chamberlain climbed to power: Asquith rose over the horizon. The long smouldering South African volcano burst into eruption. It meant a great deal to many people in England but to no man quite so much as to Lloyd George.

Now comes the first of the many amazing freaks that Fate played with him. The Institution of War which in later years was to make him the very Rock of Empire was now, for a time at least, to be his undoing.

Before the conflict with the Boers Lloyd George was a militant pacifist—a sort of peacemaker with a punch. When England invaded the Transvaal Lloyd George began a battle for peace that made him for the first time a force in Imperial affairs. He believed himself to be the Anointed Foe of the War and he dedicated himself and all his powers to stem what seemed to be a hopeless tide.

It was a courageous thing to do for he not only risked his reputation but his career. Up and down the Empire he pleaded. He was in some respects the brilliant Bryan of the period but with the difference that he was crucifying himself and not his cause upon the Cross of Peace. He became the target of bitter attack: no epithet was too vile to hurl upon him. Often he carried his life in his hands as the episode of the Birmingham riot shows. In all his storm tossed life nothing approached this in daring or danger.

Lloyd George was invited to speak in the Citadel of Imperialism which was likewise the home of Joseph Chamberlain, Arch-Apostle of the Boer War. Save for the staunchest Liberals the whole town rose in protest. For weeks the local press seethed and raged denouncing Lloyd George as "arch-traitor" and "self-confessed enemy." He was warned that he would imperil his life if he even showed himself. He sent back this word: "I am announced to speak and speak I will."

He reached Birmingham ahead of schedule time and got to the home of his host in safety. All day long sandwich men paraded the highways bearing placards calling upon the citizenry to assemble at the Town Hall where Lloyd George was to speak "To defend the King, the Government and Mr. Chamberlain."

Night came, the streets were howling mobs, every constable was on duty. The hall was stormed and when Lloyd George appeared on the platform he faced turmoil. Hundreds of men carried sticks, clubs and bricks covered with rags and fastened to barbed wire. When he rose to speak Bedlam let loose. Jeers, catcalls and frightful epithets rained on him and with them rocks and vegetables. He removed his overcoat and stood calm and smiling. When he raised his voice, however, the grand assault was made. Only a double cordon of constables massed around the stage kept him from being overwhelmed. In the free-for-all fight that followed one man was killed and many injured.

Anything like a speech was hopeless: the main task was to save the speaker's life, for outside in the streets a bloodthirsty rabble waited for its prey. Lloyd George started to face them single-handed and it was only when he was told that such procedure would not only foolishly endanger his life but the lives of his party which included several women, he consented to escape through a side door, wearing a policeman's helmet and coat.

Fourteen years later Lloyd George returned to Birmingham acclaimed as a Saviour of Empire. Such have been the contrasts in this career of careers.

Fortunately England, like the rest of the world, forgets. The mists of unpopularity that hung about the little Welshman vanished under the sheer brilliancy of the man. When the Conservative Government fell after the Boer War he was not only a Cabinet possibility but a necessity. The Government had to have him. From that time on they needed him in their business.

Lloyd George drew the dullest and dustiest of all portfolios—the Board of Trade. He found the post lifeless and academic; he vivified and galvanised it and made it a vital branch of party life and dispute. It is the Lloyd George way.

Here you find the first big evidence of one of the great Lloyd George qualities that has stood him in such good stead these recent turbulent years. He became, like Henry Clay, the Great Conciliator. The whole widespread labour and industrial fabric of Great Britain was geared up to his desk. It shook with unrest and was studded with strife. Much of this clash subsided when Lloyd George came into office because he had the peculiar knack of bringing groups of contending interests together. Men learned then, as they found out later, that when they went into conference with Lloyd George they might as well leave their convictions outside the door with their hats and umbrellas.

To this policy of readjustment he also brought the laurel of constructive legislation. To him England owes the famous Patents Bill which gives English labour a share in the English manufacture of all foreign invention; the Merchant Shipping Bill which safeguards the interest of English sailor and shipper; and the Port of London Bill which made the British metropolis immune from foreign ship menace.

England was fast learning to lean on the grey-eyed Welshman. He came to be known as the "Government Mascot": he was continually pulling his party's chestnuts out of the fire of failure or folly. George had begun to "do it" and in a big way.

Likewise the whole country was beginning to feel pride in his performance as the following story, which has been adapted to various other celebrities, will attest:

Lloyd George sat one day in the compartment of a train that was held up at the station at Cardiff. A porter carrying a traveller's luggage noticed him and called his client's attention, saying:

"There is Lloyd George himself in that train."

The traveller seemed indifferent and again the porter called attention to the budding great man. After persistent efforts to rouse his interest, the tourist, much nettled, said tartly:

"Suppose it is. He's not God Almighty."

"Ah," replied the porter, "remember he's young yet."

When Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Asquith no one was surprised. It is typical of the man that he should have leaped from the lowest to the highest place but one in the Cabinet.

As Chancellor he had at last the opportunity to fulfill his democratic destiny. Whatever Lloyd George may be, one thing is certain: he is essentially a man of the masses. With his famous People's Budget he legislated sympathy into the law. It meant the whole kindling social programme of Old Age pensions, Health and Unemployment insurance, increased income tax and an enlarged death duty. As most people know, it put much of the burden of English taxation on the pocketbooks of the people who could best afford to pay. The Duke-baiting began.

Just as he had fought for a Free Wales so did he now struggle for a Free Land. All his amazing picturesqueness of expression came into play. He contended that Monopoly had made land so valuable in Britain that it almost sold by the grain, like radium. In commenting on the heavy taxes levied by the land autocrats upon commercial enterprise in London he made his famous phrase:

"This is not business. It is blackmail!"

To democracy the Budget meant economic emancipation: the banishment of hunger from the hearth: the solace of an old age free from want. It made Lloyd George "The Little Brother of the Poor." To the Aristocracy it was the gauge of battle for the bitterest class war ever waged in England: violation of ancient privilege.

The fight for this programme made Lloyd George the best known and most detested man in England. To hate him was one of the accomplishments of titled folk to whom his very name was a hissing and a by-word. Massed behind him were the common people whose champion he was: arrayed against him were the powers of wealth and rank.

In this campaign Lloyd George used the three great weapons that he has always brought to bear. First and foremost was the force of his personality, for he swept England with a tidal wave of impassioned eloquence. Second, he unloosed as never before the reservoirs of ink, for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his message. He even printed his creed in Gaelic, Welsh and Erse. Third, he employed his kinship with the people to the fullest extent. The Commoner won. As the great structure of social reform rose under his dynamic powers so did the influence of the House of Lords crumble like an Edifice of Cards. Democracy in England meant something at last!

The tumult and the shouting died, the smoke cleared, and Lloyd George stood revealed as England's Strong Man, a sort of Atlas upholding the World of Public Life and much of its responsibilities.

Now for the first time he was caught up in the fabric of the Crimson Net that a few years later was to haul nearly all Europe into war. In 1911 Germany made a hostile demonstration in Morocco. Although England had no territorial interests there, it was important for many reasons to warn the Kaiser that she would oppose his policy with armed force if necessary. A strong voice was needed to sound this note. Lloyd George did it.

Hence it came about that the Chancellor of the Exchequer stood in the Mansion House on a certain momentous day and hurled the defi at the War Lord. It called the Teuton bluff for a while at least. In the light of later events this speech became historic. Not only did Lloyd George declare that "national honour is no party question," but he affirmed that "the peace of the world is much more likely to be secured if all the nations realise fairly what the conditions of peace must be."

Persistent pacifist propagandists to-day may well take warning from that utterance. He still believes it.

The spark that flashed at Agadir now burst into flame. The Great War broke and half the world saw red. What Lloyd George believed impossible now became bitter and wrathful reality. Though he did not know it at the moment, the supreme opportunity of his life lay on the lap of the god of Battles.

The Lloyd George who sat in council in Downing Street was no dreaming pacifist. He who had tried to stop the irresistible flood of the Boer War now rode the full swell of the storm that threatened for the moment to engulf all Britain.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer he was called upon to shape the fiscal policies that would be the determining factor in the War of Wars. "The last L100,000,000 will win," he said. Only one other man in England—Lord Kitchener—approached him in immense responsibility of office in the confidence of the people. It was a proud but equally terrifying moment.

Then indeed the little Welshman became England's Handy Man. As custodian of the British Pocketbook he had a full-sized job. But that was only part of the larger demand now made on his service. Popular faith regarded him as the Nation's First Aid, infallible remedy for every crisis.

If a compromise with Labor or Capital had to be effected it was Lloyd George who sat at the head of the table: if an Ally needed counsel or inspiration it was the Chancellor who sped across the water and laid down the law at Paris or Petrograd: if the Cause of Empire clamoured for expression from Government Seat or animated rostrum, he stood forth as the Herald of Freedom. So it went all through those dark closing months of 1914 as reverse after reverse shook the British arms and brought home the realisation that the war would be long and costly.

The year 1915 dawned full of gloom for England but pointing a fresh star for the career of Lloyd George. Although the first wave of Kitchener's new army had dashed against the German lines in France and established another tradition for British valour, the air of England became charged with an ominous feeling that something was wrong at the front. The German advance in the west had been well nigh triumphant. Reckless bravery alone could not prevail against the avalanche of Teutonic steel.

All the while the imperturbable Kitchener sat at his desk in the War Office—another man of Blood and Iron. He ran the war as he thought it should be run despite the criticism that began to beat about his head. To the average Englander he was a king who could do no wrong. But the conduct of war had changed mightily since Kitchener last led his troops. Like Business it had become a new Science, fought with new weapons and demanding an elastic intelligence that kept pace with the swift march of military events. The Germans were using every invention that marvellous efficiency and preparedness could devise. They met ancient England shrapnel with modern deadly and devastating high-explosives. If the war was to be won this condition had to be changed—and at once.

Two men in England—Lloyd George and Lord Northcliffe—understood this situation. Fortunately they are both men of courageous mould and unwavering purpose. One day Northcliffe sent the military expert of the Times (which he owns) to France to investigate conditions. He found that the greatest need of the English Army was for high-explosives. They were as necessary as bread. Into less than a quarter of a column he compressed this news. Instead of submitting it to the Censor who would have denied it publication, Northcliffe published the despatch and with it the revelation of Kitchener's long and serious omission. He not only risked suspension and possible suppression of his newspapers, but also hazarded his life because a great wave of indignation arose over what seemed to be an unwarranted attack upon an idol of the people. But it was the truth nevertheless.

At a time when England was supposed to be sensation-proof this revelation fell like a forty-two centimetre shell. It was an amazing and dramatic demonstration of the power of the press and it created a sensation.

Shell shortage at the front had full mate in a varied deficiency at home. Ammunition contracts had been let to private firms at excessive prices: labour was restricting output and breaking into periodic dissension: drink was deadening energy: in short, all the forces that should have worked together for the Imperial good were pulling apart.

Northcliffe began a silent but aggressive crusade for reform in his newspapers, while Lloyd George let loose the powers of his tongue. A national crisis, literally precipitated by these two men, arose. The Liberal Government fell and out of its wreck emerged the Coalition Cabinet. This welding of one-time enemies to meet grave emergency did more than wipe out party lines in an hour that threatened the Empire's very existence.

The reorganised Cabinet knew—as all England knew—that the greatest requirement was not only men but munitions. A galvanic personality was necessary to organise and direct the force that could save the day. A new Cabinet post—the Ministry of Munitions—was created. Who could fill it was the question. There was neither doubt nor uncertainty about the answer. It was embodied in one man.

The little Welshman became Minister of Munitions.

Lloyd George had led many a forlorn hope by taking up the task that weaker hands had laid down. Here, however, was a situation without precedent in a life that was a rebuke to convention. To succeed to an organised and going post these perilous war times was in itself a difficult job. In the case of the Ministry of Munitions there was nothing to succeed. Lloyd George had been given a blank order: it was up to him to fill it. He had to create a whole branch of Government from the ground up. All his powers of tact and persuasion were called into play. For one thing he had to fit the old established Ordnance Department rooted in tradition and jealous of its prerogatives into the new scheme of things.

Lloyd George was no business man, but he knew how business affairs should be conducted. He knew, too, that America had reared the empire of business on close knit and efficient organisation. He did what Andrew Carnegie or any other captain of capital would do. He called together the Schwabs, the Edisons, the Garys and the Westinghouses of the Kingdom and made them his work fellows.

From every corner of the Empire he drafted brains and experience. He wanted workers without stint, so he started a Bureau of Labor Supply: he needed publicity, so he set up an Advertising Department: to compete with the Germans he realised that he would need every inventive resource that England could command, so he founded an Invention and Research Bureau: he saw the disorganisation attending the output of shells in private establishments, so he planted the Union Jack in nearly every mill and took over the control of British Industry: he found labour at its old trick of impeding progress, so with a Munitions Act he practically conscripted the men of forge and mill into an industrial army that was almost under martial law. He cut red tape and injected red blood into the Department that meant national preservation. In brief, Lloyd George was on the job and things were happening.

The Minister established himself in an old mansion in Whitehall Garden where belles and beaux had danced the stately minuet. It became a dynamo of energy whose wires radiated everywhere. "More Munitions" was the creed that flew from the masthead.

A typical thing happened. The working force of the Ministry grew by leaps and bounds: already the hundreds of clerks were jam up against the confining walls of the old grey building. Lloyd George sent for one of his lieutenants and said:

"We must have more room."

"We have already reported that fact and the War Office says it will take three months to build new office space," was the reply.

"Then put up tents," snapped the little man, "and we will work under canvas."

Realising that his principal weapons were machines, Lloyd George took a census of all the machinery in the United Kingdom and got every pound of productive capacity down on paper. He was not long in finding out why the ammunition output was shy. Only a fifth of the lathes and tools used for Government work ran at night. "These machines must work every hour of the twenty-four," he said. Before a fortnight had passed every munitions mill ground incessantly.

These machines needed adequate manning. Lloyd George thereupon created the plan that enlisted the new army of Munitions Volunteers. Nelson-like he issued the thrilling proclamation that England expected every machine to do its duty. It meant the end of restricted output.

With the ban off restriction he likewise clamped the lid down on drink. Munitions workers could only go to the public houses within certain hours: the man who brought liquor into a Government controlled plant faced fines and if the offence was repeated, a still more drastic punishment.

Lloyd George began a censorship of labour which disclosed the fact that many skilled workers were wasting time on unskilled tasks. Lloyd George now began to dilute the skilled forces with unskilled who included thousands of women.

Right here came the first battle. Labour rebelled. It could find a way to get liquor but it resented dilution and cried out against capacity output. The Shell Master again became the Conciliator. He curbed the wild horses, agreeing to a restoration of pre-war shop conditions as soon as peace came. All he knew was the fact that the guns hungered and that it was up to him to feed them.

The wheels were not whirring fast enough to suit Lloyd George. "We must build our own factories," he said. Almost over night rose the mills whose slogan was "English shells for English guns." In speeding up the English output the Welshman was also equipping England to meet coming needs, laying the first stone of the structure that is fast becoming an Empire Self-Contained.

Lloyd George realised that he could not run every munitions plant, whereupon he organised local Boards of Control in the great ordnance centres like Woolwich, Sheffield, Newcastle and Middleboro. Each became a separate industrial principality but all bound up by hooks of steel to the Little Wizard who sat enthroned at Whitehall.

England became a vast arsenal, throbbing with ceaseless activity. The smoke that trailed from the myriad stacks was the banner of a new and triumphant faith in the future.

What was the result? Up and down the western battle front English cannon spoke in terms of victory. No longer was British gunner required to husband shells: to meet crash with silence. He hurled back steel for steel and all because England's Hope had answered England's Call. Lloyd George had done it again.

I first met Lloyd George during those crowded days when he was Commander-in-Chief of the host that fed the firing line. Under his magnetic direction British industry had been forged into a colossal munitions shop. No man in England was busier: not even the King was more inaccessible. Life with him was one engagement after another.

Now came one of those swift emergencies that seems to crowd so fast upon Lloyd George's life and with it arose my own opportunity.

The British Trade Union Congress in annual session at Bristol had expressed Labour's dissatisfaction over its share of the munitions profits. Lloyd George had sent them a letter explaining his proposed excess profit tax, but this apparently was not enough. The delegates still growled.

"Then I'll go down and speak to them in person," said the Minister with characteristic energy.

Thus it happened that I journeyed with him to the old town, background of stirring naval history. On the way down half a dozen department heads poured into his responsive ears the up-to-the-minute details of the work in hand. He became a Human Sponge soaking up the waters of fact.

At Bristol in a crowded stuffy hall he faced what was at the start almost a menacing crowd. Yet as he addressed them you would have thought that he had known every man and woman in the assembly all their lives. The easy, intimate, frank manner of his delivery: his immediate claim to kinship with them on the ground of a common lowly birth: his quick and stirring appeal to their patriotism swept aside all discord and disaffection. As he gave an eloquent account of his stewardship you could see the audience plastic under his spell. The people who had assembled to heckle sat spellbound. When he had finished they not only gave him an ovation but pledged themselves anew to the gospel of "More Munitions."

It was on the train back to London that I got a glimpse of the real Lloyd George. What Roosevelt would have called "a bully day" had left its impress upon the little man. His long grey hair hung matted over a wilted collar: there was a wistful sort of weariness in his eyes. He sank into a big chair and looked for a long time in silence at the flying landscape. Then suddenly he aroused himself and began to talk. Like many men of his type whom you go to interview he began by interviewing the interviewer.

The first two questions that Lloyd George asked me showed what was going on in his mind, for they were:

"What were Lincoln's views of conscription, and did your soldiers vote during the Civil War?"

There was definite method in these queries, for already the Shadow of Conscription had begun to fall over all England. It was Lloyd George, aided by Northcliffe, who led the fight for it.

The talk always went back to the great war. When I spoke of his speech at Bristol his face kindled and he said:

"Have you stopped to realise that this war is not so much a war of human mass against human mass as it is a war of machine against machine? It is a duel between the English and German workman."

You cannot talk long with Lloyd George without touching on democracy. This is his chosen ground. I shall never forget the fervour with which he said:

"The European struggle is a struggle for world liberty. It will mean in the end a victory for all democracy in its fight for equality."

When I asked him to write an inscription for a friend of mine and express the hope that lay closest to his heart, he took a card from his pocket, gazed for a moment at the rushing country now shot through with the first evening lights, and then wrote: "Let Freedom win."

A few days later Lloyd George made still another appearance in his now familiar role of England's Deliverer. The South Wales coal miners, 2,000,000 in number, went on strike at a time when Coal meant Life to the Empire. There is no need of asking the name of the man who went to calm this storm. Only one was eligible and he lost no time.

Lloyd George did not call a conference at Cardiff: he went straight to Wales and spoke to the workers at the mouth of the pit. What arbitration and conciliation had failed to do, his hypnotic oratory achieved. The men went back to the mines with a cheer.

A week later at the London Opera House he made a notable speech to the Conference of Representatives of the Miners of Great Britain. To have heard that speech was to get a liberal education in the art of phraseology and to carry always in memory the magic of the man's voice. In this speech he said:

"In war and peace King Coal is the paramount industry. Every pit is a trench: every workshop a rampart: every yard that can turn out munitions of war is a fortress.... Coal is the most terrible of enemies and the most potent of friends.... When you see the seas clear and the British flag flying with impunity from realm to realm and from shore to shore—when you find the German flag banished from the face of the ocean, who had done it? The British miner helping the British sailor."

Small wonder that after this effort the miners of Wales should acclaim their gallant countryman as Industrial Messiah.

You would think that by this time England had made her final tax on the resource of her Ready Man. But she had not. There came the desolate day when the news flashed over England that the "Hampshire" had gone down and with it Kitchener. Following the shock of this blow, greater than any that German arms could deliver, arose the faltering question, "Who is there to take his place?"

It did not falter long. Once more the S.O.S. call of a Nation in Distress flashed out and again the spark found its man. Lloyd George went from Ministry of Munitions to sit in Kitchener's seat at the War Office. Unlike the Hero of Khartoum, he had no service in the field to his credit. But he knew men and he also knew how to deploy them. Just as he brought the Veterans of Business to sit around the Munitions Board, so did he now marshal war-tried campaigners for the Strategy Table. The Somme blow was struck: the new War Chieftain proved his worth.

In the midst of all these new exactions Lloyd George found time for other and arduous national labours. Two more episodes will serve to close this narrative of unprecedented achievement.

When the recent Irish Revolt had registered its tragedy of blood, death and execution, menacing the very structure of Empire, Lloyd George became the Emissary of Peace to the Isle of Unrest.

Again, when prying peacemakers sought to intrude themselves upon the nations engaged in a life and death struggle, it was Lloyd George, in a remarkable interview, who warned all would-be winners of the Nobel prize that peace talk was unfriendly, that "there was neither clock nor calendar in the British Army," that the Allies would make it a finish fight.

So it went until gloom once more took up its abode amid the Allies. Bucharest fell before the German assault: Greece seethed with the unhappy mess that Entente diplomacy had made of a great opportunity: land and sea registered daily some fresh evidence of Teutonic advance. What was wrong?

England speculated, yet one man knew and that man was Lloyd George. He realised the futility of a many-headed direction of the war: with his swift insight he saw the tragic toll that all this cross purpose was taking. He made a demand on Asquith for a small War Council that would put dash, vigour and success into the British side of the conflict. The Premier refused to assent and Lloyd George resigned as War Chief. The Government toppled in a crisis that menaced the very future of the nation.

Great Britain stood aghast. Lloyd George stood for all the popular confidence in victory that the nation felt. For a moment it appeared as if the very foundations of authority had crumbled.

But not for long. When Bonar Law declined to reestablish the Government the oft-repeated cry for action that had invariably found its answer in the intrepid little Welshman, again rose up. Upon him devolved the task of constructing a new Cabinet which he headed as Prime Minister. He now reached the inevitable goal toward which he had unconsciously marched ever since that faraway day when his voice was first heard in Parliament.

Even with Cabinet-making Lloyd George was a Revolutionist. He cut down the membership from twenty-four to five, establishing a compact and effective War Council whose sole task is to "win the war." He centred more authority in the Premiership than the English system has ever known before. He virtually became Dictator.

On the other hand, he raised the number of Ministers outside the Cabinet from nineteen to twenty-eight. He scattered the coterie of lawyers who had so long comprised the Government Trust and put in men with red blood and proved achievement—in the main, self-made like himself. He installed a trained and competent business man of the type of Sir Albert Stanley, raised in the hard school of American transportation, as President of the Board of Trade: he drafted a seasoned commercial veteran like Lord Rhondda (D. A. Thomas), for President of the Local Government Board: he raised his old and experienced aide, Dr. Christopher Addison, to be Minister of Munitions: he made Lord Derby, who had conducted the great recruiting campaign, Minister of War: he put Sir Joseph Maclay, an extensive ship owner, into the post of Shipping Controller. Everywhere he supplanted politicians with doers.

What was equally important he continued his role of Conciliator, for he placated Labour by giving it a large representation and he took a definite step toward the solution of the Irish problem by making Sir Edward Carson First Lord of the Admiralty.

Even as he stood at what seemed the very pinnacle of his power Destiny once more marked him for its own. He had scarcely announced his Cabinet when the world was electrified by the news of the German peace proposal. By his own action Lloyd George had placed himself at the head of the Council charged with the conduct of the war. To the Wizard Welshman therefore was put squarely the responsibility of continuing or ending the stupendous struggle.

Never before in the history of any country was such momentous responsibility concentrated in an individual. The dramatic element with which Lloyd George had become synonymous, found an amazing expression. He was ill in bed when the German suggestion was made. No official announcement of England's position in reply could be made until he had recovered. In the interim the whole world trembled with suspense while stock markets shivered. The Premier's name was on every tongue: the eyes of the universe were focussed on him. It was indeed his Great Hour.

In what was the most significant speech of his career, and with all the force and fervour at his command, he stated the Empire's determination to fulfill its obligations to the trampled and ravaged countries. On that speech hung the stability of international financial credit, the lives of millions of men and the whole future security of Europe.

You have seen the moving picture of a tumultuous life: what of the personality behind it?

Reducing the Prime Minister to a formula you find that he is fifty per cent Roosevelt in the virility and forcefulness of his character, fifteen per cent Bryan in the purely demagogic phase of his makeup, while the rest is canny Celt opportunism. It makes a dazzling and well-nigh irresistible composite.

It is with Roosevelt that the best and happiest comparison can be made. Indeed I know of no more convincing interpretation of the Thing that is Lloyd George than to point this live parallel. For Lloyd George is the British Roosevelt—the Imperial Rough Rider. Instead of using the Big Stick, he employs the Big Voice. No two leaders ever had so much in common.

Each is more of an institution than a mere man: each dramatises himself in everything he does: each has the same genius for the benevolent assimilation of idea and fact. They are both persistent but brilliant "crammers." Trust Lloyd George to know all about the man who comes to see him whether he be statesman, author, explorer or plain captain of industry. It is one of the reasons why he maintains his amazing political hold.

Lloyd George has Roosevelt's striking gift of phrase-making, although he does not share the American's love of letter writing. As I have already intimated, whatever may be his future, Lloyd George will never be confronted by accusing epistle. None exists.

Like Roosevelt, Lloyd George is past master in the art of effective publicity. He has a monopoly on the British front page. Each of these remarkable men projects the fire and magnetism of his dynamic personality. Curiously enough, each one has been the terror of the Corporate Evil-doer—the conspicuous target of Big Business in his respective country. Each one is a dictator in the making, and it is safe to assume that if Lloyd George lived in a republic, like Roosevelt he would say: "My Army," "My Navy" and "My Policies."

Roosevelt, however, has one distinct advantage over his British colleague in that he is a deeper student and has a wider learning.

In one God-given gift Lloyd George not only surpasses Roosevelt but every other man I have ever met. It is an inspired oratory that is at once the wonder and the admiration of all who hear it. He is in many respects the greatest speaker of his day—the one man of his race whose utterance immediately becomes world property. The stage lost a great star when the Welsh David went into politics. There are those who say that he acts all the time, but that is a matter of opinion dictated by partisan or self-interest.

Lloyd George is what we in America, and especially those of us born in the South, call the "silver-tongued." His whole style of delivery is emotional and greatly resembles the technique of the Breckenridge-Watterson School. In his voice is the soft melodious lilt of the Welsh that greatly adds to the attractiveness of his speech.

Before the public he is always even-tempered and amiable, serene and smiling, quick to capitalize interruption and drive home the chance remark. He invariably establishes friendly relations with his hearers, and he has the extraordinary ability to make every man and woman in the audience before him believe that he is getting a direct and personal message.

Lloyd George can be the unfettered poet or the lion unleashed. Shut your eyes as you listen and you can almost hear the music of mountain streams or the roar of rushing cataracts. In his great moments his eloquence is little short of enthralling, for it is filled with an inspired imagery. No living man surpasses him in splendour of oratorical expression. His speeches form a literature all their own.

When, for example, yielding to that persistent Call of Empire for his service he interpreted England's cause in the war at Queen's Hall in London, in September, 1914, in what was in many respects his noblest speech, he said in referring to Belgium and Servia:

"God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries His choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and strengthen their faith; and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism, our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages."

In closing this speech which he gave the characteristic Lloyd George title of "Through Terror to Triumph," he uttered a peroration full of meaning and significance to United States in its present hour of pride and prosperity. He said:

"We have been living in a sheltered valley for generations. We have been too comfortable and too indulgent, many, perhaps, too selfish, and the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter for a nation—the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the towering pinacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.

"We shall descend into the valleys again; but as long as the men and women of this generation last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those mighty peaks whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war."

Now take a closing look at the man himself. You see a stocky, well-knit figure, broad of shoulder and deep of chest. The animated body is surmounted by a face that alternately beams and gleams. There are strength and sensitiveness, good humour, courage and resolution in these features. His eyes are large and luminous, aglow at times with the poetry of the Celt: aflame again with the fervour of mighty purpose. He moves swiftly. To have him pass you by is to get a breath of life.

To all this strength and power he brings undeniable charm. In action he is like a man exalted: in repose he becomes tender, dreamy, almost childlike. His whole nature seems to be driven by a vast and volcanic energy. This is why, like Roosevelt, he has been able to crowd the achievements of half a dozen careers into one. He is indeed the Happy Warrior.

Yet Lloyd George knows how to play. I have known him to work incessantly all day and follow the Ministerial game far into the night. Ten o'clock the next morning would find him on the golf links at Walton Heath fresh and full of vim and energy. At fifty-three he is at the very zenith of his strength.

Why has he succeeded? Simply because he was born to leadership. Without being profound he is profoundly moving: without studying life he is an unerring judge of men and moods. Volatile, masterful and above all human he is at once the most consistent and inconsistent of men.

But it is a new Lloyd George who stepped from unofficial to official stewardship of England: a Lloyd George with the firebrand out of his being, purged of bitter revolt, chastened and mellowed by the years of war ordeal. Out of contact with mighty sacrifice has come a kinship with the spirit. He is to-day like a man transformed. "England hath need of him."

There are those who see in the new Lloyd George a Conservative in evolution. But whatever the political product of this change may be, it represents the equipment necessary to meet the shock of peace. For peace will demand a leadership no less vigorous than war.

The lowly lad who dreamed of power amid the Welsh Hills is to-day the Hope of Empire.



VIII—From Pedlar to Premier

The great General who once said that war is the graveyard of reputations might have added that in its fiery furnace great careers are welded. Out of the Franco-Prussian conflict emerged the Master Figure of Bismarck: the Soudan brought forth Kitchener and South Africa Lord Roberts. The Great Struggle now rending Europe has given Joffre to French history and up to the time of this writing it has presented to the British Empire no more striking nor unexpected character than William Morris Hughes, the battling Prime Minister of Australia—the Unknown who waked up England.

Even to America where the dramatisation of the Self-made Idea has become a commonplace thing the story of his rise from pedlar to premier has a meaning all its own. Elsewhere in this book you have seen how he stirred Great Britain to the post-war commercial menace of the German. It is peculiarly fitting therefore that this narrative, dedicated as it is to the War after the War, should close with some attempt at interpretation of the personality of the man who sounded its first trumpet call.

Like Lloyd George, Hughes is a Welshman. These two remarkable men, who have done so much to rouse their people, have more than racial kinship in common. They are both undersized: both rose from the humble hearth: both made their way to eminence by way of the bar: both gripped popular imagination as real leaders of democracy. They are to-day the two principal imperial human assets.

Hughes will tell you that he was born frail and has remained so ever since. This son of a carpenter was a weak, thin, delicate boy, but always a fighter. At school in London he was the only Nonconformist around, and the biggest fellows invariably picked upon him. He could strike back with his fists and protect his narrow chest, but his legs were so thin that he had to stuff exercise books in his stockings to safeguard his shins.

Hughes was trained for teaching, and only the restlessness of the Celt saved him from a life term in the schoolroom. At sixteen he had become a pupil instructor. But the sea always stirred his imagination. He would wander down to the East India Docks and watch the ships load with cargoes for spicy climes. One day as he watched the great freighters a boy joined him. He looked very sad, and when Hughes asked him the reason he said he wanted to go home to visit his people, but lacked the money.

"I'll lend you some," said Hughes impulsively.

He went home and out of the lining of an ancient concertina he produced thirty shillings, all the money he had in the world. He handed this hoard over to his new-found friend and promptly forgot all about it. He kept on teaching.

I cite this little episode because it was the turning point in a great man's career. The boy who borrowed the shillings went to Australia. Several years later he returned the money and with it this message: "This is a great country full of opportunity for a young man. Chuck your teaching and come out here." Hughes went.

Three months later—it was in 1884—and with half a crown in his pocket he walked ashore at Brisbane. He looked so frail that the husky dock labourers jeered at his physical weakness. Yet less than ten years from that date he was their militant leader marching on to the Rulership of all Australia.

In those days Australia was a rough land. Beef, bullying and brawn were the things that counted most in that paradise of ticket-of-leave men. Hughes bucked the sternest game in the world and with it began a series of adventures that read like a romance and give a stirring background to the man's extraordinary public achievements.

Hughes found out at once that all hope of earning a livelihood by teaching in the bush was out of the question. His money was gone: he had to exist, so he took the first job that came his way. A band of timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor, dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender and sheep drover.

With a small band he once brought fifty thousand sheep down from Queensland into New South Wales. For fifteen weeks he was on the tramp, sleeping at night under the stars, trudging the dusty roads all day. At the end of this trip occurred the incident that made him deaf. Over night he passed from the sun-baked plains to a high mountain altitude. Wet with perspiration, he slept out with his flocks and caught cold. The result was an infirmity which is only one of many physical handicaps that this amazing little man has had to overcome throughout his tempestuous life.

Yet he has fought them all down. As he once humorously said: "If I had had a constitution I should have been dead long ago."

After all his strenuous bushwhacking the year 1890 found him running a small shop in the suburbs of Sydney. By day he sold books and newspapers: at night he repaired locks and clocks in order to get enough money to buy law books. Into his shop drifted sailors from the wharves with their grievances. Born with a passionate love of freedom, these sounds of revolt were as music to his ears. Figuratively he sat at the feet of Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty" helped to shape the course of his thinking. Lincoln's letters and speeches were among his favourites, too.

One night a big dock bruiser grabbed a package of tobacco off the counter, but before he could move a step Hughes had caught him under the jaw with his fist. His burly associates cheered the game little shopkeeper. They now came to him with their troubles and he was soon their friend, philosopher and guide.

For years the synonym for Australian Labour was strike. When the unions were merged into a national body Hughes was the unanimous choice of the husky stevedores for leader. He became the Great Restrainer. Never was influence of lip and brain over muscle and temper better demonstrated. The wild men of the wharves—the roughest crowd in all labour—were under his spell. This nimble-footed shopkeeper flouted them with his wit: ruled with his mind.

On a certain occasion five hundred of them were crowded into a building at Sydney yelling bloody murder and clamouring for violence. Suddenly the tiny figure of Hughes appeared on the platform before them. At first they yelled him down, but he stood smiling, resolute, undaunted. He began to talk: the tumult subsided: he stepped forward, stamped his foot and said in a voice that reached to every corner:

"You shall not strike." And they did not. David had defied the Goliaths.

From that time on Hughes was the Brains of Australian Labour. He organised his industrial rough riders into a powerful and constructive union. With it he drove a wedge into the New South Wales Legislature and gave industry, for the first time, a seat in its Councils. He became its Parliamentary Voice. He was only thirty.

Having got his foot in the doorway of public life, he now jammed the portal wide open. As trade union official he forged ahead. He became the Father Confessor of the Worker. His advice always was: "Avoid violence: put your faith in the ballot box." With this creed he tamed the Labour Jungle: through it he built up an industrial legislative group that acknowledged him as chief.

Though he was rising to fame the struggle for existence was hard. No matter how late he toiled in legislative hall or union assembly, he read law when he got home. He was admitted to the bar, and despite his deafness he became an able advocate. When he had to appear in court he used a special apparatus with wire attachments that ran to the witness box and the bench and enabled him to hear everything that was going on.

He became a journalist and contributed a weekly article to the Sydney Telegraph. An amusing thing happened. He noticed that remarkable statements began to creep into his articles when published. When he complained to the editor he discovered that the linotype operator who set up his almost indecipherable copy injected his own ideas when he could not make out the stuff.

The limitation of a State Legislature irked Hughes. He beheld the vision of an Australian Commonwealth that would federate all those Overseas States. When the far-away dominions had been welded under his eloquent appeal into a close-knit Union, the fragile, deaf little man emerged as Attorney General. At last he had elbow room.

It was due to his efforts that Australia got National Service, an Officers' School, ammunition factories, military training for schoolboys. They were all part of the kindling campaign that he waged to the stirring slogan of "Defence, not Defiance."

Always the friend and champion of Labour, he was in the thick of incessant controversy. His enemies feared him: his friends adored him. He got a variety of names that ranged all the way from "Bush Robespierre" to the "Australian Abraham Lincoln."

The Great War found Hughes the Strong Man of Australia, soon to be bound up in the larger Destiny of the Empire.

Even before the Mother Country sent her call for help to the Children beyond the seas, Hughes had offered the gallant contingent that made history at the Dardanelles. Thanks to him, they were prepared. It was Hughes who sped the Anzacs on to Gallipoli: it was Hughes who, on his own responsibility, offered fifty thousand men more. These men were not in sight at the moment, but the intrepid statesman went forth that very day and started the crusade that rallied them at once.

Hughes was moving fast, but faster moved the relentless course of the war. Gallipoli's splendid failure had been recorded, the Australians stood shoulder to shoulder with their British brothers in the French trenches when the opportunity which was to make him a world citizen knocked at his door.

In October, 1915, Andrew Fisher resigned the Premiership of Australia to become High Commissioner in London, and Hughes was named as his successor. The puny lad who had landed at Brisbane thirty years before with half a crown in his pocket sat enthroned. The reins of power were his and he lost no time in lashing them.

How he divorced the German from Australian trade: how he broke the Teutonic monopoly of the Antipodean metal fields and established the Australian Metal Exchange and made of it an Imperial institution for Imperial revenue only: how he swept England with a torrent of fervid oratory rousing the whole nation to its post-war commercial responsibilities, are all part of very recent history already woven into the fabric of this little volume.

"Reconstruct or decay" was his admonition. Reluctantly the great mass of English people saw him leave their shores last summer. Already the demand for his recall as unofficial Speeder-up of Patriotism is simmering.

What of the man behind this drama of almost unparalleled performance?

To see Hughes in action is to get the impression of a human dynamo suddenly let loose. His face is keen and sharp: his mouth thin: his cheeks are shrunken: his arms and legs are long and he has a curious way of stuffing his clenched fists into his trousers pockets. Some one has called him the Mirabeau of the Australian Proletariat. Certainly he looks it. He has a nervous energy almost beyond belief. By birth, temperament, experience and point of view he is a firebrand, but with this difference: he is a Human Flame that reasons.

Only Lloyd George surpasses him in force and fervour of eloquence. He has a marvellous trick of expression that never fails to make a winning appeal. His speeches are the Bible of the Australian worker, and they are fast becoming part of the Gospel of the wide-awake and progressive British wage-earner.

Since he was the first Statesman of the Empire to appreciate the grave business responsibilities that will come with peace, it is interesting to get his ideas on the relation between Trade and Government. In one of his impassioned speeches in England he declared:

"The relations between modern trade interests and national welfare are so intimate and complex that they cannot be treated as though they were not parts of one organic whole. No sane person now suggests that the foreign policy of the country should be dealt with by the laissez-faire policy. No one would dare openly to contend that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business they conceive this to be.

"I want to make one thing quite clear, that what I am advocating is not merely a change of fiscal policy, not merely or even necessarily what is called Tariff Reform—although this may, probably will, incidentally follow—but a fundamental change in our ideas of government as applied to economic and national matters. The fact is that the whole concept of modern statesmanship needs revision. But England has been, and is, the chief of sinners. Quite apart from the idea of a self-contained Empire there is the idea of Britain as an organized nation. And the British Empire as an organized Empire, organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. That is a noble ideal. It ought to be—it must be—ours."

An extract from another notable address will reveal his gift of words. Commenting on the frightful price in human life and treasure that the Empire was paying, he said:

"Let us take this solemn lesson to heart. Let us, resolutely putting aside all considerations of party, class, and doctrine, without delay, proceed to devise a policy for the British Empire, a policy which shall cover every phase of our national, economic, and social life; which shall develop our tremendous resources, and yet be compatible with those ideals of liberty and justice for which our ancestors fought and died, and for which the men of our race now, in this, the greatest of all wars, are fighting and dying in a fashion worthy of their breeding.

"Let us set sail upon a definite course as becomes a mighty nation to whom has been entrusted the destiny of one-fourth of the whole human race."

Hughes is the most accessible of men. The humblest wharf-rustler in Australia hails him by his first name. A characteristic incident will show the comradeship that exists between this leader and his constituency.

On his last visit to England he crossed over to France to visit the Australian troops at the front. He was walking through a trench accompanied by General Birdwood, who is Commander-in-Chief of the overseas contingent, and stopped to chat with a group of soldiers who had fought at Gallipoli. Suddenly a shell shrieked overhead. A Tommy from Sydney yelled to the Premier:

"Duck, Billy, duck!"

Here is practical democracy. Nowhere, in all the varied human side of the war, does it find more impressive embodiment than in the self-made little Australian whose life is a miracle of progress.

Of such stuff as this are the Builders of the British To-morrow!

THE END