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The Mask of Merlin
A Critical Biography
of DayRd^Lloyd^aeorge
By DorTard McCormick

Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of
Australia, referred to the statecraft of
Lloyd George as "the magic of
Merlin." The parallel was apt in many
ways: Merlin, too, was a fatherless waif
from Wales. But THE MASK OF
MERLIN is not merely a new study of
the life of the celebrated Welsh
Premier, it is an attempt to see "the
magic of Merlin" beneath the mask of
the statesman, to examine the "Lloyd
George Legend" so carefully built
up by earlier biographers and to make
a reappraisal of the character and
career of this dynamic politician.
Was Lloyd George a great patriot or a
traitor? Was he a war winner or a war
bungler? A sincere statesman or a
political mountebank? In his heyday,
Lloyd George achieved more absolute
power than even Sir Winston
Churchill secured in World War II. He
was, it has been argued, "the master
of Europe."

Showing how power corrupts, Donald
McCormick draws aside the veil, which
has previously obscured much of the
truth, to shed new light on Lloyd
George s peccadilloes, which. more
than once threatened his career; his
intrigues with Zaharoff, the arms
magnate; the Sale of Honours scandal;
and Lloyd George s association with
the enigmatic Trebitsch Lincoln who
later turned traitor.
The author has interviewed scores of

(Continued on back flap)

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61^-19897 - % 00
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a critical

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[; The raask of Merlin; a critical

biograpty of David Lloyd George.

[19631 Rinehart and Winston
343p, illus., ports,

THE MASK OF MERLIN

- -V-,

Topix Picture Servia

Lloyd George in Bardic robes, when, with his family, he acted as Castellan at St.

Donat s Castle, Glamorgan, to entertain the Gorsedd of Welsh Eisteddfod Bards

at a banquet served with medieval splendour.

THE
MASK OF MERLIN

A Critical Biography of David Lloyd George
BY DONALD McCORMICK

HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON

NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO

First Published in the United States
August 1964.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-20102
First Edition

85551-0114
Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is impossible to thank adequately all the many people whose know
ledge of and interest in David Lloyd George helped me to write this
book.

Various private collections of papers, pamphlets, diaries and letters
have been perused, in addition to which I have had the inestimable
value of the services of the staffs of the Reading Room, Manuscripts
Room and Newspaper Library of the British Museum, and the Public
Records Office, for which I am deeply grateful.

I wish to thank the executors of Mr. Vivian Phillipps, the former
Liberal Party Chief Whip, for allowing access to Mr. Phillipps papers
and contemporary memoranda and for permission to quote from the
same: Mrs. E. A. Morgan for permission to reproduce extracts from
letters and diaries of the late Mr. Moses Roberts; Mrs. E. Lycett Green
for reminiscences of North Wales of the Lloyd Georgian era; Mr. B.
Schofield, Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts of the British
Museum.

In addition there have been many people who have known Lloyd
George personally, or worked for him, who have provided help and
advice anonymously. I should like to emphasise that I have consulted
many who, though they strongly opposed some of my own interpreta
tions of events and personalities, nevertheless co-operated willingly.
In this connection I should like to thank Mr. Reginald Orlando Bridge-
man, who had an intimate knowledge of British foreign policy in the
years immediately before and after the Russian Revolution. Though
our respective outlooks on the Lloyd George policy towards Russia
were sometimes diametrically opposed, he provided a salutary counter
blast to my own contentions and did much to induce me to re-write
a whole chapter on this subject.

Similarly I must warmly acknowledge the valuable criticism and
constructive suggestions of Mr. Malcolm Elwin and Sqn.-Ldr. Ronald
Ladbrook, Senior History Master at Stanbridge Earls School. In
fairness to each I must admit that, while I gladly accepted some of
their suggestions, in other instances, rightly or wrongly, I begged to
differ. Kr, -. . ,, . --;/^V v

Much assistance has been given to me from other countries. In
particular I wish to acknowledge my thanks to Professor Frank Freidel,
the biographer of President Roosevelt; Mr. Adolf A. Berle, Jr.; the
late Mr. Wythe Williams, of New York; Dr. L. de Jong, of Amsterdam;

VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Herr H. Hausofer, of Hartschimmel; Dr. Weis, Director of the W.K.B.
at Stuttgart; various friends in the Quai d Orsay in Paris.

I gratefully acknowledge permission for the use of copyright material
from:

Earl Haig and Mr. Robert Blake, who are trustees of the Haig
Papers;

Mr. Robert Blake and Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., for extracts from
The Private Papers ofDougl&s Haig, The Unknown Prime Minister and The
Baldwin Age i

Sir Harold Nicolson and Constable & Co. Ltd., for material from
King George V, His Life and Times ;

Cassell & Co. Ltd., for extracts from A King s Story by H.R.H. the
Duke of Windsor;

Lord Beaverbrook and Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., for extracts from
Men and Power : 1917-18 and from a broadcast review of The History
of The Times ,

Sir Winston S. Churchill and Odhams Press, Ltd., as publishers
and proprietors of the copyright, for extracts from Great Contemporaries
and The World Crisis;

The Editor of The Observer for extracts from Kenneth Harrises inter
view with Sir Harold Nicolson;

Mr. F. M. Maurice for extracts from the papers and correspondence
of General Sir Frederick Maurice;

The Times Publishing Co. Ltd., for extracts from The History of The
Times ;

Professor H. R. Trevor-Roper and Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., for
extracts from Hitler s Table Talk;

Mr. Malcolm Thomson and Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., for extracts
from David Lloyd George;

Mr. Kingsley Martin and the New Statesman & Nation, for extracts
from that journal;

Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu, M.P., and the Editor of the Evening Standard
for extracts from an interview with General Gough;

George Allen & Unwin Ltd., for extracts from Dame Margaret by
Earl Lloyd-George;

Mrs. Eirene White, M.P., for extracts from Dr. Thomas Jones
Lloyd George (Oxford University Press) ;

J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., for an extract from Dylan Thomas s
poem, "O Make Me a Mask" from Collected Poems : 1934-52.

More than 130 books have been consulted (though not necessarily
all used as sources) as well as vast quantities of press cuttings and
documents and, though a bibliographical list is included, it is far from
being a complete bibliography of Lloyd George, as new material on
the man is still being either published or unearthed. Nevertheless, the

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Vll

list given should enable readers who wish to delve further into this
subject to obtain an objective and well-documented picture of the Lloyd
Georgian era. Students wishing to check on other sources will find
them given in chronological order in the bibliography under chapter
headings.

I should, however, acknowledge my special indebtedness to Dr.
Thomas Jones Lloyd George, a short but extremely workmanlike bio
graphy which can usefully be regarded as a text-book on the subject;
to Sir Winston Churchill s The World Crisis ; to Mr. Frank Owen s Tem
pestuous Journey^ to Sir Harold Nicolson for the time he kindly spared
to discuss with me the subject of Lloyd George; to Lord Beaverbrook s
various illuminating and well-documented books on the period, for
no student of LI. G, can fail to benefit from his revelations; and The
Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith by H. A. Spender and Cyril Asquith.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ....... v

1. The Riddle of the Wizard 13

2. Bible and Bundling . . . . . .22

3. "The Blackest Tory Parish in the Land" 33

4. Young Man in a Hurry ...... 42

5. Vermin among the Ermine ...... 55

6. The Bid for Power 70

7. The Lie that Sinketh 85

8. Manpower or Gun-power ...... 96

9. The Amateur Strategist ...... 107

10. A Conspiracy of Silence . . . . . .125

11. Fandango of Victory . . . . . . .143

12. The "Ticket-holders" Government . . . -159

13. Lloyd George and Russia . . . . . .172

14. Coercion from Downing Street . . . . .185

15. Go-Betweens in the Shadows . . . , .197

1 6. "For Greeks a Blush, For Greece a Tear" . . . 212

17. The End of the Coalition ...... 222

1 8. Worshipping the Molten Calf 231

19. Now Right, Now Left 246

20. King s Champion ....... 264

21. Visit to Hitler 273

22. World War II 282

23. The Last Years 298

24. A Glimpse Beneath the Mask ..... 304
Bibliography . . . . . - . .317
Index ......... 335

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lloyd George in Bardic robes ..... frontispiece

The house where Lloyd George was born . . facing page 64
His home in Llanystumdwy ...... 64

The young Lloyd George ....... 65

A portrait in his early days as M.P. ..... 80

Dame Margaret Lloyd George . . . . . . 81

Camping with his wife in the Welsh mountains at Moel Heboz 128
Lloyd George with Col. Sir Maurice Hankey . . . 129

The coalition Prime Minister cracking a joke with Marshal

Foch and Aristide Briand . . . . . .129

Field-Marshal Earl Haig . . . . . . .144

Trebitsch Lincoln . . . . . . . .145

Philip Kerr, Marquis of Lothian . . . . 145

A. Maundy Gregory ........ 208

Sir William Sutherland 208

Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street, in 1918, with Marshal

Foch and Georges Clemenceau ..... 209

The Irish rebellion: a street barricade in Dublin . . . 224

Michael Collins addressing a meeting ..... 224

A typical oratorical pose ....... 225

Lloyd George with Hitler in 1936 ..... 288

The bridge over the River Dwyfor at Llanystumdwy . . 289

Lloyd George s last resting place overlooking the Dwyfor . 289

The illustrations of Dame Margaret Lloyd George and

Michael Collins are from the Radio Times Hulton Picture

Library, and that of F.M. Earl Haig from Bassano Ltd.

THE RIDDLE OF THE WIZARD

"A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy body to decay."

John Dryden

Llanystumdwy is still an unspoilt village with nothing particularly
remarkable about it until one comes to the ancient three-span bridge
under which flows the River Dwyfor. Here is the kind of Tennysonian
stream which onomatopoeically "bubbles into eddying bays and
babbles on the pebbles". A tumultuous, gay little river, meandering
and cantering like a Celtic goblin, a stream which has never quite
grown up.

This is the river so beloved by David Lloyd George that, when he
received an earldom, he chose Dwyfor as part of his title. To see the
river is to appreciate the bond between the two; each share the same
characteristics waywardness, directness when the path ahead is clear,
deviousness when there are obstacles to be circumnavigated, gaiety in
the sunlight and a reflective note of warning when the clouds gather*

Not to know Llanystumdwy is not to know Lloyd George. Here he
was reared and here he returned to die. Here also he has left behind
a clue to his elusive character and to the legend of the Cambrian
Wizard who, for the best part of a century, cast a sparkling pattern of
magic, of rhetoric and of a brittle, fragile charm over the valleys of
North Wales. Once that magic left the valleys and ventured into more
sophisticated regions it became tainted and sullied. It was as though
Ariel had given place to Puck, and Puck, in turn, had changed into
a scheming, tortuous faun.

Llanystumdwy. The name has a pleasant, sleepy softness about it,
much more eloquent than its rather clumsy English translation "the
church at the bend of the Dwyfor River". Across the bridge from the
Pwllheli road is the Lloyd George Museum, where are to be found
the caskets and rolls of the many cities of which Lloyd George was
made a Freeman and the policeman s helmet which he wore when
escaping from an angry mob at Birmingham Town Hall during the
Boer War. Further on along the Criccieth road is the tiny, ivy-covered
cottage where he spent his boyhood days. On the Criccieth side of

14 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the river is Lloyd George s grave in the exact site he chose for him
self, among the trees on a bank of the rushing Dwyfor. A small garden
of memory in the form of an enclosed shrine has been designed by
Clough Williams Ellis, the Welsh architect.

The Welsh love their rivers with a passionate fervour and imbibe
from them a deep spiritual comfort. The theme of the "little stream,
meandering down the mountain-side" on its way to the sea, is a
constantly recurring motif in the lyrical and dramatic hwl 9 that tor
rential peroration with its sing-song delivery which marks the end of
a Welsh preacher s sermon.

Symbolically, and not merely sentimentally, the Dwyfor seems to
provide the one permanent background to Lloyd George s life. All
else was a frenzied scene-changing in a feverish revue. The Lloyd
Georgian era was one of quicksands and follies. The constant threat
of war from the continent of Europe, the pitfalls of a foreign policy
built on expediency and not on principles, the passage from Victorian
sobriety and solidity through Edwardian frivolity to the butterfly
way of life of the nineteen-twenties, all these things were merely an
echo of earlier history. For the Coalition Government of Lloyd George
read the crooked counsels of the Cabal. In Dryden s bitter satire on
Lord Shaftesbury there is an echo of that other False Achitophel from
Llanystumdwy. . . .

"A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy body to decay."

In an historical context it is impossible in any attempt to assess
Lloyd George to avoid posing the question: Could a man who was
hailed as the saviour of civilization, the master-mind behind the Allied
victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the architect of social security,
be an evil genius rather than a benevolent wizard?

At Llanystumdwy it is least easy to answer this question. The old
magic comes back to one and, with it, a question mark. Is it dust
thrown in the eyes by unseen Celtic goblins? Or is the phrase "Welsh
wizard" just a happy piece of alliteration thought up by a propa
gandist? Neither is quite true. There is an ancient tradition of wizardry
in Wales that brings the word, naturally to the lips of any Welshman
who wishes to describe genius. Another Welsh-born Prime Minister,
Billy Hughes of Australia, was the first politician to liken Lloyd George
to the Arthurian wizard when he referred to his statecraft as "the
magic of Merlin".

The most difficult task of any biographer of Lloyd George is to
explain and interpret the magic without being mesmerised by its spell.
One must avoid, for example, so surprisingly sweeping an assertion
as that of Mr. A. J. P. Taylor who writes: "Lloyd George was the

THE RIDDLE OF THE WIZARD 15

man who won the war and, as the years recede, he stands out as the
greatest political genius that the twentieth century produced in this
country."

Stanley Baldwin was, perhaps, wiser when he said: "It will take
ten men to write his life." More than twice this number have indi
vidually attempted the task, yet a clear picture has not yet emerged.

The modern tendency in biography is to sublimate any inspired
sense of history to a desire to be dispassionate at all costs. The result
is a series of books which pretend that nothing is either black or white,
but an all-embracing greyness. It is history as Whistler might have
painted it on a misty November morning looking out on the Thames
from Chelsea Embankment.

Yet his contemporaries never saw Lloyd George in other than black
or white, either hating him or idolising him. An impassioned local
orator, carried away by his own eloquence at Rhyl in 1919, introduced
Lloyd George to his audience as "the greatest man since Christ".

It would be utterly untruthful to assert that this is a dispassionate
biography. Indeed, it is not intended to be a biography in the con
ventional sense, but rather a critical interpretation of one of the most
baffling political figures of our time. Beyond this basic aim there is
a broader purpose to be developed, and if the book has a theme other
than its main subject it is to show how power corrupts. For Lloyd
George undoubtedly undermined the moral structure of British public
life and began the moral degeneration which is the greatest political
problem of the present day.

It has been necessary to examine the legend of Lloyd George and
to check the facts with that legend, to separate the wheat of truth from
the chaff of idolatry. More especially has it been important to fill in
the gaps in the Lloyd George story left by other biographers.

The legend of Lloyd George has come down to a generation to
whom he is a complete stranger. All this generation knows, or is told
about him, is that he was the man who won World War I, or, as Sir
Winston Churchill has put it: "He was the greatest Welshman which
that unconquerable race has produced since the time of the Tudors."
There have been greater occupants of No. 10 Downing Street in the
past century, but Lloyd George was easily the most fascinating premier
since the days of Disraeli and possibly the most remarkable human
enigma ever to have resided there. During his lifetime, well fed by a
skilled propaganda machine, aided and abetted by a national Press
that saw in him a heaven-sent boon to cartoonists, the legend blossomed
into extravagant imagery. In his last days it had become somewhat
shabby and tawdry, but in the years since his death various biographers
have resurrected the fading picture and restored the halo.

The biographical pictures so far drawn of Lloyd George have been
largely uncritical and incomplete. "Although I have it on good

1 6 THE MASK OF MERLIN

authority that the Lloyd George bibliography is probably the most
extensive of that of any man living" (his father was still alive when this
was written), writes his son, Earl Lloyd-George, "I have yet to read
one biography that does David Lloyd George justice. Certainly all of
them that have come under my eye are either full of inaccuracies or
sadly lacking in important facts or both."

Even allowing for the books published since this date, a modern
student of the Lloyd George bibliography, having no other facts to go
on, might decide that the edifice which was the great Welshman had
very few cracks. The evidence which builds up this picture is for
midable. In its obituary of Lloyd George The Times stated: "His
countrymen will remember that he wrought greatly and daringly for
them in dark times, in peace and in war, and will admit without
distinction of class or party that a great man has passed away." And
again, Sir Winston Churchill has commented: "As a man of action,
resource and creative energy he stood, when at his zenith, without a
rival. Much of his work abides, some of it will grow greatly in the
future, and those who come after us will find the pillars of his life s
toil upstanding, massive and indestructible." Field-Marshal Jan
Smuts declared that Lloyd George was the "supreme architect of
victory in the First World War". Dr. Thomas Jones, who as a senior
civil servant was very close to Lloyd George, does, it is true, admit his
master had faults, but somewhat extravagantly claims that he "took
hold of flabbiness and muddle" at a great crisis in history, and "by
his own energy turned flabbiness into resolution, muddle into system
and purpose".

But when one examines the base of this edifice it is found to be far
from durable. There are yawning chasms of omission in the narratives,
many controversies are glossed over. Even Dr. Thomas Jones honestly
confesses that "I have tried to rid myself of prejudice and partiality,
but I am not so foolish as to think I have succeeded. For the fact must
be faced that he was not universally trusted".

The hesitations of his biographers have been echoed by various
critics. "People will go on writing books about him and remain not
quite sure what to say," was the summing-up of Mr. Kingsley Martin
in The New Statesman and Nation, reviewing Frank Owen s book, Tem
pestuous Journey. "So the mystery of Lloyd George remains . . . what
was his secret?" was the cryptic question put in an unsigned review in
The Economist. The Daily Worker, on the left, headed its review of the
same book, "If Only the People Had Known" a dark hint and
no thing more while the Evening Standard, on the right, asked, "Was
he a failure after all? "

Possibly his fellow-countryman, Aneurin Sevan, came nearest to
finding a clue to the truth about Lloyd George when he wrote in the
News Chronicle: "... The explanation is that we are looking in the

THE RIDDLE OF THE WIZARD 17

wrong place. The secret of the career of Lloyd George is to be sought
in the character of British political institutions and in the conduct of
the people influenced by them. We are much more the creatures of
social institutions than we care to admit."

Lloyd George s collected papers, including official documents,
private correspondence, Press-cuttings and other records (an immense
accumulation of material, weighing several tons) have been carefully
preserved. Yet it requires only a little preliminary research to prove
that there is too much " evidence" and that what exists tends to
obscure vital facts.

How, for example, can one find in dusty documents the answer to
this poser by Mr. Robert Blake, who, in his introduction to his collection
of the late Earl Haig s diaries, mentions that "there was something in
Lloyd George, a love of intrigue, a lack of fixed principle, a curious
inconsistency, which at once puzzled Haig and aroused his suspicion.
What lay behind the charm, the wit, the swift ripostes, the romantic
oratory? Lloyd George s closest friends could not always tell. Was he
a man of principle pursuing by devious means a consistent end, or
was he an opportunist who relied upon his intuition to gratify at every
turn his love of power and office? To this day it is not an easy question
to answer. Lloyd George remains and perhaps will long remain an
enigma to the historian."

It is strange that not even his Welsh biographers have attempted to
convey the real background and atmosphere of Lloyd George s early
life in any detail. Not one of them has captured the sultry, smouldering
evangelism of the Welsh valleys, with its undertones of sexual obsession,
in the sixties and seventies of the last century. Yet the Wales of his
boyhood is a subject which is inextricably linked with the man s
character and outlook. Glues to the riddle of the Wizard may be found
in many unusual places, and more in his associations with men who
worked behind the scenes than in his relations with the greatest states
men of his age. Mr. Dingle Foot suggests that Lloyd George s reputa
tion can only suffer at the hands of Lilliputians, but Lilliputians can
get around in places where larger men would not deign to go. They
can ferret out facts close to the ground, while the Brobdignagian bio
graphers stand, arms akimbo, surveying the landscape from too great
a height. The latter see the main highways of Lloyd George s political
career, but ignore the narrow, hidden footpaths through the corn.

For much of Lloyd George s political planning was done stealthily,
working in the shadows with trusted accomplices who shared his love
of intrigue and secrecy. In his hey-day these puppets, unknown to the
general public, exercised more real power and influence than any of
his Cabinet colleagues.

1 8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

The charm of Lloyd George is, perhaps, the most difficult thing of
all to capture. I was eight years old when I first heard him speak and
that is still an unforgettable experience. He pleaded, he cajoled, he
amused, he dramatised. He was the subtlest wooer of a crowd since
Mark Antony made his funeral oration over the body of Julius Caesar,
and it is strange that he should have taken the pseudonym of Brutus
when first he wrote for the Press.

No other British orator of this century could compare with Lloyd
George in his capacity for thrilling and enthralling an audience. He
could, said Dr. Thomas Jones, "charm a bird off a tree 3 . The day
I first heard him speak he gave a two minutes peroration in Welsh
at the end of his main speech. Those brief moments were the high
light of the meeting. If he was eloquent in English, he was positively
mesmeric in Welsh.

Years later, as a young reporter, I had to interview him. I recall
most of all his large, shiny head and the flowing mane of white hair
that glistened in the early morning sunlight. There was about him a
fresh, polished look as though he had just emerged from a bath and
a session with the hairdresser. It was mostly his sunshine mood that
morning, talking about his "New Deal". Yet, curiously enough, in
conversation on political subjects he was far less impressive than on
the platform. One felt that his gestures and histrionics were false, that
he was often groping for his own meaning. He seemed to lack erudition,
to chase ideas like a cat playing with a mouse. When talking of
trivialities he could be charming and witty, but in expounding his
new political philosophy he mumbled a lot of platitudes. Throughout
the interview he grasped every opportunity to steer the talk away from
too close questioning on his economic plans and I suspect he never
really mastered the ideas of Maynard Keynes. But apart from this
he contributed to the conversation much that was memorable and
illuminating.

He decried the fact that modern politicians were by and large poor
speakers. "Even the aristocrats have lost their touch," he commented.
"They miaow and puke out the words from their mouths as though
the very syllables are too much for them. Perhaps it s the B.B.C. that
has emasculated the English language, but there s no bite in it any
more. Churchill is the last of the great Parliamentary orators and he s
just an odd man out anyhow."

"Is it true," I asked, "that you never know exactly how your speech
is going to work out when you get up to make it? "
^ "That is what they say, But don t you believe that, or take it too
literally. ^ In most cases I stick to my brief. Only in crises, or when
the meeting I address contains a challenge, do I improvize. Then I
feel my way along. I "

He dropped the apple he was munching and clutched the air as

THE RIDDLE OF THE WIZARD 1 9

though to draw a word from the heavens. "I pause. I reach out my
hand to the people and draw them to me. Like children they seem
then. Like little children."

There was nothing of the ham actor about this dissertation, nothing
insincere. I swear that he really believed what he said and that in
fact he could become intoxicated by the presence of a crowd. But
there was something in the tone in which he said it that was more
than a little Merlinesque. As Dryden put it:

"Great wits are sure to madness near alli d.
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

Here, one felt, was that hint of megalomania which often infected
Lloyd George, though he kept it under control through his sense of
humour and native subtlety. In a flash Lloyd George had suddenly
ceased to be himself: he was Danny, the conceited young Welsh servant
in Emlyn Williams s play Night Must Fall.

He went on: "It is emotion which counts most at these times. If
a meeting seems flat, I throw out a challenge on the spur of the moment
perhaps a little story that will bring a throb to their hearts. Or, if
the meeting is hostile, I try to get an opponent to toss me a lifebelt."

"You mean?"

He threw back his head and chuckled. "Well, there was an occasion
when I was speaking to some Welsh farmers. Tory farmers, of course.
I was talking about Home Rule. When I talked about it, I tried to
make people feel it was not just an ideal for Ireland, but for England,
Scotland and Wales, too. We want Home Rule not only for Ireland,
but for Wales as well, I told them. Aye, and for hell, man, I suppose? *
shouted some drunken lout. *Yes, I said, I like to hear a man stand
up for his own country. That changed the mood of the meeting.

"Then there was another meeting in the East End of London when
a boozy-faced old harridan called out: Is it true that most of the
Cabinet have illegitimate children?* I was at a loss to reply for a
moment. Then, in a flash, the words came: It s a wise old mare who
knows the best stallions, I parried. Laughter and applause. But it
isn t always so easy."

It is difficult to evoke from mere shorthand notes the spirit of a
raconteur such as Lloyd George. He was completely unsophisticated
and yet still a man of the world. There were no epigrams, but his wit
sparkled and bubbled. His voice would drop almost to a whisper,
then rise in a sudden burst of glee. He was as irrepressible as a school
boy. Yet, when talking of some politicians of the day, his eyes would
glower and his whole countenance take on a ferocious expression. The
very mention of Neville Chamberlain was enough to transform him
into a Biblical prophet denouncing the evils of the world. Few who

20 THE MASK OF MERLIN

witnessed it will ever forget his scathing denunciation of Sir John
Simon when the latter crossed the floor of the House to vote with the
Tories. With his finger twisting a tortuous trail in the air, he scorn
fully referred to the " right honourable gentleman who crossed the
floor, leaving a trail of slime behind him".

A few other things he said during our interview shed light on his
affinity with the River Dwyfor and the mountains of North Wales.
"When I seek for strength and courage I always say go to the moun
tains and the little streams for these qualities . That is where the
greatest preachers of Wales have found their inspiration. You cannot
beat it. The Banner of the Dawn , The mists of the mountains,
which as they begin to rise give promise of a brighter day. There you
have it all. I often feel that perhaps the speech of mine which gave
me the most pleasure was at the Cardiff City Hall on the occasion of
the unveiling of the statues to the Great Men of Wales , presented by
Lord Rhondda. I relied on the mountains for that speech. This is
what I said:

" The great men of any nation are like mountains. They attract
and assemble the vitalising elements under the heavens and distribute
and direct them into the valleys and plains to irrigate the land.

" Without great men a nation would be a desert or a morass, a fen
of stagnant waters. Wales without its great men would be a wretched
swamp. "

Lloyd George was not by nature introspective; he drew his inspira
tion from external sources rather than from communion with himself.
Sometimes he steeped himself in gloom as foreboding as one of the
cloudy days in his native valleys and his gaiety would easily evaporate.
But he was remarkably resilient and it was one of the quirks of his
character that optimism in others depressed him, yet when confronted
by prophets of doom he was provoked into a quixotic and taunting
optimism himself. Away from him, having escaped his magic, men
found it easy to be angry with him and to criticise. But in his presence
the anger even of his enemies usually melted away. Had he lacked the
charm, he might have been routed by his enemies on many occasions.
Even so outspoken a critic as Lord Croft was once so overcome
by Lord George s personal magnetism that he seized him by the hand
and said, "Sir, you would have made the greatest Conservative Prime
Minister of all time, if you had only joined our Party in 1919."

Mr. J. S. Barnes, an observant critic from inside the Foreign Office,
wrote that Arthur Balfour "allowed himself to be hypnotised by
personalities. He watched Lloyd George, fascinated like one entranced
by the beauty of a firefly". Indeed, this can be the only explanation
of how A J.B. allowed one of his most formidable political enemies to

THE RIDDLE OF THE WIZARD 21

lure him into a Government about which he must have had the most
profound misgivings.

Asquith, to his cost, mistook emotional appeals by his adversary for
sincerity. Even so discerning a judge of character as King George V,
who never really liked or trusted Lloyd George, once so far forgot
himself as to say: "He is a very great man. I am sorry he is leaving
Downing Street, but he will come back again."

The real genius of Lloyd George was a subtle combination of personal
magnetism and an innate Machiavellianism. The two traits worked
together in his heart and mind. They proved an intoxicating mixture,
for he lacked the devotion to an ultimate aim which Machiavelli had
in great measure, while too often relying on charm to obscure lack of
principles. At times one felt that Lloyd George believed the means
justified the end, for he was proud rather than ashamed of his chican
eries. This, more than anything else, was his undoing and made him
a master of self-deception, a factor which developed the most dangerous
characteristics he possessed a fatal facility for making a complete
volte-face, of seeing black as white. The man who could fight for the
rights of little nations with the fire of a Garibaldi could also laud the
advent of Hitlerism. The statesman who professed liberalism as a
creed could behave as Prime Minister like a dictator and tyrant.

Mr. A. J. Sylvester, who was for many years his right-hand man,
has written of him: "A great pacifist ... a believer in humanity . . .
a democrat . . . such was the character he always presented as his.
But those of us in daily contact with him recognised he had few of
these qualities in his heart. Lloyd George was a pacifist just as long
as pacifism didn t involve humiliation, or interfere with his plans. In
his personal affairs he was the most autocratic of men. He would
never admit he was in the wrong. He suffered from an inferiority
complex which explains his jealousies and suspicions."

Was Lloyd George a great man, or was greatness merely thrust upon
him? Was he a Liberal Democrat or a dictator? A zealous social
reformer or a demagogic charlatan? A statesman or a mountebank?
A patriot of the highest order, or a self-seeker who would stoop to
treachery and treason?

These questions pose extreme viewpoints. In some cases the facts
will show the answers come down positively one way or the other.
Sometimes the answers lie between two extremes. But whatever
picture must finally emerge from the reader s point of view the fasci
nation of the personality of Lloyd George is undeniable and will
remain so throughout the ages*

BIBLE AND BUNDLING

"I often think we can trace almost all the disasters of English history
to the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Carnarvon, the first
Prince of Wales, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church,
then Lloyd George &gt; the temperance movement, Nonconformity
and lust stalking hand in hand throughout the country, wasting
and ravaging."

Dr. Pagan in Evelyn WaugKs
Decline and Fall

It was a world of optimism into which David Lloyd George was born
on January 17, 1863. The tide of liberalism was flowing fast, engulfing
the New World and the Old. On New Year s Day slavery was abolished
by proclamation of President Lincoln. Gladstone had not yet reached
his hey-day, but the forces of democracy throughout Europe were on
the march.

Young Lloyd George s father belonged to an ancient Pembrokeshire
family. At the end of the eighteenth century the Georges lived in a
farm at Tresinwen near Stumble Head. In 1797 a French expedition
landed on the coast only a short distance from the Georges farm.
Among the farmers* and fishermen s wives who donned red cloaks and
massed on the cliff-tops to trick the French into believing that a formid
able detachment of redcoats was awaiting them was Mrs. Timothy
George, Lloyd George s great-grandmother.

During the First World War, when "gallant, little Belgium" was
the hero among nations, Lloyd George allowed it to be given out at a
Welsh reunion in London that, although Welsh by birth, he was
Flemish by origin. The Brussels newspaper Soir on July 29, 1920,
stated that "from private information in our possession it appears that
Lloyd George is descended from a family which emigrated to Pem
brokeshire from Menin, Comines or Warneton".

William George left the family farm to become a teacher. He
seems to have had the same kind of restless urge as his son, for he
taught in London, Liverpool, Haverfordwest, Pwllheli and Newchurch
before finally settling in his last post at Manchester. While at Pwllheli
he met Elizabeth Lloyd of Llanystumdwy. They married and in 1862

BIBLE AND BUNDLING 23

went to Manchester where, in a two-storied house, No. 5 New York
Place, his son David was born.

The climate of this city did not suit William George and his health
suffered in consequence. Eventually he returned to Pembrokeshire,
gave up teaching and rented a small farm. The year after David s
birth he caught pneumonia and died.

His widow went to live with her shoemaker brother, Richard Lloyd,
in Llanystumdwy in her native Caernarvonshire. It has often been
suggested that Lloyd George was a fatherless waif, a story to which
LI. G. himself subscribed on occasions, especially when speaking in a
constituency where poverty was widespread. In some of his speeches
he declared that he was "reared in poverty", that his sole luxury was
"half an egg on Sundays". Such statements were misleading and a
travesty of the truth. It is true that his father had little money to leave,
that his mother was expecting a third child when her husband died,
but he had as stable a family background in his infancy and youth as
any average boy of his time. A Mr. Evan Thomas, of East Orange,
New Jersey, who knew the family in Lloyd George s childhood, wrote
to the New York Times on January 20, 1945, criticising these reports
which were repeated in the paper s account of his elevation to the
peerage. "He was always well fed and the George boys were among
the best dressed at the local school/ wrote Mr. Thomas. "Lloyd
George should be regarded as a child of good fortune." Yet LI. G. said
of his early days: "We scarcely ever ate fresh meat."

His uncle was no ordinary shoemaker, but a remarkable man of
great strength of character who amply filled the place of a father who
died before he could have made any impression on his son. Richard
Lloyd has been described as "an uncanonised Welsh saint", which
may be Celtic exaggeration, but is a testimony which is corroborated
by many who knew him. The present Earl Lloyd-George has recorded
how in those days schooling in North Wales did not exist for children
beyond their twelfth year. "But Richard Lloyd," he said, "did not
hold with this custom. I have never heard of anything finer than what
my great-uncle did. With heroic pertinacity, and at the end of a hard
day s work at his cobbler s bench, he took on the task of himself learning
Latin and Greek and French. ... In addition he acquired textbooks
on English Common Law and laboriously mastered their contents.
Thus he equipped himself with at least sufficient knowledge to further
the schooling of his children." 1

To understand fully the influences which moulded Lloyd George s
character one must also appreciate not only the religious revolution
of the period, but the influences of Wales dating back to the twilight
world of Celtic folk-lore. The Welsh nation has its roots deep in pre-
Christian Celtic legend. Even its Christianity is peculiarly conditioned

1 Dame Margaret by Earl Lloyd-George.

24 THE MASK OF MERLIN

by paganism, possibly because neither Roman culture nor the Norman
conquest made the same impression here as in England.

The Welsh mountains formed the one bulwark which shielded
Welsh nationality when the invader threatened; they were father and
mother to the Welsh people, guardian and inspiration. This explains
the passion for mountain names in Welsh nonconformity Mount Sion,
Mount Horeb and Mount Ararat, as so many of the chapels are named.
From the earliest days the mountains were the source and subject of
songs and from these songs came the national love of music.

Giraldus Cambrensis (i 146-1223) has said of the Welshman s love of
music: "In their musical concerts they do not sing in unison like the
inhabitants of other countries, but in many different parts. They have
the gift of making the human voice a musical instrument."

This gift Lloyd George had in great measure. Allied to it was the
influence of the mountains which was never so marked as in an early
World War I peroration of his :

"I knew a valley in the north of Wales between the mountains and
the sea a beautiful valley, snug, comfortable, sheltered from all the
bitter blasts* It was very enervating and I remember how all the boys
were in the habit of climbing the hill above the village to have a
glimpse of the great mountains in the distance and to be stimulated
and freshened by the breezes which come from the hill-tops. We have
been living in a sheltered valley for generations. We have been too
comfortable, too indulgent, many, perhaps, too selfish, and the stern
hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great
everlasting things that matter for a nation the peaks of honour we
had forgotten duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the
pinnacle of sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to heaven."

This is the heady wine of speech which dulls the head and warms
the heart. Analysed, it amounts to little more than tub-thumping. No
one in these years of disillusionment since the First World War would
risk such a blatant appeal to the emotions. Nevertheless it has the
quality of a " musical instrument", to which Giraldus referred, and it
illustrates perfectly the influence of those native mountains.

At the beginning of this chapter there is a quotation from one of
Mr. Evelyn Waugh s most brilliant social satires. "The Welsh," said
Dr. Fagan in Decline and Fall, "are the only nation in the world that
has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama.
They just sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. They
are deceitful because they cannot discern truth from falsehood, de
praved because they cannot discern the consequences of their in
dulgence." This is exaggeration in a Shavian sense of magnifying facts
to reveal a truth, but it is unjust for the English to wax indignantly

BIBLE AND BUNDLING 25

about Welsh faults when one recalls that subjection by the English
created a social degeneration in Wales and brought such despair to
the hearts of the bards that the court poet of Llewellyn cried: "Woe
is me for my Lord. Do ye not see that the world is done? A sigh to
thee, O God, that the sea might come overwhelming the land. Why
are we left to wait?"

The publication of the Welsh New Testament and Prayer Book by
William Salesbury brought about the revival of the Welsh language
and lit the torch of Welsh patriotism after centuries of despair under
English subjection. Towards the end of the seventeenth century
Stephen Hughes founded the Welsh Trust to fight the notorious
ignorance and lack of religion in the country. Then a new evangelical
movement began within the Established Church with Howell Harris
as its spearhead. He toured Wales, preaching indoors and out, suffering
persecution at the hands of mobs who often assaulted him. "We must
agitate the very soul to its foundations/ he thundered, and when he
died in 1773 some 20,000 souls from all parts of Wales were sufficiently
"agitated " to attend his funeral and moan as well as mourn his passing.

Howell Harris was the first of a long line of evangelist preachers
who ranted, raved and whipped themselves into a frenzy. Jeering
mobs brought a sense of persecution and persecution begot masochism.
In their twin tides sex and religion merged into an emotional whirl
pool. Howell Harris seems to have realised this danger of playing on
the emotions: "It provokes strange manifestations of religious hys
teria," he said. But evangelism spread throughout the country. It
reached villages in remote country districts where religion had been
unknown for years, perhaps centuries. Preaching became a national
occupation. Anyone who felt like it packed his bags and sauntered out
into the byways, Bible in hand. Even Anglican curates were enthused
to such an extent that one of them, Daniel Rowland, once preached
for six hours without pause or, more remarkably still, interruption.

The Methodist Revival gave the movement further impetus, and
soon the Calvinistic Methodist Church became in effect a Welsh
National Church. It was essentially a Church for the common man,
as democratic in its administration as the Presbyterian Kirk in Scotland.
The democracy of the Church revealed itself in the insistence on plain,
simple grey stone chapels. Religious revivalism touched off a demand
for education. "On Sunday the whole nation was turned into a
school," declared O. M. Edwards. "They not only read the Bible in
the fields, but debated its meaning, and the geography of Palestine
became more familiar than that of Wales itself." It may be that Lloyd
George s passion for Biblical place-names and his pre-occupation with
the Middle East in 1919-23 was a relic of those days.

Bibles were regarded as the most precious of possessions, but it was
mainly preaching which revived the Welsh language and brought about

26 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the renaissance of Welsh verse. Goronwy Owen, son of a drunken
tinker, became Wales s greatest poet. Until the early nineteenth
century the Welsh Revival was almost entirely religious, but the
industrial revolution reshaped revivalism, directing it into political
channels. The unrest and agitation which developed from the re
volution soon spread to Wales. Low wages, long hours, child and
female labour and bad housing caused protests against the fixed pay
ments for tithes and toll-gates when the Highway Act of 1855 was
passed. And Chartism produced an unusual and typically Welsh by
product, Rebeccaism. Rents had been inflated during the Napoleonic
Wars and there was little capital to enable smallholders to carry out
improvements to property. The main source of vexation was the toll
charged on lime, but Rebeccaism developed as an organised attack on
all the toll-gates of the various Turnpike Trusts. Church rates, tithes,
high rents and the new Poor Law were all attacked in turn.

The leader of the Rebeccaite movement was a mysterious, anony
mous figure. An old print shows "Rebecca" as a woman armed with
a stock leading an attack on a toll-gate. But while some claim "Re
becca" was a woman, others are equally emphatic that he was a farmer
who signed his manifestoes " Rebecca" and that, as a disguise, he
ordered his lieutenants to dress themselves in women s gowns and
bonnets and called them "Daughters of Rebecca ". After the demolition
of each toll-house the "Daughters" rode away and presumably re
turned their bonnets and gowns to their wives. "Rebecca" was also
a Nationalist, writing in one manifesto that "it is a shameful thing
for the sons of Hengist to have domination over us Welshmen".

This may seem a far cry from Lloyd George, but, according to the
late Thomas Charles Williams, a celebrated preacher from Menai
Bridge, LI. G. at one time toyed with the idea of reviving the tactics
of Rebeccaism in the ranks of the Welsh Nationalists with the object
of organised attacks on the Established Church and the squirearchy.

Feeling in Wales in the middle of the nineteenth century became
steadily more antagonistic to England. Already, through the industrial
revolution, the miseries of Victorian capitalism had been inflicted on
Wales by English employers. And when the British Government
decided to send a Commission of Enquiry to Wales in 1846 they added
insult to injury. The Commission was comprised of Englishmen,
mostly lawyers, who made no attempt to conceal their prejudices
against Wales. Much of what they discovered as a result of extensive
tours of the country was appalling indeed. They found that almost
every man who lost his job could get a post as a teacher regardless of
his ability. "Teaching is one of those vocations which serve as the
sink of all others," stated the Commission s report. "The Welsh
language is a vast drawback to Wales and a manifold barrier to the
moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. . . . The Evil

BIBLE AND BUNDLING 27

of the Welsh language is fearfully great ... it distorts the truth, favours
fraud and abets perjury. . . , There are few countries where the
standard of minor morals is lower. Of these immoralities the worst
and most common is sexual incontinence, the peculiar vice of the
Principality." Mr. Waugh s Dr. Fagan might well have written this
report!

The Commission s unanimous conclusion was that Wales must get
rid of its language. Understandably, the report created a furore
throughout Wales and, far from killing the Welsh language, it stung
the Welsh Nationalists to campaign for even more extensive use of their
native tongue. Some immediate results of this campaign were the
founding of Baner Cymru by Thomas Gee and the publication of a
Welsh encyclopaedia in 1854. Through the columns of the former
Gee did much to influence Welsh political thought and Tr Amserau,
with which Baner Cymru was amalgamated in 1859, and the encyclo
paedia were vital sources of young Lloyd George s education.

Yet even as late as 1866 The Times was arguing that the "Welsh
language is the curse of Wales". Instruction in the schools was given
in English and children were punished for speaking in Welsh. In
many schools a blackboard bearing the legend "Welsh Stick" was
hung in the class-room. If any pupil was caught speaking Welsh, this
blackboard would be hung round his neck for a whole week, at the
end of which a severe flogging was inflicted on him. At the school in
Lloyd George s own village a girl pupil was made to walk to and from
school wearing a dunce s cap bearing the words, "Welsh Fool".

If violence was not shown towards "the enemy from across the
border" it was due very largely to the pacifist teaching of the religious
revival. The first Welsh M.P. to make something of an international
reputation for himself was a pacifist, Henry Richard, who was secretary
of the Peace Society and who, from 1845 to ^84, expounded the need
for disarmament both in and out of Parliament and as far afield as
Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris. Henry Richard was the inspiration for
Lloyd George s bitter opposition to the Boer War.

All these events helped to mould the opinions and stimulate the
ideas of the youthful Lloyd George. He grew up against a background
of revolt against the social order of the day, the domination of the
English and widespread poverty. The Wales of his boyhood was marked
by radicalism and militant Nonconformity arising after a long period
of indifference to religion. Religious fervour stirred the valleys from
apathy; the desire was to revolt, but the emphasis was on intellectual
action rather than the use of brute force. Religion coloured and
formed the political outlook. The bitter passions which might so easily
have resulted in riots were put through tie sieve of pulpit exhortation,
thus making religion the natural outlet for the emotions of a passionate
race.

28 THE MASK OF MERLIN

But, in staving off the dangers of violent nationalism, this religious
emotionalism frequently turned in on itself. The Nonconformist
section of the nation, now by far the largest section of the population,
leavened its Calvinistic pre-occupation with sin with an obsession with
sex. Exultation of the spirit, far from mortifying the flesh, inflamed it,
and in the period from 1850 to 1906 the picture drawn by Dr. Fagan
of "Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand" is certainly not
overdrawn. Calvinism and paganism united to make sex and religion
a patch-work quilt of idealism, exhibitionism and sexual indulgence.

Nowhere was the pagan tradition stronger than in North Wales,
and here the religious revival achieved its emotional zenith and produced
the most marked excesses. Revivalist preachers were adored and doted
on with as much extravagant enthusiasm and frustrated passion as is
now bestowed on pop singers. After family prayers and Bible reading
bundling followed as a matter of course in the most strictly religious
of North Wales households.

Llanystumdwy was no exception to the general rule. There were two
Nonconformist chapels in the village besides the parish church, but
Richard Lloyd and his family worshipped at the Church of the Dis
ciples of Christ at Penymaes, a small chapel two miles away. The
Disciples were a sect which had broken away from the Baptist denomi
nation because of an insistence on following more closely the precepts
of the New Testament. Preaching festivals were held at regular inter
vals and the emphasis in religion was always on the preacher. There
could hardly have been a better training ground for a future public
speaker than this part of Caernarvonshire, for the ablest preachers in
Wales and the most outstanding orators of the era all came here in
turn. In his later years Lloyd George always acknowledged this,
saying: "I owe nothing to the university, I owe nothing to secondary
schools. Whatever I owe is to the little bethel. * l He learned the arts
and technique of public speaking by listening to the great preachers
and the effect of the hwl in their sermons conditioned the purple parts
of his own oratory.

It was an intoxicating brew of oratory which these preachers served
up. Of one of them, Hugh Price Hughes, LI. G. said: "The greatest
personal force my race has turned out for a generation. That was the
atmosphere Hugh Price Hughes brought in my youth. We had then
preachers who believed passionately in heaven and hell, God and
Satan, damnation, salvation and redemption."

Lloyd George was baptised by immersion at the age of twelve.
"Washing for Jesus" was how the irreverent non-Baptists regarded
this ritual: they were strangely intolerant of each other s sects. The
Calvinistic Methodist preacher would declaim from his pulpit against
the practices of Baptists, while a little crowd of unruly village toughs

1 Church.

BIBLE AND BUNDLING 29

would gather around the immersion pool, lewdly jeering behind cup
ped hands at the parson immersing men, women and children in
loose-fitting night-shirts. In Welsh the Baptists would intone:

"In the water
He will wash us,
He will wash us,
He will wash us/

Devout Baptists such as Richard Lloyd may have been unaffected
by such manifestations of mocking irreverence around them, but many
testified to the soul-warping nature of such ceremonies under the

public gaze.

*****

In researches around Llanystumdwy the author was given extracts
from letters written by a friend of Lloyd George s youth, a man named
Moses Roberts, who hailed from Caernarvon and later emigrated to
Patagonia. These letters shed fascinating light on the period in which
Lloyd George grew up and on the man from Llanystumdwy himself.

"I shall always remember the day young LL G. and I went to a
convention at Blaenau Festiniog. There were about thirty churches
and chapels in Blaenau at the time and the place was full of tuber
culosis. I remember LL G. he was about fifteen then, a clever boy
and full of big ideas about the future saying that T.B. was due to
English Church and that it was a regular scandal. What he meant
was the custom of English Church of passing the same cup round at
Communion, and all those coughing and spitting people passing the
germs on to one another this way. Of course he was quite right, but
I had never thought of this before. Shows how his brain worked even
at that age.

"At Blaenau we attended two convention meetings in the morning
and the big meeting at night. They had been quiet meetings with not
much interest until the big show at night.

"I shall never forget it was a lovely balmy summer evening and the
young people of the district had gathered in groups outside the capel,
wondering whether to go in or just to walk the streets. Then one
young girl came in, knelt down in front of everyone and confessed that
she had sinned greatly, but was now willing to testify to the Great
Lord Jesus.

"Young Lloyd George was deeply moved. He kept crying Amen*
and then the other young people, probably curious to know what the
girl had said, flocked into the capel and everyone singing and praying all
at once. The preacher s full name I cannot recall, but his Christian
name was Evan. We all knew that Evan was a secret drinker and
that was why he had never made the great name for himself that as a
preacher he deserved.

30 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"I am a sinner/ cried Evan. We are all sinners here. But don t
do as I do, do as I tell you. The glory of the Lord lies in overcoming
our sins and being sorry for them. If we have no sin, we have nothing
to be sorry about.

"At the end of his sermon he closed the meeting with a prayer,
shouting out in a paroxysm of ecstasy: O Lord, let us make our sins
glorify Thy Name. That is not the cry of blasphemy, but of true repen
tance. Oh, Lord, bend us !

"There was a great commotion in the congregation as men and
women tumbled on their knees, some whimpering and crying softly,
others shouting Alleluia! Then I opened my own eyes as I heard
someone fall down beside me. It was young Lloyd George. He was
prostrate on the floor, with the sweat pouring off his brow. And young
women gathered around him, wiping away the sweat and whispering
to him. When he came to he told me: From this day I am ready
to go out and preach to the world like that man. I know exactly what
my message is. "

Anyone in Nonconformist circles in North Wales who wished to
preach could do so: he did not have to be ordained or to receive any
formal blessing. Youths started to preach spontaneously and on the
inspiration of a single experience at a convention. The sinners were
even more prone to preach than those who had lived virtuous lives.
Personal experience of sin became a cult. Nor was this revivalism a
short spasm in the life of Wales. It sparked, flared, ebbed and burst
forth again into great flames of emotionalism throughout the first forty
years of Lloyd George s lifetime. The last great Revival in Wales was
that inspired by Evan Roberts, a man with a handsome, almost
Semitic countenance. From 1904 his oratory and influence spread
from Loughor to Angelsey, from Newcastle Emlyn to Ammanford.
Whereas the Methodist Revival was educational in substance, that of
Lloyd George s childhood was theological, but the final Revival of
1904 was unadulterated emotionalism. Indeed, it is probable that in
1904 Revivalism reached its zenith and gradually burnt itself out.

Aneirin Talfan Davies, the B.B.C. s West Wales representative, has
given an account of one of Evan Roberta s meetings: "On the Sunday
evening . . . Evan Roberts asked those who had given themselves of
the Lord to remain in the chapel. The doors were locked. Evan
Roberts then gave them a simple prayer, "Send the Holy Spirit now,
for Jesus Christ s sake. Each member of the congregation was to
repeat it in turn, but before they were half way through the number
present something happened and there was an outburst of pentecostal
fervour. . . , People came groaning under the burden of sin; others,
confessing, and others shouting: Hold Thy Hand, O Jesus, I can t
stand any more. "

In the neighbourhood of Llanystumdwy and especially at Caer-

BIBLE AND BUNDLING 31

narvon there were many Irish and Spanish labourers, mostly working
in the slate quarries. Many of these infused something of their own
native emotionalism into the Pentecostan dances which so often fol
lowed the Revivalist meetings. Terpsichorean abandon was the hand
maiden of religious mania so that its participants danced wildly
around while proclaiming the glories of the Lord in a fashion which
would have done more credit to West African fetishists than to sober
Nonconformists. They invariably ended up in sexual orgies.

Moses Roberts of Caernarvon seems to have been a close crony of
Lloyd George in his early teens. He tells us that together they "Took
part in the Pentecostan dances and afterwards were sorely tempted by
two Irish girls. I do not dare to imagine what Richard Lloyd would
have said! He did not hold with anything that deviated from the
strict tenets of the Disciples. LI. G. and I were in fine fettle that night,
a little merry maybe, but just stimulated by the preaching and we did
nothing wrong, only taking the girls to their lodgings for cam gwely. 9

Caru gwely means literally courting in bed, or, more accurately,
bundling. It is an ancient custom in Wales, dating back several cen
turies, and in the last century was the general form of courting, even
though frowned upon by some deacons of the chapels. Caru gwely was
practised in various forms and the liberties which courting couples
could enjoy were carefully regulated according to the district in which
they lived. There were strict rules and they had to be kept, or social
ostracism would follow. Sometimes the parents or guardians of the
girl would put the couple to bed, tuck them in and place a pillow or
plank between them. On occasions the girl would be sewn up in a
sack to make complete seduction almost impossible. But when the boy
and girl were both faithful members of a chapel such restrictions were
regarded as an insult to their religious senses, so they were put on their
honour not to exceed the bounds of decency. As to the conception of
" decency" considerable latitude was allowed. In theory this may
suggest that all reasonable precautions for controlling bundling were
taken, but in practice, as Evan Price Davies once denounced caru gwely
in an anti-bundling sermon:

"Deep down in hell let them there dwell
And bundle on that bed,
Then turn and roll without control
Till all their lusts are fed."

The Anglican Church in Wales frowned on bundling. The Rev.
William Jones, Vicar of Nevin, had this to say on the custom in North
Wales: "In England farmers daughters are respectable. In Wales
they are in the constant habit of being courted in bed. In the case of
domestic servants the vice is universal. I have had the greatest difficulty
in keeping my own servants from practising it. It became necessary to

32 THE MASK OF MERLIN

secure their chamber windows with bars to prevent them from admit
ting men. Of course, they are Nonconformists and heretics, so what
can you expect. I am told by my parishioners that unless I allow the
practice, I shall very soon have no servants at all."

So if Lloyd George went bundling in his youth he must be judged
by the custom of his fellow countrymen. A chaplain to the Bishop of
Bangor, the Rev. J. W. Trevor, declared that "fornication was not
regarded as a vice, scarcely as a frailty, by the common people of
Wales. It is considered as a matter of course and laughed at without
shame or scruple by both sexes alike. In Anglesey and Caernarvon
shire householders absolutely encourage the practice."

It is important to realise the effects of such practices as caru gwely^
the unhealthy religious emotionalism and the local attitude to sex
relations in assessing the peccadilloes of Lloyd George s later life.
Though the full details of his amorous life may never be told, it is
possible now to show how Lloyd George s character and career were
injured by this weakness. Not since the days of Palmerston had a
British Prime Minister shown so few inhibitions in his private life as
LI. G. Certainly none has been so careless of his reputation in private
life, or risked so much to satisfy the smallest whim. How he escaped
unscathed in a country so prone to outbursts of moral indignation is
one of the social miracles of our time. During his lifetime he saw
Dilke and Parnell crucified on the altar of British hypocrisy, yet he
never heeded the warnings. Luck was always with him in his private,
if not his public life.

Many a Sunday night sermon acted as an unconscious spur to
bundling, or to provoking sexual thoughts. In one such sermon preached
in near-by Nevin during Lloyd George s youth the congregation were
told in the middle of a hwl peroration: "Our native mountains raise
themselves like paps to show to God their affinity with humanity.
These mountains are God s monuments to the glory of Woman, and
when the sun sets on them and lights them up in an aura of pink, one
can look upon them as those roseate buds of a woman s breasts which
offer us life and hope."

Doubtless that preacher had the same ideas as Somerset Maugham s
missionary in Rain when he was disturbed in his dreams by the likeness
of the mountains of Nevada to the breasts of the prostitute he was
trying to reform.

Mountains and breasts, running streams and the surging, babbling
source of love and religious fervour, God and Satan, Mary and the
Whore of Babylon, harp-playing angels and hell-fire. This was the
black-and-white, all things clear-cut forthrightness of the Wales of the
era. It was a heady brew for the simple-minded; for a young man of
intelligence and avid curiosity, of passion and enthusiasm, it must have
stimulated to an incalculable extent.

"THE BLACKEST TORY PARISH
IN THE LAND"

"Llanystumdwy, the place from where I came, was the blackest
Tory parish in the land."

David Lloyd George

The Bethel and the Bible, politics and bundling: these were the
diverse ingredients of Lloyd George s youth. In the background, like
an Avenging Angel, reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet, was the
stern figure of Uncle Richard. There was little time for idling. Even
bundling was something to be snatched furtively "in between a Band
of Hope meeting and a walk home." 1 Work all the week and lessons
late at night from Richard Lloyd; the journey on foot three times each
way on Sunday to the chapel at Penymaes; Band of Hope meetings
at Moriah and singing classes in Llanystumdwy; Sunday School and
occasional visits to the conventions as far afield as Caernarvon and Bala;
a walk into Pwllheli once a week to borrow the London papers: it
was a full life and certainly not a dull one, far fuller and more exciting
than civilised suburban life in Victorian England.

Village schooling may have been defective in many ways, but it was
thorough in the emphasis it placed on speaking clearly and correctly,
the trained Welsh ear being unable to tolerate any spoken word that
was unmusical. Lloyd George commented: "I learned to speak clearly
and correctly so that all could hear me when I was four years of age.
We had singing lessons in the village from a farmer s son who was a
fine interpreter of tonic sol-fa. He taught us to strike the right tones
truly, to enunciate clearly and to use our voices correctly. He would
force us to sing again and again until every word was intelligible."

The chief battle which waged in the hearts of the people of North
Wales in the sixties and seventies of the last century was that against
the power and domination of the Established Church. Llanystumdwy
was no exception to the general rule. There was a bitter hatred in this
village of the tyranny of a Church which, through Squire and Rector,
tried to stamp out the Welsh tongue, persecuted schoolchildren and
even forced them to repeat the Catechism by threatening the direst
penalties against their parents if they disobeyed. The Church of

1 Moses Roberts.

34 THE MASK OF MERLIN

England clergymen of the area were feeble characters, the lackeys and
lickspittles of the Squire, far more intent on doing his bidding than
preaching the philosophy of Christ.

Richard Lloyd, who was morally and intellectually head and
shoulders above his fellow-villagers, was one of the stoutest opponents
of the Established Church, not on bigoted grounds he was friendly
enough with the Rector to borrow his papers but because he saw it
as an instrument to bolster up a class system.

"The English Church/ said Richard Lloyd, "is but a milk-and-
water copy of Papism, with all its follies and frills." He impressed on
his nephew the need for resisting the attempts of the local school
master to wean his pupils towards the Established Church.

This war between the branches of the Church of Christ must have
made its mark on LI. G. early in life. The knowledge that there could
be open war between practising Christians would induce cynicism in
so intelligent a boy. Doubtless this inter-denominational strife and
bickering between Churches created in his mind the doubts he always
held privately about organised religion and the increasing unorthodoxy
of his theological views in later life.

From 1715 to 1870 there was not a single Bishop in Wales who could
speak Welsh. This deepened the class conflict and fanned the spirit of
nationalism. The extension of the franchise in 1867 made a difference:
for the first time the ascendancy of the Church of England and the
Tory landlords was challenged. It was, however, odd, yet at the
same time significant of the resilience of the English Church, that a
devout member of that Church, perhaps the greatest lay member it
has ever had, should become the rallying figure for the aspirations of
the Welsh Nonconformists. William Ewart Gladstone gradually cast
his spell across the sombre valleys of Wales until in many a humble
cottage a picture of the familiar and formidable visage of that states
man held a place of honour beside the coloured prints of Old Testa
ment patriarchs.

From 1870 onwards there was open war between the forces of
Liberalism and Nonconformity on the one hand and those of Toryism
and the Established Church on the other. The landlords, especially
those of North Wales, were among the worst in Britain. In rapacious-
ness and lack of charity they can only be compared to the early nine
teenth century English landlords in Ireland. When the Liberals won
the elections of 1868, the landlords were sufficiently aroused to realise
that this was a threat to their authority and they used their powers to
crush this dangerous new doctrine, which, as they saw it, was filling
the people s minds with ideas above their divinely allotted station in life.
The election ballots were not secret in those days and many tenants
who had not voted for Tory candidates were evicted from their land
and cottages. This happened at Llanystumdwy, and Lloyd George s

earliest memories must have been of neighbours often mothers in
the last stages of childbirth thrown out into the street with their few
belongings and driven to the fields to find what shelter they could in
some distant hayrick. Even then they might be charged as vagrants
and hounded out of the district.

Other landlords were more subtle. They merely raised the rents
of those who had voted Liberal and reduced those of the faithful Tories.
Liberals who owned shops were boycotted; their children were brought
before the courts on some trumped-up charges of poaching. Is it to be
wondered that this tyranny produced a reaction towards Socialism
and even Communism in the next fifty years?

But in 1872 the Ballot Act checked these unscrupulous tactics and
tenants were enabled to vote without being intimidated and the forces
of Liberalism grew to combat the solid bloc of Tory landlords.

Young Lloyd George s schoolmaster wanted him to take up teach
ing. But to become a teacher in the parish school he would have had
to join the Church of England and this, of course, was unthinkable.
It was David s mother who suggested her son might become a solicitor
and, with his uncle s assistance, he passed the preliminary examination
of the Law Society in December, 1877, an( * *& ^ ue course was articled
to the office of Breese, Jones and Casson, of Portmadoc. By a happy
coincidence Mr. Breese was not only Clerk of the Peace, but Liberal
agent as well.

Sir Herbert Lewis recorded that in 1904, when Lloyd George was
already established politically, the latter regretted he had not become
a preacher. But, Sir Herbert added: * Of one thing I am sure. If LI. G.
had gone into the pulpit he would have started a new sect/*

Lloyd George s earliest attempts at public speaking and preaching
were at local Temperance Society meetings. Coming from a teetotal
household, he was made secretary of the local branch of the United
Kingdom Alliance. Occasionally he read the lesson at the chapel at
Penymaes, but his original ideas on preaching made him chary of con
forming to the strict tenets of the Disciples. His first preaching engage
ment was at the age of eighteen in a Baptist chapel at Penmachno in
Denbighshire.

About this time Richard Lloyd closed down his cobbler s business
and moved with his family to Criccieth. This town must have been a
constant reminder to Lloyd George of the traditions of Welsh nationa
lism. For the castle which towered above his new home was once held
by Edward I. It was captured and destroyed in 1404 by Owain
Glyndwr. Outside the Memorial Hall in the little town lay the ancient
stone called Carreg Orchest, which means "Try your strength ". "When
ever I passed that stone," LI. G. used to say, "it always seemed to be
addressing itself to me alone. It was that stone which prompted me to
enter politics seriously/*

36 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Yet, despite the call of politics, he found time to join the Volunteers
and even attend their camp at Conway. Little is known for certain
about this brief and untypical episode in his life. Here he was preaching
pacifism and attacking the British occupation of Egypt in the local
Press, and at the same time a Volunteer. It has been suggested that he
was asked to leave the Volunteers after he told a Liberal meeting at
Caernarvon :

"I come from the blackest and wickedest Tory parish in the land.
It is a parish in which the Squire turned the fathers of young children
out of their homes because they dared to vote Liberal. But the political
power of the landlords in Wales will be broken as effectively as the
power of the Druids. The great rugged nationalist sentiments of Wales
will rise against the English Ogre, this fiendish she-wolf whose lair is
in Westminster. I shall not sleep in my grave until someone knocks
and tells me Mae hi wedi rnynd 3 (She has gone). *

The Llanfrothen Burial Case, one of Lloyd George s first and greatest
legal triumphs, has been described in great detail by many people,
and if a brief summary of it is included in this chapter, the purpose is
solely to throw light on that fiery outburst at Caernarvon and to show
how even at the age of twenty-four Lloyd George was possessed of a
fanatical, single-minded political opportunism.

Llanfrothen Churchyard had been enlarged by the gift of a piece
of land which had been used for burials even though it was unconse-
crated. In 1880 the Burials Act was passed, authorising the burials of
Dissenters in Church of England graveyards with specific permission for
services other than those of the Established Church. The Rector, who
disliked the Act, persuaded one of the donors of the land to sign a deed
insisting that burials must be conducted with Church of England rites.

Lloyd George followed this move on the part of the Rector with
interest. With how great an interest his biographers do not tell us.
But he evidently anticipated that one day the Act of 1880 would be
tested, for he took counsel s opinion in London on such a hypothetical
case. When he had received this opinion, he told his political mentor,
Michael D. Jones, Principal of the Independent Theological College
at Bala: "I see in Llanfrothen the chance of striking a mortal blow
against the Church of England. We can make the plight of the down
trodden Welsh Nonconformists a political issue, not only in Wales, but
far beyond its borders."

Michael Jones and Lloyd George had struck up a close friendship,
and the latter s land reform policy was borrowed in almost every
detail from the former. Together the two discussed a plan of action in
the event of a Dissenter dying and desiring to be buried in Llanfrothen
Churchyard. Michael Jones was somewhat shocked when the young
solicitor insisted that the only way to defy the Rector was to "break
down the gate if necessary and force through the burial".

"THE BLACKEST TORY PARISH IN THE LAND 37

According to Michael Jones, Lloyd George actually made a tour of
the parish of Llanfrothen, inquiring of Nonconformists who had ex
pressed a wish to be buried in the little churchyard. Then he was told
of an ailing quarry worker named Robert Roberts, a Galvinistic
Methodist, already destined for an early grave, whose daughter was
buried in the annexe to the churchyard. LL G. visited the dying man,
talked with his relatives and persuaded them to insist on his being
buried beside his daughter. There is something rather ghoulish about
these deathbed imbroglios, with LI. G. whispering advice on how the
poor man should be buried, but it is certain that the family of the
quarry man would never have dared to challenge the might of the
Established Church without the backing and encouragement of the
solicitor from Criccieth.

When Roberts died the relatives informed the Rector that they
wished his burial to take place in the churchyard according to Cal-
vinist rites. The Rector refused, locked the churchyard gate and de
clined to hand over the key. The funeral procession was barred.

Lloyd George, who had foreseen that the relatives might capitulate,
was near at hand. He told them that the Rector had said: "The man
Roberts can be buried in the corner reserved for suicides and un
believers." In fairness to the cantankerous old Rector it is only right to
point out that there is no evidence he said any such thing. By mis
representing the Rector Lloyd George may have stiffened the morale
of the relatives, but he certainly caused them grievous pain. When the
pain turned to anger, they accepted Lloyd George s advice to "break
down the gate and bury him beside his daughter, using whatever service
you desire".

This was done. The Rector sued the relatives of Roberts in the
Portmadoc County Court and Lloyd George, now sure of gaining poli
tical kudos out of the incident, defended the case. The jury found in
favour of the defendants, but the Judge not only made an inaccurate
note of their findings, but gave a verdict for the Rector. When the
appeal went to the High Court of Justice, the Judge s findings were
reversed.

That case did more harm to the Established Church in Wales than
any other single incident. It had wide publicity throughout Britain
and was, perhaps, the final nail in the coffin of the un-Christian edifice
of the Church of England as it functioned in Wales. For Lloyd George
it did all he expected, enhancing his reputation and paving the way
for a political career.

There is no positive proof of how and when Lloyd George first met
Maggie Owen, the farmer s comely daughter. His notebook stated
that on November 28, 1885, "after an election meeting" he "took

38 THE MASK OF MERLIN

M.O. and her cousin home ". Later entries seem to confirm that this
was Maggie Owen, daughter of Richard Owen, a yeoman farmer of
Mynydd Ednyfed, near Crictieth. "How and where they first met I
never knew/ wrote the present Earl Lloyd-George. "I do know it
was not a case of love at first sight as far as my mother was concerned."
J. Hugh Edwards, however, recalled asking Mrs. Lloyd George
whether she could remember the occasion on which she first saw her
future husband. She replied that she "had a distinct recollection".
It appears that, when they were small children, they used to pass
each other in the main street as they accompanied their elders to their
respective chapels. One Sunday morning the little boy who was Lloyd
George arrived in his knickerbocker suit, displaying a pair of scarlet
woollen stockings, which attracted her attention, with the result that,
immediately after they had passed each other, she turned round to
have another look "at so attractive a pair of stockings ". As she did so,
the boy turned round also and they smiled at each other.

There was immediate and vehement opposition to the match both
from Lloyd George s family and that of Maggie Owen. Was not LI. G.
a fatherless waif, argued the Owens, and his uncle only a poor cobbler?
They really knew very little about the relative well-being of Richard
Lloyd and his brood. What dismayed them was that LI. G. was a
Baptist and a peculiar sort of Baptist at that. Besides he was a Radical
Liberal, whereas the Owens were Calvinistic Methodists and lukewarm
Liberals as well.

Richard Lloyd was so perturbed at the idea of a match with a
Calvinistic Methodist that he set out to lure his nephew away from his
heart s desire by inviting all the eligible daughters of Baptists to tea at
his home, rather clumsily encouraging David to take them out. Moses
Roberts, his friend from Caernarvon, seems to have been a close con
spirator of Lloyd George at this time. Working on the principle that
two s company, three s not, Lloyd George would persuade Moses to
join him in these evenings and so thwart his uncle s purpose.

"You take her home, Moses, and mind you don t leave me alone
with her, man," admonished young LJ. G. "I don t want Maggie
Owen to hear I m out and about chasing other girls. Already some
people have given her that idea."

"And what do I do about all this? What do I get out of it, Dai
bach?"

"Oh, you have the honour of taking her home. You can bundle
with her if she ll let you. But I doubt your chances, knowing she s
been chosen by the Esgob to keep company with me."

The Esgob (Bishop) was LI. G. s own nickname for Uncle Richard.

So Moses, as he used to relate in later years, was the chosen instru
ment to thwart the wishes of Uncle Richard. "LI. G. used to tell his
uncle that I was the fast one, that I knew more about courting them

"THE BLACKEST TORY PARISH IN THE LAND" 39

than he did. He always was one for telling a tall story. I don t think
Uncle Richard ever forgave me for this. He forbade David to see me,
saying I was a thriftless good-for-nothing."

Meanwhile Lloyd George had made up his mind that he was going
to marry Maggie Owen as firmly as he had fixed his heart on entering
politics. In love, as in politics, be showed immense cunning. When
Maggie told him she had been forbidden to see him any more, he
solemnly replied: "Don t you worry, cariad (sweetheart). Love will
find a way without cheating. You have been told not to see me and I
understand that. But we can write to one another."

"But you mustn t post the letters to my home, and if I write to you
your Uncle Richard will know all about it. Then there ll be trouble."

"No need to use the post office for love messages," said LI. G.
soothingly. "I know a far, far better and much more romantic way to
do these things."

And he pointed to a small crevice in a wall surrounding one of the
Owen s fields. "This will be our post-box. I ll put my letters in here
and you can come and collect them when no one is looking. And
mind you put your answers in the same place."

So the hole in the wall was the sole method of communication for
many weeks, if not months. Meanwhile David had found an un
expected ally in his campaign to win the hand of Maggie. She was
Maggie s aunt who, differing from the rest of the Owen family, advised
her niece: "Don t give him up. He has a great future."

Young Lloyd George paid frequent visits to this aunt, cajoling her
into championing his cause more actively. But he did not trust to this
method alone; he sought to ingratiate himself with Margiad, a faithful
servant of the Owens, who was devoted to Maggie. With all the charm
and persuasion at his command, he proceeded to impress his person
ality on Margiad just as he had on the aunt. But Margiad was not
such an easy ally in the early stages. She knew that Lloyd George
was not favoured by her employers and she was too fond of Maggie
to want to risk ruining her happiness.

Moses Roberts wrote: "LI. G. met his match in Margiad. She
would have nothing to do with him at first. * We don t want no Baptists
round our farm, she told him scornfully. You go back to the girls of
Llanystumdwy.

"But LL G. refused to be daunted. He tried all methods to win
Margiad over. He was solemn and dignified, and when that failed he
was gay and even flirtatious. He bought her little presents, most of
which she gave back to him with a piece of her mind.

" Well, Margiad, if this state of affairs goes on much longer, I shall
have to propose to you instead. For if you don t want Maggie to be
happy and marry me, why, then, you must want to many me your
self! Is that it, my girl? Fie on you, you Jezebel! No, no, I don t

4O THE MASK OF MERLIN

really think that myself, so don t look so shocked and pained. But
other people might think so and what would Maggie say then, eh?
Come now, be a good girl, and take a message to your beloved mistress.
We both love her, don t we, so we both want the same thing/

"Margiad began to acquiesce in the persistence of this ardent suitor.
He would put his arm round her shoulder and cuddle her and she
would push him away. Don t you go touching me, Mr. George, she
would say. I m not one of your Baptist girls. Well, I can t cuddle
Maggie, she s not here, so why not cuddle her best friend? Now, be
sensible, Margiad, just do me the favour of telling Maggie Owen that
I can kiss better than those Calvin louts. Tell her you know because
I ve tried it out on you. But you wouldn t dare to admit kissing a
Baptist, would you now?

"LI. G. was a man who would never take no for an answer where
girls were concerned."

Eventually it became apparent to Richard Lloyd that his nephew
was not going to be palmed off with any Baptist maidens, and the
Owens, partly persuaded by the aunt, but much more impressed by
the young solicitor s growing prestige, agreed to a marriage. It took
place on January 24, 1888, a few days after Lloyd George s twenty-
fifth birthday, in the Presbyterian Chapel of Pen-cae-newydd. Signi
ficantly the wedding was solemnised in neither the bride s nor the
groom s village; it was a very quiet affair and the choice of chapel was
obviously a compromise to reconcile religious differences. There was
still reluctance on both sides to a match that was now regarded
as inevitable rather than desirable by the respective families. After a
brief honeymoon in London the Lloyd Georges settled down for a
while at Maggie s home near Criccieth.

Village legal triumphs did much to turn Lloyd George from the
idol of the poachers and working men whom he defended into the
rising hope of the Liberal Party in the district. On all sides it was
agreed that he had all the attributes of a first-class public speaker. He
had thrown his weight into the fight for Disestablishment of the Church
in Wales and allied himself to the left-wing and nationalist fringe of
the Welsh Liberals. At this time Gladstone was actively wooing the
Welsh Liberals, and the G.O.M. in a speech at Swansea in 1887 had
more or less invited the formation of a Welsh Parliamentary Party.

Lloyd George decided to follow up this lead from the mightiest
political figure in Britain. His one idea at the time was to be leader
of a Welsh Nationalist Party, a radical, reforming Party which would
break away from the "she-wolf at Westminster".

Yet already he was displaying that ingratitude in political life which
was such an unpleasant feature of his later life. When Gladstone spoke
at Swansea in favour of the "just claims of Wales", Lloyd George
lauded him as "this grand fighter for the liberties and rights of little

"THE BLACKEST TORY PARISH IN THE LAND" 41

nations". But the following year in a speech to the North Wales
Liberal Federation he was supporting a resolution condemning Glad
stone for his absence from a recent debate on Welsh Disestablishment
and threatening him with the withdrawal of Welsh Liberal support
if he did not mend his ways.

From four nominees the young solicitor was selected as prospective
Parliamentary candidate for Caernarvon Boroughs. Some of the older
men in the Party shook their heads at the choice. " Young George is
too wild/ they said. "He will lose us votes. He is too ambitious and
will over-reach himself." But his popularity with the rank-and-file
ensured his selection. Had he been turned down there would have
been a revolt among the younger Liberals of the constituency. Young
Lloyd George was a handsome, dominating figure, with his large head
and commanding presence. It was audacity which was the quality
which most of all in Ms younger days won him admiration, for audacity
is rare in a politician.

His chance came unexpectedly. Just as he was setting off for a
holiday with his wife news came that Edward Swetenham, Q.C.,
member for the division, had died suddenly. The by-election he had
to fight early in 1890 was, appropriately enough, against his old enemy
and tormentor, Squire Ellis Nanney. It was a piquant situation in
which Lloyd George impishly delighted.

His programme was good, heady radical stuff Home Rule for
Wales as well as Ireland, Disestablishment and Land Reform, the
abolition of plural voting and the removal of restrictions on fisheries,
the last-named being a sure-fire vote-catcher in this constituency. He
set about his election campaign with verve and zest, travelling round
the scattered villages on foot as no candidate had ever done before;
he knocked at cottage doors where a Parliamentary candidate had
never previously been seen.

Lloyd George was declared the victor by 1,963 votes to 1,945 a
narrow margin, but sufficient to cause great jubilation in the Liberal
camp. Liberalism in Caernarvon had come into its own, and when
he returned to Criccieth he was greeted by the glow of a score of
bonfires on the surrounding hills.

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY

"There is a path which no fowl
knoweth and which the
vulture s eye hath not seen."

Job, XXVIII, v.7

Above his bed in Downing Street in the days when he was Premier
this text served as a reminder to Lloyd George both of the extremes
of adversity and questing hope. He told Lionel Curtis that "more
than once I have preached on this text, but it was not until the Boer
War that I realised its full meaning. Then indeed I felt that I was on
a path which no fowl knew and the eye of the vulture had not seen
a perilous mountain path that soared high into the mists."

But the text is typical of the young man in a hurry, eager to seek
out paths that disappeared in the mists. From the moment he took
his seat in the House of Commons on April 17, 1890, Lloyd George
gave the impression of an impatient young man who had much to do
and little time in which to do it. He made his maiden speech on the
day Goschen introduced his Budget. "I was horribly nervous. I felt
like a young student who had not even been to Bala to preach a sermon
before John Elias."

Lloyd George missed the invigorating atmosphere of the cheering
meetings of his own countrymen, felt the chilly hostility of the aristocrats
who looked upon him as a Radical interloper. Cassell s Popular Educator
was a poor substitute for Oxford. This sense of loneliness made him
more of a rebel; for a time he turned his eyes back towards Wales and
yearned for a Welsh Party that could employ the obstructive tactics
of the Irish and dominate the scene at Westminster. Parnell became
his hero for a while and Mabon was another strong influence. This
rugged and impassioned Welsh miners leader was a remarkable orator
who made his mark with one of the most memorable rebuffs the House
of Commons has ever witnessed.

Welsh Disestablishment was being discussed and Mabon was em
phasising the grave handicap to the spiritual life of Wales which arose
from the fact that so many of the clergy in the Church could not speak
Welsh. Suddenly, and without warning, Mabon switched from
English into a torrent of Welsh. The Tories hooted with laughter.

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 43

Mabon paused. He looked across the floor of the House and asked
quietly: "Do you know what you were laughing at? That was the
Lord s Prayer."

The effect of that remark was instantaneous. His critics were
shamed and silent.

Outside Westminster Lloyd George pursued his role as crusader of
the Nationalists. He always seemed to be one step ahead of Tom Ellis,
son of a peasant farmer from Merionethshire, who was the acknowledged
leader of the little band of Welsh Liberal M.P.s. In speeches at Cardiff
and Merthyr Tydfil he demanded, "As complete a measure of Home
Rule for Wales as for Ireland/

Then Tom Ellis was made Liberal Whip, and from that day Welsh
Nationalism sadly lacked his selfless leadership. For Ellis was a loyal
Party man, where LI. G. was an opportunist. As Chief Whip Ellis
put the Liberal Party s interests first and those of Welsh Nationalism
second. "I was elected as a Liberal and to that creed I am pledged.
Its interests come before anything else," he told fellow Welshmen. His
attitude caused LI. G. to sneer that, "Tom Ellis is a renegade and mere
office-seeker." It was an unworthy remark.

After Ellis became Chief Whip, Lloyd George assumed the mantle
of unofficial leader of the Welsh Nationalists, who were surprised and
delighted when they found they had a more aggressive and colourful
speaker than Ellis. "Welsh Nationalism," he told one meeting, "is
not anti-Liberal. It is Liberal enthusiasm worked up to a glowing
red by the blasts of patriotism."

Lloyd George was never a convinced "Home Ruler" on the subject
of Ireland. While insisting on the need for Home Rule for Wales, he
made it clear that he was not altogether happy about granting the
same rights to Ireland. "Every argument in favour of Home Rule
in Ireland would be equally if not more appropriate for Wales.
There is the fear that Irish Home Rule would re-establish Roman
Catholicism as the national religion of Ireland not a step we
Nonconformists would regard as necessarily progressive. This risk
would be entirely absent in the case of Wales. And Wales has no
Ulster."

His new plan for the nationalists was to rally the forces of Irish,
Scottish and Welsh nationalism into a united front to press for a policy
of "quadrilateral Home Rule", It was not a new idea, for the Scottish
Nationalists had spent five years insisting that whatever was done for
Ireland should be done for Scotland. Now Lloyd George, with the
support of his friend, Sir Herbert Lewis, M.P. for Flintshire, argued
for Scottish and Welsh Home Rule. A motion in favour of this was
carried by 180 votes to 170. In 1895 a resolution expanded this to
cover Home Rule all round and was seconded by LI. G. This time
the motion was defeated by 128 to 102.

44 THE MASK OF MERLIN

By now the "young man in a hurry" was sizing up his colleagues
in the House. For Gladstone he always had deep veneration mingled
with impatience and sometimes outspoken criticism. He detested
Lord Rosebery whom he regarded as a "Tory aristocrat masquerading
under Liberal colours". Rosebery, for all his brilliance, shone with
the tinsel glamour of a dilettante in the political field and was a con
stant and understandable thorn in the side of the radicals. But the
original reason for Lloyd George s unconcealed dislike of Rosebery
was the latter s reference to the Welsh as "natives of the Principality".
"He talks about us as though we were some African tribe," grumbled
LI. G. "Stanley cheated the African tribes with empty jam-pots. That
is the policy of the Liberal Government, giving us jam-pots from which
others have had the jam."

But if the House of Commons had its Roseberys and other Liberals
who still lived in the past, it also had on the Liberal benches a far
stronger streak of genuine radicalism than it has ever seen since. One
of these, Labouchere, was a man after Lloyd George s heart "a gay
spark who coruscates when he likes and doesn t give a damn for any
one", was the Welshman s summing-up of him. It was the irrepressible
"Labby ", last of the Liberal rakes, who, as the member for Northamp
ton, supported the right of Nonconformists to be buried in Anglican
churchyards. "I am in favour of religious equality not only above, but
below the sod," said "Labby", employing a quip which might almost
have come from the lips of the member for Caernarvon Boroughs. The
man who, before entering politics, had gambled his way across Mexico,
appeared in a circus in pink tights, billed as the "Bounding Buck of
Babylon", taken part in a Californian gold rush in 1853 and fought a
duel with an Austrian charge d affaires, was an exhilarating companion
for the young Welshman whom he introduced to some of the less
reputable of London night resorts. Both men had that touch of audacity
without which radicalism can become arid and unexciting.

Whenever rumours about Lloyd George s private life developed to
the extent of a court case as they did on a number of occasions the
impression he managed to convey to the outside world was of an
innocent man cruelly and wickedly victimised by malicious slander.
This is a picture which has been iterated by many writers, but a re-
examination of some of these charges will show that the portrait of
injured innocence is somewhat overdrawn.

There was the divorce action of Edwards versus Edwards and
Wilson, in July, 1897. The petitioner, Dr. David Edwards, a close
friend of Lloyd George, of Cemmaes, Montgomeryshire, asked for
leave to proceed without making a certain man, unnamed but referred
to as "A.B.", the co-respondent. It was alleged that Mrs. Catherine

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 45

Edwards, his wife, had on August 19, 1896, given birth to a child of
which the petitioner was not the father. Nine days before the birth of
this child Mrs. Edwards had made a written confession to her husband
mentioning the name of a man and alleging him to be the father of
the child. The petitioner had been unable to obtain evidence which
would corroborate this and meanwhile he had charged his wife with
adultery with one, Edward Wilson.

The President of the Court stressed that a section of the Divorce
Act was to ensure "that no man shall be convicted of adultery without
the opportunity of clearing himself". He suggested that the unnamed
man might put in a statement with reference to the course he intended
to adopt.

Mrs. Edwards claimed her husband had forced her to make and
sign the confession. Dr. Edwards had produced letters from "A.B."
denying adultery with his wife in emphatic terms. The President of
the Court then agreed that the petition should be allowed to proceed
without making "A.B." a co-respondent. By this time it was common
gossip in various parts of Wales that "A.B." was Lloyd George, but it
was not until the case was heard again in the following November
that suspicions became confirmed. Then Catherine Edwards s con
fession was produced. It stated that: "I, Catherine Edwards, do
solemnly confess that I have on 4 February, 1896, committed adultery
with Lloyd George, M.P., and that the said Lloyd George is the
father of the child, and that I have on a previous occasion committed
adultery with the above Lloyd George."

Counsel on both sides said they were "satisfied that the imputation
against Lloyd George was without foundation". The respondent s
confession was "an invention to protect a guilty man by naming an
innocent one".

The co-respondent, who was stationmaster at Cemmaes Road rail
way station, said he was prepared to fight the case. Mrs. Edwards
denied the charges of adultery made against herself and Wilson. The
President then said the right course had been adopted in not pressing
the case against Wilson, when once the petitioner had established his
case against the "unknown adulterer", and Wilson was entitled to the
benefit of his denial. Mrs. Edwards s adultery with a person unknown
was clearly proved and there must be a decree nisi.

It was an unsatisfactory ending to a case which seems to have been
deliberately confused on both sides. The allegation against Lloyd
George was that on February 4, 1896, Dr. Edwards invited him to stay
at his home. During the night Dr. Edwards had been called away
professionally and did not return until the following morning. Did
Lloyd George fool counsel on both sides and the President of the
Court into the bargain? The reports of the case make no reference to
statements which Lloyd George himself must have made to counsel.

46 THE MASK OF MERLIN

In Mr. Frank Owen s book, Tempestuous Journey 9 we learn: "When
the case came up for hearing Lloyd George produced to counsel
records of the Parliamentary Division lists to show that on 4 Feb
ruary he had been until early morning voting in the House of
Commons."

But on February 4, 1896, Parliament was not sitting.

The second session of the fourteenth Parliament of Queen Victoria
was not opened until February 1 1 of that year. How then could Lloyd
George clear himself on the grounds indicated by Mr. Owen?

Immediately the result of the case had been declared Lloyd George
posed successfiilly as the injured martyr and was cordially congratulated
by the Caernarvon Liberal Association on the "complete vindication
of his character". LI. G. wrote to the secretary of that association a
long letter in which he said: "Our slander law is still uncivilised.
Here was one of the greatest imputations on a man s honour that could
ever be invented . . . and yet I was helpless in the matter. My accuser
I could not bring to justice, as she had not published the charge
within the legal meaning of that term; a communication made by a
wife to her husband does not constitute publication*. The horrible
anguish of mind, the impairment to health, the possible loss of reputa
tion counted for nothing in the eyes of our slander law. . . . Surely the
law should be placed on a more humane footing? "

This scandal was indirectly the cause of a final split on the Welsh:
Home Rule issue between Lloyd George and D. A. Thomas (later
Lord Rhondda). Originally Lloyd George s own scheme for the
nationalists was to organise a highly disciplined Welsh Party which
could link up with the Irish Party in challenging the House and
forcing the Liberals to a more forthright Home Rule policy. Lord
Oxford s biographers have spoken of the "studied want of considera
tion" with which Parnell, the Irish leader, treated his supporters and
sympathisers. Lloyd George was reluctantly forced to draw the same
conclusion. According to John Morley, Lloyd George actually made
overtures to Parnell through Kitty O Shea, the Irishman s mistress.
But he received no encouragement from the chilly Parnell and when
D. A. Thomas heard of his overtures he deprecated them strongly.
There was no enthusiasm for Parnell among the Nonconformist Welsh
M.P.s, who knew all about the liaison between Parnell and Kitty
O Shea. When LL G. put to a small group of them his plan for a
Welsh Party on the Irish model he met with hostility. At this time
Lloyd George was already involved in the scandal which eventually
ended in the Divorce Courts, and D. A. Thomas heatedly asked him:
"Do you want to repeat Parnell s blunders by ruining everything for
Wales s future? You seem to think the Irish have everything to teach
us. It would be better to learn from the lesson of where Mrs. O Shea
will lead Parnell to Home Rule or the Divorce Court! "

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 47

This was a rebuke which Lloyd George never forgot and never
completely forgave. Thomas, an extremely able man, who had been
University light-weight boxing champion at Oxford, in the nineties,
"counted for more in South Wales, which contained three-fourths of
the people in the Principality, than the future Prime Minister," de
clared Llewellyn Williams, Q,.C. This made Lloyd George extremely
jealous of him, inclining him to the view that there was no room for
two " kings" in Wales.

Consequently, wrote Lady Rhondda, Lloyd George "took the
necessary precautions to ensure that there should not be. My father
made one attempt to work with him in 1894, but he soon gave it up".

Lloyd George strove hard to bring the whole of the Welsh Nation
alist movement into line with Gymru Fydd, the most fanatical of the
Home Rule organisations. But his strength in North Wales was
counteracted by his lack of influence in the south. D. A. Thomas
supported Disestablishment, but he did not want Home Rule for
Wales, and he disliked the idea of the South Wales Liberal Association,
of which he was president, being merged into a wider organisation of
which, without doubt, Lloyd George aimed to be the head. There
was a split between south and north, and this finally proved fatal not
only to LI. G. s plan for a militant Nationalist Party on the Irish model,
but to the cause of nationalism generally.

In the House of Commons, Lloyd George deliberately set out to be
the enfant terrible of Parliament. He was at his best in opposition and
seemed happier when the Tories were back in power. Uaudace, Vaudace,
toujours Vaudace: Danton s policy became his guiding principle: to
shock and to keep on shocking until the enemy was speechless in the
face of his furious onslaughts. In June, 1899, * n a debate on the Tithes
Rent Charge Bill he flabbergasted the House with a scathing attack
on the Church of England, making the more pious Tories gaze up
wards as though they expected a thunderbolt from heaven to strike
him down. "The Squire and the Parson," he decried, "have broken
into the poor box and divided its contents between them. The Tam
many ring of landlords and parsons are dividing the last remnants of
the money between them."

But soon Tithes disputes, Welsh Nationalism and Disestablishment
were forgotten in the sudden emergence of a far bigger issue the
South African War. With this even the "young man in a hurry"
came into his own as a national figure, reviled and despised by a large
section of the public, but by sheer force of personality compelling the
people to listen to a series of unforgettable speeches condemning that
war and all it stood for. In retrospect this period was Lloyd George s
finest hour, morally a far greater achievement than his World War I
premiership, even though the latter may have had more widespread
results. Any student of the history and biographies of this era will

48 THE MASK OF MERLIN

recognise that it required supreme moral courage, allied to a defiant
panache, to defy the overwhelming popular prejudice in favour of the
war. One can best underline this statement by stressing how even the
few other pro-Boer Liberals, such as Morley and Campbell-Bannerman,
never effectively risked opprobrium by condemning the war in such
vehement language as LI. G. As to whether Lloyd George s uncom
promising attitude and vehement hostility to the war were justified in
the light of history is still a debatable point, but he succeeded in
clearing the air of cant, humbug and nonsensical jingoism. The issue
of the Boer War was never a clear-cut one of black and white, of right
or wrong, as LI. G. suggested. If there were unscrupulous capitalist
adventurers on the British side, there were also on the Boer side men
who permitted unspeakable indignities to be perpetrated on the African
people. Probably the best summing-up of the war was that of Sir
Edward Grey when he declared: "It has no right to be a popular
war."

Lloyd George, the Nonconformist, developed a sectarian sympathy
for the Boers. He mistook their Calvinist leaders for angels of light,
whereas today their descendants seem more like princes of darkness
bent on a fatal path of repression and segregation.

But, whatever their shortcomings, these Boers were excellent colo
nisers with a moral code that was far better than that of the money-
grabbing, gold-seeking imperialist filibusters who were the friends of
Cecil Rhodes. The virtue of Lloyd George at this period was that he
showed immense moral courage, that he acted as a highly necessary
antidote to the unthinking jingoism of a majority of the British people
and that, for the first time since John Bright, he forced them to think
about war and not just to accept it blindly as a national necessity.

In the nation-wide campaign from Bangor to Bristol, from London
to Liskeard and from Caernarvon to Birmingham on which he em
barked as a one-man crusade during the Boer War, his oratory was
forceful and sincere, yet factual and well argued. Not only does it still
read well, which cannot be said for many of his later speeches, but it is
vital documentary material for any historian of that period.

The war hardened the hearts of the Afrikaners not only against the
British but against human nature. It built up such a barrier of mistrust
of Britain that not even the generous settlement made later by a Liberal
Government could repair the damage done. It is not surprising that
if Cromwell is still an issue in Eire and George III a hated figure in
the American school, the crimes of Joseph Chamberlain are still reali
ties in the minds of Afrikaners.

In many ways Chamberlain was an English version of Lloyd George
a demagogue and anti-royalist when it suited him, a reactionary
imperialist and contemptuous of the rights of small peoples on other
occasions. Fickle, disloyal, erratic, vain and deceitful, often stooping

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 49

to the most outrageous intrigues, Chamberlain came as near to ruining
the Tory Party as Lloyd George did to obliterating Liberalism.

Thwarted from power in the Liberal Party by a Grand Old Man
who hung on to the leadership until he was almost blind. Chamberlain
changed his Party allegiance without a pang. Seeing Home Rule for
Ireland as a goal about to be achieved, he pressed Captain O Shea to
cite Parnell as a co-respondent to bring about his downfall and so
divide the nation on the Irish question. When Chamberlain met
Baron Sonnino, the Italian Foreign Secretary, a Jew, he made the
appalling ill-mannered declaration at a dinner table: "Yes, sir, I have
been called the apostle of the Anglo-Saxon race, and I am proud of
that title. I think the Anglo-Saxon race is as fine as any race on earth.
Not that I despise other races. There is only one race I despise the
Jews, sir. They are physical cowards."

This pathological outburst to Baron Sonnino sums up the mentality
of the man who, despite all attempts to prove otherwise, encouraged
the Jameson Raid which caused the South African War and made an
injured martyr out of a barely disguised saboteur of the peace in the
person of Cecil Rhodes. Though the inquiry into the Jameson Raid
of 1895, when five hundred troopers of the Chartered Company in
vaded the Transvaal, revealed that Rhodes was culpable, Chamberlain,
as Colonial Secretary, went out of his way to present Rhodes with an
unblemished character. Such condonation of a man who had treated
Chamberlain badly is quite inexplicable unless Rhodes or somebody
else was in a position to hold a threat over the Colonial Secretary. In
Gardiner s Life of Harcourt the assumption is made that "a member
of the Rhodes group had come to the House with copies of missing
telegrams and prepared to read them, if Chamberlain s attitude had
not proved satisfactory".

The Committee of Inquiry were extremely reticent on Chamber
lain s complicity in what was a flagrant piece of aggression in the name
of the British flag. Lloyd George fastened on to the far more sinister
aspect of Chamberlain s vested interests in imperialist adventures in
South Africa the big profits reaped by the Colonial Secretary s
relatives from arms supplied for the conduct of the Boer War while
Chamberlain was a minister.

If there was any doubt as to Chamberlain s culpability for the war,
the views of Sir William Butler, High Commissioner and Acting
Governor of South Africa, should suffice. Chamberlain ordered Butler
to move troops to the Transvaal frontier; Butler refused, expressing
the opinion that such a provocative gesture would inevitably cause
war. If Chamberlain had genuinely desired to keep the peace, he
could have accepted the advice of the man on the spot. Instead he
insisted on the recall of Butler, with the result that troops were sent
to the frontier and the Boer President, Kruger, sent an ultimatum to

50 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the British Government, demanding their withdrawal. The ultimatum,
which was regarded as a bluff, was ignored and so the war began.

The views of the "Liberal Imperialists" who supported the war
reluctantly once it had started Rosebery, Grey, Asquith and Haldane
were summed up by Lord Haldane in his autobiography: "If a
war is clearly wrong, then it cannot be right to support it even if one s
own country is involved. But if a new situation has developed itself,
one in which the nation is no longer fighting for what is wrong; if in
the course of time issues are raised on which one s own country is in
the right, and which have to be fought out by our own people for the
sake of dear life, then those involved in the struggle ought to be sup
ported with the full strength of the nation."

Haldane took his stand on the Kruger ultimatum and the
invasion of Natal. But both these situations could have been avoided
by tactful diplomacy by Chamberlain. The only new situation which
developed was that Britain, in embarking on this war, found the Boers
a much tougher proposition than had hitherto been imagined. In
short, Britain s prestige was at stake and every nation in Europe was
cock-a-hoop at the prospect of a severe twist for the tail of a blustering
lion.

The Boers quickly proved themselves adept at concentrating secretly
in unexpected places, such as farm-houses in the veldt. The British
answer to this was to burn and destroy all farm-houses whether they
were fortified or not, and to drive the inhabitants into concentration
camps where they were barbarously treated and died of starvation and
disease. Lloyd George challenged the morality of the war when the
mood of the British people was one of frenzied and thoughtless jingoism.
It was not only in the public houses and the streets that the Boer War
fever raged, but in the salons of Mayfair and among the somewhat
mediocre poets of the day. Lord Salisbury, with a cynical gesture, had
made Alfred Austin, a hack propaganda writer for the Tory Party,
the Poet Laureate. Austin offered his propaganda to the Muse in
these words :

"Wrong! Is it wrong? Well, maybe:

But I m going, boys, all the same.

Do they think me a Burgher s baby,

To be scared by a scolding name?

They may argue and prate and order;

Go, tell them to save their breath:

Then, over the Transvaal border,

And gallop for life or death ! "

The date of this Tory hand-out in verse was January 8, 1896, and
its tide Jamesorfs Ride.

For Lloyd George the years of the war were fraught with fears of
what the fixture might hold: financial disaster, political ruin, the path

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 51

of an outcast. His attitude on the Boer War meant his taking a line
against his own Party leaders, only CampbeU-Bannerman and Morley
being critical of the war and neither man showed the same spirit of
opposition as the member for Caernarvon Boroughs.

Gone was the old-time pacifism of the Welsh; instead Lloyd George
met with cold hostility, ostracism, even threats to his legal practice.
In Llanystumdwy he was cold-shouldered. In Bangor he was greeted
by howling mobs who stoned him, shouting "Pro-Boer" and "Traitor".
That he stuck to his convictions was due partly to a feeling that there
could be no turning back, but even more to the high moral courage of
his wife. The role Margaret Lloyd George played in those dark days
was invaluable to her husband in sustaining him in a diversity. For
him there was always the escape which flights of oratory provided,
the courage which he could pluck from the air by the knowledge of
his own mastery of words. For her there were financial embarrassment,
the torment from neighbours who had been friendly but now turned
their backs on her, and, even worse, the news in letters that her own
children were bullied and victimised at school because their father was
hated.

Those who knew both LL G. and his wife in this period doubt
whether he could have withstood the strain without the loyal support
of Mrs. Lloyd George. Mr. Arthur Porritt, former editor of the
Christian World, wrote: "Mrs. Lloyd George said in the Boer War that
she would rather take in washing than sacrifice principles." Hugh
Edwards related that at one stage, when several clients had left him,
LI. G. suggested that his wife had better stay in North Wales and that
he would find a room in an attic for a few shillings a week. Without
one moment s hesitation the brave little woman replied: "The
children can go to Griccieth, but I will come and share the attic
with you."

In his early speeches against the war he showed a sense of foreboding
of what it would ultimately bring about. "The Transvaal Boers are a
nation of farmers, one hundred thousand of them, against whom we
are massing the might of forty millions. I want Wales to be free of this
business. I have a deep-felt belief that this horror and injustice can do
us no good. Its misery may turn back upon us and we shall see in this
fair land of Cambria poverty and unemployment because war has
eaten up the means for providing pensions for the needy and jobs for
the able."

Chamberlain was the chief target for Lloyd George s attacks. Not
an easy target, but he made gaffes of which LI. G. took instant advan
tage with his quick, darting mind and ready retort. "The Transvaal,
the country we created," said Chamberlain with characteristic arro
gance: "The Birmingham version of the Scriptures," sneered Lloyd
George. "In the beginning Joseph Chamberlain created heaven and

52 THE MASK OF MERLIN

earth including the Transvaal. And he divided the earth, too. Yea,
he quoth, there shall be those who shall have the fruits of the earth and
those who shall not."

The "Khaki Election 3 * in October, 1900, gave the Tories just the
chance they wanted. "Every vote for a Liberal is a vote for the Boers "
was the cry, and Liberals, whether Imperialists supporting the war, or
radicals against it, were tarred with the same brush. As the election
drew near many of Lloyd George s supporters in his constituency left
him. There was even a move to dissuade him from standing.

"But LI. G. s ear was close to the ground," wrote Moses Roberts.
"He paid no attention to his agent who whispered that he was almost
certain to lose. His trusted unofficial agent was a Calvin and he went
out for the Calvin vote. He made great play with the fact that the
Boers were Calvins, sober, God-fearing Nonconformists like our
selves. In my opinion these tactics won him the day."

Perhaps, too, the singular incompetence of the pedestrian politician
who was opposing him in the Conservative interest, the mild and in
effectual Colonel Platt, gave him quite a few additional votes. On
October 6 he was re-elected member for Caernarvon Boroughs by his
biggest majority yet 296 votes.

In the new House of Commons there were 402 Tories against 186
Liberals and Lloyd George was now the main target for Tory attacks.
In his diary he wrote: "Was warned that the Tory rioters threatened
to kill me." Certainly he was assaulted on a number of occasions and
once his wife was nearly seriously injured by rioters. The story of his
escape from Birmingham Town Hall in a policeman s uniform has
been told with a wealth of detail by many writers. What has not
before been revealed is the extent of Joseph Chamberlain s responsi
bility for the riot and the reason for it. In 1884, when he was still a
radical, Chamberlain had been implicated in a riot at Aston, in which
Lord Randolph Churchill was only just saved from assault. Lord
Randolph blamed Chamberlain and declared: "A contest in Birming
ham is not a contest such as is carried on in other constituencies in
England between Party and Party. It is a contest between popular self-
government and corrupt oligarchy."

Before Lloyd George s visit it was noticeable that the Liberal-
Unionist Press (Chamberlain s own political interest) was far more
vituperative towards the visit of the member for Caernarvon than were
the Tory papers. The former opened their correspondence columns to
the most abusive, provocative and threatening letters, many of them
anonymous. One writer, "Pax", wrote: "A riot is inevitable."

Lloyd George had aroused local hatred because he had attacked the
Birmingham firm of Kynochs as suppliers of arms for the Boer War
and complained of the Chamberlain family interest in the firm. He
himself was hesitant about going to Birmingham, and through the

YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY 53

intercession of Labouchere asked Chamberlain whether he was pre
pared to make an appeal for a fair hearing for him in Chamberlain s
home city. Chamberlain s reply was: "If LI. G. wants his life, he had
better keep away from Birmingham. That is the only advice I am
prepared to give him. If he doesn t go, I will see that it is known he is
afraid. If he does go, he will deserve all he gets."

This uncompromising reply incensed Lloyd George, and even his
wife, who fully realised the risks of physical violence, insisted that it was
his duty to go to Birmingham.

Chamberlain had reason to be frightened about the visit to Birming
ham. For Lloyd George, intent on mischief, had threatened Chamber
lain again through Labouchere to reveal in Birmingham how a
cheque for 10,000 was paid by Cecil Rhodes into the Irish Home
Rule funds to secure the sympathies of the Nationalist Party and
Charles Parnell without leading a Tory Government to suspect the
character of Rhodes s "patriotism". This was a reference to the events
leading up to the formation of the Chartered Company to exploit
Rhodesia. In addition Lloyd George and Labouchere had obtained
proof of how, as a direct result of the Jameson Raid, Rhodes had netted
a profit of more than half a million pounds within a few years.

Tickets for the Birmingham meeting were forged by the Liberal-
Unionists with the object of smuggling rioters into the Town Hall.
Lloyd George s picture was printed on large pamphlets and given to
hooligans so that they could identify him. In a large space normally
reserved for commercial advertising, the time at which LI. G. was due
to arrive at New Street station was published, an obvious incitement
to attack. But Lloyd George came by an earlier train and missed the
first wave of rioters, or he might have been lynched before the meeting
began.

Nobody could have heard more than a few sentences of LI. G/s
speech that night. But he found time for one characteristic comment
before the mob rushed the platform. "The Union Jack," he said, "is
the pride and property of our common country and no man who really
loves it could do anything but dissent from its being converted into
Mr. Chamberlain s pocket handkerchief."

Chamberlain was in Birmingham that night. He asked to be in
formed of what happened at the meeting at regular intervals. A tele
gram was sent to him by his hooligan agents saying "Lloyd George the
traitor was not allowed to say a word. Two hundred citizens passed a
resolution of confidence in the Government and admiration for your
unique and fearless efforts for King and Country."

Some doubt was cast on the story of Lloyd George s escape from
Birmingham Town Hall, disguised as a policeman, by a cryptic remark
by the present Earl Lloyd-George that all the versions of this incident
he had read were inaccurate. In his biography of his mother Earl

54 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Lloyd-George declined to disclose the "real story" of what happened
that night.

The most indisputable evidence of what transpired seems to be
that of Police-Constable James Stonier, of Olton, Birmingham:

"The Chief Constable of Birmingham was convinced that the mob
would kill Lloyd George if they got him. So his chief concern was
how to smuggle him out of the Town Hall. Then he remembered that
a few months previously the American police had saved President
McKinley s assassin from being lynched by disguising him in police
uniform.

"At first Lloyd George wouldn t hear of this plan. He thought it
would make him look ridiculous. However, he finally agreed and I
was chosen to exchange clothes with him.

"I can well remember that night, but I have no souvenir of it. The
uniform, the helmet and the telegram I found in Lloyd George s coat
pocket are all museum pieces in glass cases.

"I was a bigger man than Lloyd George so you can imagine I had
a struggle to get his clothes on. The uniform was never worn again,
for the day afterwards I became a plain-clothes man in the C.I.D.
I had to get the uniform back so that I could hand it back to the store.

"I had been out since 5 a.m., and it was just twenty-four hours
later that I reached home, complete with uniform and having smoked
a cigar I found in Lloyd George s pocket."

Mr. Stonier died in 1954. It is a little ironic that the man whose
life he saved became Prime Minister while he himself remained a
police-constable until he retired.

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE

"I have a deep and ineradicable hatred in my heart for the
Tories. As far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin."

Aneurin Bevan in a speech at
Manchester in 1950

Aneurin Bevan s speech at Manchester in 1950, when he delivered a
violent and, as it proved, vote-losing speech attacking the Conservative
Party, was received with gasps of astonishment from a new generation
which had become accustomed to mild-mannered and even mealy-
mouthed Tories.

But Bevan s speech was an echo of the past, a summing-up of Tory
ism in the first forty years of this century. He was echoing what
Dickens said, in describing an election at Ipswich in 1835: "Never
have I set eyes on such a ruthless set of bloody-minded villains as the
Tories. Would you believe that a large body of horsemen, mounted
and armed, who galloped on a defenceless crowd yesterday, striking
about them in all directions, and protecting a man who cocked a
loaded pistol, were led by clergymen and magistrates?"

If this were true in Dickens s day, it was to a large extent applicable
from 1900 to 1914. It was to be seen not only in the hooliganism of
Chamberlain-controlled Birmingham, but in the combination of
Tories and clergymen supporting the Education Bill directed against
the Nonconformists, in the policy in South Africa and the jingoism it
encouraged at home, in the "Khaki Election" of 1900. But political
"venmnism" reached its zenith after the Tories shattering defeat in
the 1906 elections. So overwhelming a defeat not only frightened the
Tories, it enraged them. They stooped to tactics which showed a
complete disregard for the traditions of Westminster and, coming
from the supposedly "respectable" party, were as monstrous as the
obstructionism of the Irish M.P.s in the eighties. The attire and
accents of these Conservative M.P.s were impeccable, but their antics
were those of the Bowery.

When the Balfour Government resigned in November, 1905, Lloyd
George was recuperating from tonsilitis at Rapallo. He hurried back
to London to find that Campbell-Bannerman had nominated him for
the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Balfour had resigned rather

56 THE MASK OF MERLIN

than dissolve Parliament because he thought the deep schisms within
the Liberal Party would make it impossible for Campbell-Bannerman
to form a Cabinet. But he underestimated C-B. The quiet, pawky
Scottish Liberal, not without difficulty, managed to produce a Cabinet
that reunited all wings of the Party and was by general consent excep
tionally talented. It was not surprising that when the General Election
followed in the New Year, the Liberals acquired a record majority.
The Tories, discredited by the feeble leadership of Balfour and his
metaphysical evasions, and disrupted by the quarrelling between
aristocratic Free Traders and middle-class Protectionists, were in full
retreat, as Lloyd George put it: "The retreat of saboteurs and anar
chists bent on pulling everyone else down with them."

During the election Lloyd George himself descended to tactics that
were quite as bad as anything the Tories employed. He raised the
cry of "Chinese slave labour in the South African mines", and told
the electors in his constituency that the Tories who supported this
might easily approve of slavery in the Welsh quarries. There was a
come-back to this speech when F. E. Smith made his debut in the
House of Commons. Quoting from Lloyd George s speech "Slavery
on the hills of Wales! Heaven forgive me for the suggestion" the
debonair Tory recruit sarcastically remarked: "I have no means of
judging how Heaven will deal with persons who think it decent to
make such suggestions."

The new Liberal Government was individually an able, even a
brilliant administration. But it was a little top-heavy. Some of its
leaders were spiritually of the Victorian age, men who had lived under
the banners of John Stuart Mill and Richard Cobden, but who had
little in common with the feeling of the masses that so great and
prosperous an empire ought to provide some kind of social umbrella
for its peoples. To the relief, tinged with sadness, of most Liberals,
Lord Rosebery had discarded himself by petulant fits of temperament.
But if Rosebery had gone, the people in whose "tabernacle" he would
not serve included such faded relics of Gladstonian Liberalism as John
Morley and Lords Ripon and Elgin.

Grey, at the Foreign Office, had the right instincts and a stern sense
of patriotism allied with an equally uncompromising ethical approach
to politics, but he was a Whig rather than a Liberal. The Foreign
Office welcomed Grey s appointment for they knew that he would
approach the tasks of diplomacy with orthodoxy. This, in LI. G/s
opinion, was a fatal weakness : Lloyd George had little time for experts,
diplomatic or otherwise, and was irked by an orthodox approach to
problems.

The dominant figure in the Government was Herbert Henry
Asquith, who towered above his colleagues with his massive intellect,
absorbing problems and turning out the answers with the unerring

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 57

accuracy of a precision machine. Asquith never needed to thrust for
power, as did Lloyd George. The traditional " effortless superiority"
of the Balliol man of the Jowett era automatically marked him out as
the next Prime Minister.

Otherwise it was the tail that wagged this Government, the vigorous
tail of Lloyd George at the Board of Trade, Haldane at the War
Office, the brilliant young C. F. G. Masterman and that ex-Tory
recruit to the Liberal ranks, the young and ebullient Winston Churchill.
Already Churchill and Lloyd George, both with a keen nose for, and
almost aesthetic delight in, political mischief, had struck up a warm
friendship, each regarding the other with admiring envy as a buccaneer.
Soon Churchill was speaking on the same platform as Lloyd George
at Caernarvon, telling the people that "the fact remains clear and
undeniable that Mr. Lloyd George is the best fighting general in the
Liberal Army".

Meanwhile Lloyd George brought to the Board of Trade a mind
that was fresh and untrammelled. It was a mind from which he
deliberately purged his demagogic urges and set in their place the
lawyer s skill at negotiation and an empirical approach. "What can
I do for commerce?" was his first question at the Board of Trade, and
big business was duly impressed.

This period at the Board of Trade saw the emergence of a new
Lloyd George, a man immersed in every facet of his job, with a zest
for finding out for himself technicalities that ministers were normally
expected to leave to their subordinates. Big business was not slow in
telling him how he could help, and the shipowners quickly informed
him that a new Merchant Shipping Bill was long overdue. They had
long been incensed against the Plimsoll Line, claiming that, while
thousands of lives had been saved by this measure which was designed
to fix a safe and satisfactory load line for ships, tens of thousands of
pounds had been lost to shipowners because of the smaller loads
carried. Their case was that, while overloading had been checked in
British ships, foreign vessels did not have to observe this regulation
and therefore gained an advantage.

When the Conservatives had been in office a committee comprised
entirely of Board of Trade officials, with no representatives of ships
masters or seamen, had recognised this problem and recommended the
raising of the load line. The shipowners immediately pressed Lloyd
George to implement this proposal. They found him, writes Mr.
Malcolm Thomson, "to their surprised delight, not only very well-
informed about their affairs, but remarkably understanding and con
ciliatory". Well they might have done, for Lloyd George proceeded
to do exactly what they wanted and more. In his Merchant Shipping
Bill he raised the Plimsoll Line to permit ships to carry heavier cargoes,
and also made it obligatory on foreign ships entering British ports.

58 THE MASK OF MERLIN

This at once raised criticism from the out-and-out Free Traders in
the Liberal Party, who insisted that this was a barely disguised form of
Protectionism for British shipping. Had the object of the Bill been to
improve the lot of merchant seamen, as was claimed, the cry of " dis
guised Protectionism" might well have been a tedious academic
quibble. Mr. A. G. Gardiner records that Lloyd George incorporated
in the Bill "valuable provisions for improving the life of the seamen".
When LI. G. worked out the details of this Bill, added Gardiner, he
took a voyage to Spain and learned about ships. The visit to Spain
was, in fact, made at the request of the shipowners to see how foreign
competition under inferior conditions of service was injuring them.

There were some sops for the seamen included in the Bill; part of
Lloyd George s bargain with the shipowners was that, if they wished
to raise the load line against the wishes of the merchant seamen, they
must agree to mollifying them in some way. So the Shipping Bill laid
down improved standards of food and accommodation and ensured
medical attention for the seamen. The main object of the Bill was,
however, that the Plimsoll Line should only be raised in ships of new
construction, specially designed to carry heavier cargoes. After pressure
from the shipowners, ships of the oldest pattern were also allowed to
raise the line. Lloyd George was promptly charged with allowing
officials at the Board of Trade to obtain dispensing power to permit
some provisions of the Act to be disregarded: it was a charge which
could hardly be disputed as the President of the Board of Trade had
deliberately inserted Clause 78 to provide for this dispensing power.

The Bill might well have been a Tory measure. Ships were deliber
ately overloaded with the object of bringing bigger profits to the owners;
in some cases the risk of losing a ship as a result of this was considered
fully justified because the loss could be made good through insurance
claims. Very soon the losses of both ships and men steadily increased.

In the House of Commons Lloyd George declared that the raising
of the load line had reduced the number of ships foundering by twenty
per cent. A letter dictated by him in 1912, but signed "H. P. Hamilton"
on his behalf, stated that for the six years prior to June 30, 1906, the
total number of vessels registered in the United Kingdom which
foundered was 307; for the six years since that date the figure was
240, so beneficial had been the raising of the load line.

This juggling with figures was a typical example of Lloyd Georgian
dishonesty, which was a technique frequently repeated throughout his
political career. Included in the returns for the six years prior to the
passing of the Bill were vessels of two, four, five and seven tons, where
the question of the load line did not arise.

An example of how old ships were allowed to raise the load line is
provided by the ship, North Briton. Before 1906 the freeboard of this
ship was one foot four and a half inches. The Board of Trade allowed

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 59

it to be reduced to a mere ten inches. In the first six months of 1912,
when Lloyd George was no longer at the Board of Trade to face the
mounting criticism, twenty-two British vessels were reported missing
and forty-two had foundered (in thirty of the latter the load line had
been altered). In this same year Sydney Buxton had to admit that
more than 3,000 British seamen had lost their lives in a single year,
"this being equal to a rate of one in seventy-six compared to one in
112 previously". The situation was by this time getting much worse
because the vessels were older and more freights were being lost.
Nevertheless, the much-boosted Shipping Act saved the owners an
estimated 8 millions in building new ships which, by the original
intention of the Bill, they should have provided.

The anger of the seamen s leaders at this state of affairs may be
judged from the fact that on April 14, 1913, a meeting was called by
the British Socialist Party at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street,
London, for an address by Mr. H. M. Hyndman on the subject of
"The Official Murdering of British Seamen by Mr. Lloyd George and
the Board of Trade". Mr. Hyndman was no ignorant, feckless, cloth-
capped tub-thumper, but the top-hatted, frock-coated Old Etonian
who was founder of the Social Democratic Federation.

At this meeting Mr. Hyndman, referring to the "arch-humbug
George", said that the "raising of the load line is one of the most
shameful things done to the working-class of this country. I say that
Lloyd George has been officially murdering the seamen of British
vessels in the interests of the ship-owning class. This man George is
an unscrupulous and murdering rascal. I challenge him to bring an
action for criminal libel against me. I tell you he won t dare to do so."

"Mr. Lloyd George is poor in honesty and statesmanship and rich
in humbug," was the comment at the same meeting by Robert Williams
of the Transport Workers Federation.

Both in his Shipping Bill and in the Patents and Designs (Amend
ments) Bill, LI. G. showed that the moral principles of Free Trade
meant very little to him. In the latter Bill he laid down that a British
patent could only be retained to protect a manufacture carried on in
Britain, a principle which would have horrified the Victorian Liberals
by its narrow nationalism.

Perhaps the clearest proof that at the Board of Trade Lloyd George
so frequently appeared as the ally of big business was the statement
made in the House by Bonar Law: "During the time the Right Hon.
gentleman was at the Board of Trade the Opposition on almost every
occasion supported and agreed to his proposals. That I attribute
entirely to the fact that in his administration of the Board of Trade he
treated every question on its merits."

Nevertheless Lloyd George made a great reputation for himself in
this office and he undertook and initiated far more legislation than

6O THE MASK OF MERLIN

had his predecessors. To his credit he set out to study foreign trade
and transport installations. When he turned his attention to the docks,
he travelled abroad to investigate port facilities at Hamburg, Antwerp
and elsewhere. His great merit was his passion for finding out for
himself, an asset which was shared by only a few of his colleagues in
the Government. The Port of London, he rightly decided, was hope
lessly antiquated and in need of a drastic overhaul. Competition
between the various companies in the port, which at first brought
rapid expansion, had ended by crippling each other and harming trade.
Even the provision of such necessities as deeper dredging to take larger
ships had been neglected through lack of money. A deadlock occurred
when the conservators saw no reason for dredging a channel for ships
of deeper draught before the dock owners lowered the cills of their
docks. The owners on their part refused to spend the money on recon
struction until the channel had been dredged.

Most of Lloyd George s biographers give LL G. the full credit for
bringing the Port of London under a single authority. But it was
Asquith who took the initiative in this matter, according to Sir Joseph
Broodbank, author of the History of the Port of London. "Mr. Asquith
had some acquaintance with port questions, as he was briefed as
counsel in some dock cases, invariably, I think, against the dock com
panies. But as an Elder Brother of the Trinity House he took a very
keen interest in port management and outlined the proposals which
led to the ultimate solution."

Sir Joseph sums up the part played by Lloyd George in establishing
the Port of London Authority as follows: "He had sounded the dock
companies as to purchase, and had come to terms with the leading
company. He had disarmed City opposition by proposing that the
new authority which was to control the docks and the river channel
should be without state or municipal guarantee. He had given an
additional safeguard to the private wharfingers by allowing them to
have representation in the management of the new body.

"Giving the impression to everyone who went to him with their
tale of hardship that he was desirous of acting equitably to all and
even to be tender to vested interests, Mr. Lloyd George eventually had
the satisfaction of seeing his measure placed upon the Statute Book."

That the creation of the P.L. A. was his greatest achievement at the
Board of Trade must be conceded, but his methods of achieving his
object were so circuitous that the machinery of the new organisation
was in many ways cumbersome. By assuring the dock owners that
the P.L.A. would be without state or municipal guarantee he prevented
the rapid improvement of the port so urgently needed. The P.L.A.
took over an imperfect system of docks and the i 1,500,000 which was
spent by the authority from 1910 to 1926 was not disbursed in the best
possible manner to secure the highest financial return, with the result

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 6 1

that the Port of London continued to lose in prestige. The policy of
the authority was to spend the greater part of its money on works on
unsuitable sites in the lower reaches of the Thames, while the south
side, which possessed deep-water facilities at low tide, was for years
utterly neglected.

To sum up, Lloyd George s achievement in this direction was an
adroit effort at negotiation, but not a measure of far-sighted, radical
reconstruction.

His talent for skilful negotiation was the real secret of his success
at the Board of Trade, and the reason for the speed and smoothness
with which he accomplished what he set out to do. He dealt success
fully with trade disputes in the cotton, engineering and shipbuilding
industries and managed to prevent a strike by the railwaymen which
caused Campbell-Bannerman to write to King Edward VII and say:
"The country was largely indebted for so blessed a conclusion to the
knowledge, skill, astuteness and tact of the President of the Board of

Trade."

* * * * $

Sonia Keppel, Somerset Maugham and other nostalgically minded
authors have painted a picture of Edwardian days as an England
bathed in the gold and silver of a Lehar waltz, with God in his Heaven
and all right with the world. It is true that the landed aristocracy, in
spite of Harcourt s death duties, had not yet begun to feel financial
pressures upon them and that a mass of cheap domestic labour enabled
a clerk s wife to employ a teenage girl full-time for not more than 12
a year, sometimes less. But the real value of money was already slowly
melting away and a closer investigation of the Edwardian scene shows
growing discontent in the working classes and increasing threats of
violence and use of violence every year. It is perhaps not generally
realised that between 1900 and 1914 there were far more unofficial
strikes than occur today and that more working days were lost by
strike action than at any time in our history.

A Liberal Government had arrived far too late in the day to be
fully effective, despite its remarkable record of social legislation.
"Verminism" existed not only in the political ranks, but among
employers who, far from wishing to come to terms with organised
labour, frequently sought to crush it. A typical example of the in
difference and callous attitude of employers was the sequel to the
Senghenydd Mine disaster, costing 439 lives. Proved gross negligence
and disregard of safety regulations by the colliery manager resulted in
a fine of 22 : to assess the value of miners lives at a shilling a man
was scarcely a slogan to encourage the unity of classes.

That Lloyd George was conscious of these things there is no doubt.
Such scars and blemishes on the good name of the nation moved him
deeply. But it was anger more than compassion that he felt, hence

62 THE MASK OF MERLIN

he frequently wasted his invective in Party polemics rather than in
focusing it on the need for a higher all-round standard of living. His
experience at the Board of Trade had whetted his appetite for a bigger
job and he began to throw himself wholeheartedly into the attack on
the obstructive tactics of the House of Lords. In language that was
often intemperate he proceeded to inform the nation of the menace
of "the men in ermine". It was language which shocked the more
orthodox Liberals as well as angering the Tories, but it cannot be
denied that it was provoked by the irresponsible conduct of the peers
who tried to thwart the will of the electorate. "The House of Lords
is petrified Toryism and has lost its use/ he declared, and promptly
scorned the peers claim to be the watchdog of the nation. "A mastiff? "
he asked. "No. It is the right honourable gentleman s (Balfour s)
poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It bites anybody that he sets
it on to."

Welsh Nationalism, as far as LI. G. was concerned, was almost a
thing of the past. So much so that on January 17, 1907, at a meeting
at Caernarvon, Lloyd George said: "I will say this to my fellow-
countrymen. If they find the Government manoeuvring its artillery
into position for making an attack on the Lords, Welshmen who worry
the Government into attending to anything else until the citadel has
been stormed ought to be pushed into the guardroom."

This speech caused a furore in the Nationalist ranks. It was im
mediately interpreted as an indication that the Government had given
up the policy of Disestablishment. In fact it was directed against D. A.
Thomas, who lost no time in counter-attacking. From Robertson
Nicoll, editor of the British Weekly, came stern criticism of the President
of the Board of Trade: "Mr. Lloyd George is detained by mysterious
providence these days from appearing at Nonconformist gatherings,
but he will have to explain himself to the nation that has trusted him."

The quietus to the critics was given in sobbing rhetoric at a con
vention of the Nonconformist League at Cardiff. "Am I going to sell
the land I love?" asked LL G., with a histrionic catch in his voice.
"God knows how dear to me is my Wales." If the Deity understood,
Welsh Nonconformists could hardly doubt the heavenly judgment.

Lloyd George has so frequently been hailed as the architect of social
security in Britain that this claim needs to be analysed. It would be a
mistake to detract from his genuine achievements towards this end,
achievements without which he could never have risen to his subsequent
supremacy. He was the spearhead, the propagandist and the execu
tioner of the revolutionary measures of social security introduced by
the Liberal Government. But no one man and certainly no single
Party can honestly pretend to be the architect of Britain s social revolu
tion of the past sixty years. If the Tories of the Edwardian era were
more anti-social than at any time since the Reform Bill, it must be

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 63

admitted that Disraeli, Lord John Manners, Lord Shaftesbury and
Lord Randolph Churchill had all tried to breathe some moral purpose
into the domestic policy of the Conservatives at a time when Glad-
stonian Liberalism was far too pre-occupied with Ireland. The real
drive towards the awakening of the social conscience to the need for
fairer shares and greater security came primarily not from the Socialist
politicians, but from the artists and writers and philanthropists of an
earlier period, from Coleridge, Byron, Godwin, Hazlitt, Wilberforce,
Clarkson and the Wedgwoods. This was long before Cobbett and
Robert Owen paved the way for Ruskin s generation and the dilettante
Socialists such as William Morris, and Oscar Wilde s brief flirtation
with social security in that often forgotten, but still most thought-
provoking essay in the English language, The Soul of Man under Socialism.
Later Shaw and the Fabians converted romantic appreciation of an
ideal into more practical pamphleteering.

Asquith, A. D. D. Acland, Sydney Buxton and Haldane co-operated
with Sydney Webb, Bernard Shaw and other members of the Fabian
Society. It is interesting to note Mrs. Sydney Webb s view of Asquith.
"Asquith," she said, "supplies all the ideas. He is the best of the lot
and the greatest radical of them all."

This sidelight on Asquith has never been given, even by his own
biographers, the prominence that it deserves. Modest, content to let
others take the credit, indifferent to what other people thought of him,
ready with advice, yet never one to flaunt it, the part he played in
paving the way towards "the greatest happiness for the greatest
number" has been under-estimated. Lloyd George was given and
readily took the credit for the Old Age Pensions measure which the
Liberal Government introduced. But the initial work, the long-term
planning and the honour belong in no small measure to Asquith. While
at the Exchequer he planned the whole scheme of Old Age Pensions,
and by wise and prudent financial management saved the cash to pay
for them. A. G. Gardiner wrote of him: "No great cause will ever
owe anything to him in its inception, but when he is convinced of its
justice and practicability, he will take it up with a quiet, undemon
strative firmness that means success. It was so in the case of Old Age
Pensions. He made no electoral capital out of them, seemed indeed
to be unsympathetic." This is a misleading picture. Asquith, according
to Mrs. Sydney Webb, planned the details of Old Age Pensions fifteen
years before they were introduced.

How Asquith handled his Budget to achieve this is still a classical
model of financial resourcefulness. Not only did he provide the cash
for pensions, but he reduced the sugar tax by more than a half and
reduced the National Debt by 47 millions. No one remembered this
lesson when Hugh Dalton with "a song in my heart" helped to lay
another stone in the still unsecure foundation of the Welfare State of

64 THE MASK OF MERLIN

today. Yet in the official biography of Lloyd George we are told:
"No doubt Asquith deserved a large measure of the credit. . . . But
popular instinct has been right in this matter. It recognised in Lloyd
George the man who chiefly inspired and fought for the complex of
progressive and ameliorative social legislation carried out by the
Liberal Government between 1906 and 1914, of which the Old Age
Pensions was one of the biggest items."

The importance of Lloyd George s role in introducing social security
was his genius for simplifying the issues, for turning arid and com
plicated financial details into a neat phrase that humanised his pro
posals. No other man in the Cabinet, not even John Burns, could have
achieved this, and the achievement is greater when one realises how
neither the "haves " nor the "have-nots " had been politically educated
to appreciate the benefits of these measures. This is admirably illus
trated by a recollection by his son, Lord Tenby, in a tribute he made
to the Ministry of Pensions on the fiftieth anniversary of national
insurance in Britain.

"He (LI. G.) was very glad to have been able to do something for
the old people, but he said, 4 I am much more worried about the
young. The man with a small family, unemployed through no fault
of his own because his work may be seasonal, the mother who has just
borne a child, or the family with sickness in the house without means
to meet the medical expenses.

"There is much I could say about the hostility with which his pro
posals were received in many quarters our family doctor argued at
great length that the Bill would ruin him. I well remember my father s
reply, How many families do you attend here knowing full well you
will never be paid? I will mention one to you now, and he gave the
name. Then said my father, e Do you ever refuse to go? 5 The doctor
said, { Of course not.

"My father told him that he would in future be paid; but the
doctor insisted that the Bill would ruin him. The argument appeared
unending and it was finally closed by my father saying, Look, if you
are not getting paid for those cases you attend without payment now,
I ll be glad to give you a turkey next Christmas. Our doctor never
claimed the turkey!"

When Campbell-Bannerman resigned and Asquith became Premier,
Lloyd George was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thus it
was that he introduced the pensions scheme which Asquith had initiated
and so unobtrusively worked for. But the medical insurance scheme
owed an immeasurable debt to his first-hand knowledge of how the
poor lived, how the doctors in areas of unemployment functioned, and
even more to his vision and vigorous determination to ram home self-
evident points to people obstinately declining to admit their truth.
The hypocrisy of the Tories on these subjects was typical of their

The House at 5 New York
Place, Chorlton-On-Medlock,
Manchester, where
Lloyd George was born.

Topix Picture Service

..l ^-;&gt;l -* l?vS- ? i His home in Llanystumdwy.

Topix Picture Service,

TJ ] " **"

The young Lloyd George.

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 65

irresponsible attitude to all social reforms in this period. On the one
hand they pretended the country could not afford the measures, on
the other they claimed they were not enough. Even so responsible and
usually statesmanlike a Tory as Lord Lansdowne made the astonishing
remark that "expenditure on the South African War had been a better
investment than Old Age Pensions. This Bill," he argued, "will cost
the nation as much as a great war. There will be this difference
that you may pay your war debt by making sacrifices in order to
do it. A war, terrible as are its consequences, has at any rate the
effect of raising the moral fibre of the country, whereas this measure
I am very much afraid is one that will weaken the moral fibre of the
nation."

The nation not only could afford the pensions scheme, but the fall
in the real standard of living demanded it. Between 1898 and 1910,
in spite of the growth of population, the consumption in Britain of
wheat, sugar and meat actually declined, as did the sales of beer
and spirits, yet the gross assessments on Schedule D of Income Tax
were fifty-five per cent up and between 1905 and 1914 an extra
2,000 millions was invested abroad. The Liberal welfare legislation
of this period, including the 1909 Budget and the 1911 Insurance
Acts, was in fact only redistributing one per cent of the national
income.

The Licensing Bill provided ample evidence that the brewers were
the masters of the Tories soul. What happened in recent years in
France, when their most outstanding prime minister for twenty years
was thrown out of office by the "liquor lobby" because he tried to
stamp out the evils of widespread alcoholism, was preceded in Edwar
dian Britain by the unedifying spectacle of a Tory Party financed and
dominated by the brewers. "An un-Christian measure" was the most
blatantly impudent description which the Tories gave to the Licensing
Bill. Though some bishops supported the Liberal Government in its
efforts to stamp out drunkenness and control the liquor trade, many
of the clergy backed the brewers even from the pulpit. One clergyman
even held a service of protest on behalf of the brewers, but perhaps the
depths of political "verminism" were reached in the Peckham by-
election, which was hailed as a victory for the liquor trade. Casks of
free beer were doled out to lubricate the consciences of the semi-
literate. While placards in Peckham screamed "Thou shalt not steal"
an oblique and obscure reference to the Government s licensing
project hundreds of pounds were spent by brewers in backing the
Tory candidates.

While attacking the Lords for their sabotage of social measures,
Lloyd George threw himself enthusiastically into the quest for bringing
new means of security to the British people. He liked to give the
impression that his projects were thwarted at every stage by members

66 THE MASK OF MERLIN

of the Cabinet. "You are concerned with your friends, the dukes,"
he told Lord Loreburn, according to Sir Herbert Lewis.

It is hard to believe he could have had any just cause to make such
an offensive remark to a Lord Chancellor who was a radical above all
else, but it is part of the Lloyd Georgian myth that he brought social
security to Britain in the face of a partially hostile Cabinet. What he
did achieve was mastery of his subject so that in Cabinet discussions
he could argue from first-hand experience of social legislation in other
countries, resulting from his visits to Austria, Germany and Belgium.
He learned much from studying on the spot Belgium s "Ghent System"
of insurance against unemployment, and he was deeply impressed by
the higher standard of health achieved in Germany through her
national insurance scheme against ill-health. He borrowed some ideas
from all these various schemes* and worked out his compulsory and
contributory health insurance plan on a simple, if sketchy outline which
was handed over to C. F. G. Masterman to thrash out. Oddly enough,
the one man in the Cabinet who was most critical of all this was the
Socialist John Burns. Burns regarded the projects as "mainly pro
paganda for Lloyd George. In many ways," he added, "this insurance
scheme does not go far enough and the proposals for raising the money
are fundamentally unsound."

When he introduced the "People s Budget" in the House in 1909,
Lloyd George paid tribute to the social legislation of the countries he
had visited. He referred to Bismarck s "superb scheme" of insurance
for workmen and their families and he commented: "I hope our
competition with Germany will not be in armaments alone ... to
put ourselves on a level with Germany is to make some further pro
vision for the sick, for the invalided, for widows and orphans,"

His actual Budget speech was often diffuse and lacking in lucidity,
suggesting he had no real grasp of the complicated details of his newly
created fields of revenue. "The performance," recorded Dr. Thomas
Jones, "was a parliamentary failure. "

A sum of approximately 16 millions had to be raised in additional
revenue. Lloyd George was careful to point out that the building of
eight "Dreadnoughts" under the naval programme would add nearly
4&lt;f. on to income tax, but the crux of his Budget was that 8 millions
.had to be raised to preserve nearly 700,000 old people from the "horror
of the workhouse". "The workhouse," declared LI. G., "may be
better than hunger, but it is a humiliating end for men whose honest
toil won for them through life at least freedom, if not plenty. It (the
Budget) provides another million or two for the emancipation of the
pauper who is still in the grip of the Poor Law. There are at least
200,000 of these aged toilers who stand at the gates wistfully awaiting
the turn of the key with nothing between them now and their redemp
tion but the greed of the Lords."

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 67

The extra money required to finance his proposals Lloyd George
planned to raise as follows:

Income Tax ;3&gt;50O,ooo

Estate duties 2,850,000

Liquor duties 2,600,000

Tobacco duties 1,900,000

Spirits duties 1,600,000

Stamp duties 650,000

Tax on motors & petrol 600,000

New land taxes 500,000

The increases in direct taxation, though they raised a howl from the
Tories, were moderate enough. The idea of an autonomous fund from
motorists to pay for new roads and their upkeep has long since proved
to be a mirage. The weakest link in the financial provisions was the
land duties. Bearing in mind that Lloyd George had to carry not only
the Commons, but the Lords, too, in accepting his highly necessary,
but nevertheless revolutionary proposals, the land duties were a foolish
and unnecessarily provocative measure. It was almost entirely due to
the land taxes that the Budget increases were not accepted by the
Opposition. Lloyd George was warned that any move to bring in a
comprehensive system of land taxes on unearned increment of land
values and on undeveloped land would be rejected by the Lords, So
it was, by 350 votes to 75.

Lloyd George s idea of " minus site value" was declared by the
Scottish courts to be nonsensical. The land taxes produced very little
revenue and were soon abandoned. One of their worst features was
that they caused a decline in house-building which had serious and
lasting effects.

The "People s Budget" and the much publicised Limehouse speech
in which LL G. lashed out at the landowners produced an instan
taneous reaction by the Tories who set up anti-Budget Leagues all over
the country. The Duke of Beaufort told his tenants: "I would like to
see Churchill and Lloyd George in the middle of twenty couple of dog-
hounds."

Equally extravagant and inflammatory speeches were made by LL G.
A particularly ill-timed jest on the singularly inappropriate occasion
of the presentation of his portrait to the Law Society was his boast:
"I have no nest-eggs. I am looking for someone s hen-roost to rob
next year,"

This irresponsible remark from the Chancellor of the Exchequer
cost the Liberals many votes. In worst taste was his flamboyant
challenge: "Who is going to rule the country? The King and the
Peers? Or the King and the People? "

68 THE MASK OF MERLIN

The rejection of the Budget by the Lords led to the constitutional
crisis between the House of Lords and the Liberal Government. After
a General Election, in which the Liberals were returned with a reduced
majority, the Budget of the previous April was eventually passed by
the Lords on April 28, 1910, without a division. But by now the Liberals
knew that no major measure of reform could be passed as long as the
Lords held the power of the veto. So the Parliament Bill was intro
duced by the Prime Minister, providing that any Bill which had been
passed three times by the Commons must be accepted by the Lords.

Meanwhile, despite the constant shadow of obstruction by the House
of Lords, the Liberal Governments of the period from 1906 onwards
had given the country many measures of lasting value. Old Age
Pensions, the Labour Exchange Act, the Medical Inspection of School
children, the Education (Provisions of Meals) Act, all paved the way
towards a form of Welfare State. If they were modest measures com
pared with what has been achieved since, it must be remembered that
the task of a Liberal Government^ even with a large majority, was
always hampered by the disgraceful manner in which the Tories
invoked the Lords power against the will of the people.

One final comment might usefully be made to illustrate the muddled
and antediluvian thinking of the Tories of Edwardian days. It was
provided by the gambling spendthrift, Mr. Henry Chaplin, when
speaking in the House of Commons on the Old Age Pensions Bill:
"It had ever been the purpose of my life to do nothing that would
sap the foundations of thrift among the poor."

Sir Harold Nicolson, a most moderate, detached and keenly intel
lectual observer of the political scene, recently told Kenneth Harris 1
that he joined the Labour Party because "I ve always hated the
Tories". This statement more clearly perhaps than any other explains
how the behaviour of the Tories in the days before 1914 aroused hatred
in the breasts of those of their own class who tried to think honestly
and preserve a social conscience. Asked how he first became aware of
"hating" them, he replied: "When I was ten. It seemed to me that
a certain number of people who used to come to my father s house
as a diplomatist he entertained all parties, of course believed above
all in pomp and grandeur. It was an indefinite idea, but the feeling
I had about them was positive. The idea became definite when I was
between seventeen and eighteen. My father was then Ambassador to
Russia and I went out to spend a vacation with him at St. Petersburg.
I saw the behaviour of the Russian Court. I thought it was horrible.
I transferred my hatred of their cruelty, indifference and selfishness to
their opposite numbers at home the Tories."

If the effect of the Tories on Nicolson, a patrician, was such, then
political "verminism", coupled by the abysmal ignorance in the Tory

1 Observer, 1961.

VERMIN AMONG THE ERMINE 69

ranks, easily explains, though it does not excuse, the adoption of Tory
tactics in his speeches by Lloyd George. Indeed, in the light of his
own softness towards vested interests when at the Board of Trade, it
makes these tactics appear strangely insincere. By employing them he
began to destroy the confidence of the floating voter in Liberalism.
Admittedly the electorate needed an infusion of forthright and dynamic
oratory which would in simple terms and by brilliant similes show
them what the Tories really stood for. This Lloyd George gave the
people, but in the long run it was the Labour Party that benefited from
it. LI. G. did the spade work for the Labour Party in those days; it
was a more effective spade than that wielded by the mystical and
fastidious Mr. Ramsay MacDonald.

Fortunately the political bitterness of those days is something which
has never been witnessed in Britain since. But in 1910 the words
"Traitor!" "Swine!" and "Liberal Scum!" were frequently heard
in the House of Commons, and even the Prime Minister was prevented
from speaking by the prolonged and organised uproar by the Oppo
sition. "For God s sake defend him from the cats and the cads," was
the plea of the Prime Minister s wife in a hastily scribbled note sent
from the gallery to Sir Edward Grey.

THE BID FOR POWER

"Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit. ..."

John Dryden

For the constitutional battle that raged around the subject of the veto
by the Lords A. J. Balfour must take considerable responsibility. As
far back as the General Election of 1906 he had laid down the prin
ciple that the Conservative Party "whether in power or whether in
opposition should still control the destinies of the country".

In spite of the threat to create sufficient new peers favourable to the
Liberal Government to secure the passage of the Parliament Bill, the
Lords held out. Towards the end of King Edward s reign the loyalty
of the peers to the Grown was a little strained. King Edward, though
always a strict constitutionalist, was suspected by some of being more
favourably disposed to the Liberals than the Tories. This was not an
accurate diagnosis of the King s attitude. The fact was that, in con
trast to his mother, who had never disguised her pro-Tory sentiments,
King Edward, by his strictly neutral approach, appeared to be sym
pathetic to the Liberal Government in its acute dilemma over the
Lords controversy. The King had surprised his critics when he came
to the throne by displaying a seiious-mindedness which had never been
apparent in the play-boy Prince. His common sense and gift of humour
had also enabled him to be popular with all classes and he had a flair
for understanding the European scene a great deal better than some
statesmen. He had no illusions that, if the monarchy was to survive,
it must appear to be far more constitutional than had been the case
in the Victorian age. He made close friends with one or two members
of the Liberal Cabinet, of whom Haldane was perhaps the favourite.
With the Liberal War Minister he travelled incognito in Germany
and Austria, drinking coffee at roadside cafes and having tea with the
monks at Teppel.

Yet the controversy over the House of Lords clouded the last years
of his life. He heard the whispers of some Tory peers that he was
secretly encouraging the Liberals and that he had "betrayed his class "

THE BID FOR POWER 71

and "sold the Lords for the messpot of the Cassels" a disgraceful
and utterly untrue reference to his friendship with Sir Ernest Cassel
"the King s dam banker and moneylender" as some Tories called
him. Such scurrilous gossip hurt the King deeply.

Lloyd George s views on the King varied with to his moods.
According to his brother, Mr. William George, in one diary entry after
he had settled a railway strike, LL G. wrote: "The King was against
the working-man in the matter of the strike. . . . He is a Tory at heart
and I came away hating all kings." Yet on another occasion he des
cribed King Edward as "a shrewd and sensible old boy and our first
real constitutional monarch".

When the King died a truce was called in the constitutional crisis.
The Tories, some of whom had been openly gleeful at the old King s
passing, believed that King George V, who was more conservative by
nature than his father, would side with them and resist the plan to
create additional peers to give the Liberals a majority in the Lords.
It was a foolish illusion.

Nevertheless the new King sought to take advantage of the Party
truce by proposing a conference on the constitutional question. On the
Liberal side the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, Augustine Birrell and
Lord Grewe were joined at the conference table by Balfour, Austen
Chamberlain, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Gawdor for the Tories. It
was this abortive conference which marked Lloyd George s first open
bid for power.

The questions to which the conference was supposed to limit itself
were, first, the relation of the two Houses regarding the passing of
financial measures; second, provision of some machinery to deal with
the persistent disagreement between the Houses; and, third, the possi
bility of coming to some agreement as to change in the composition
and numbers of the House of Lords to ensure that it would act fairly
between the two major parties in the state.

The idea of resuming the political controversy immediately the new
King came to the throne was repugnant to Asquith, and doubtless he
felt there were moral advantages for the Liberal Party in offering to
explore the possibilities of a compromise. That the Tories were sus
picious of Liberal motives can be judged from Lord Lansdowne s
comment on a suggestion that the conference should meet during
the summer at Lord Grewe s country house: "Will not criticism
at the hands of our friends be much more severe, if it can be said
that we had been softened by the excellence of Crewe s champagne
and the other attractions of a hospitable and luxurious country
house?"

But if there was any "softening" with champagne or any other
luxurious attractions, it would seem that the Chancellor of the Ex
chequer rather than the Tories was the victim. Did Lloyd George

72 THE MASK OF MERLIN

mellow under the influence of closer and more informal contact with
the Tory leaders, or did he see this conference as a means to paving
the way to a Coalition Government in which he would eventually hold
the reins of power? However strange it may seem in the light of his
earlier speeches, the most virulent critic of the Lords in public speedily
became the chief exponent of compromise in private. In honeyed
whispers he was heard at the dinner tables of Mayfair to give the
words " Coalition Government" a melodious and seductive air. Though
the conference was strictly confidential, leakages occurred and it is
significant that they nearly all came from Lloyd George.

It was the Liberal Chancellor who, regardless of the fact that it
meant a betrayal of the wishes of a majority of the British people and
the end of any further ambitious social legislation, suggested privately
to Balfour that there should be a "National Government". His plan
was to concede to the Tories a stronger Navy, which they had been
wanting and he had been condemning, to have compulsory military
service (which the Tories on their own would have never dared to
suggest), a compromise on Home Rule for Ireland, for Asquith to
remain Prime Minister temporarily, but to go to the House of Lords.
There was no mention of Disestablishment of the Church in Wales,
to which Lloyd George was now committed absolutely.

Arthur Balfour, as nimble as a monkey in his political acrobatics,
cynically encouraged the idea, while hypocritically commenting (as
Mr. Roy Jenkins tells in Mr. Balfoufs Poodle}: "Now, isn t that like
Lloyd George, Principles mean nothing to him never have. His
mind doesn t work that way. It is both his strength and weakness."

When The Times recorded the death of Lord Balfour in 1930, in
referring to these events it stated that "a common programme of a
Ministry was laid down, Mr. Asquith being excluded. Balfour, how
ever, declined to take part in this intrigue." Why, if Balfour had
originally encouraged the idea, did he now turn it down? One must
deduce that he saw this as a subtle move by Lloyd George to oust
Asquith. Obviously, with a Liberal majority in the country, Lloyd
George could have demanded the Premiership in any National Govern
ment.

Asquith s biographers took the view that Asquith was "certainly
aware that Mr. Lloyd George was conferring with Mr. Balfour".
How much Asquith knew of the intrigue they do not say, but it is
almost equally certain that he viewed the whole affair with tolerant
amusement, knowing full well that nothing was likely to come of it.

Winston Churchill was undoubtedly involved in the National Govern
ment proposal at an early stage. Mr. Malcolm Thomson tells
us that Churchill "as LL G. s intimate friend was aware of the dis
cussions", and that he wrote to LI. G. saying, "Let us dine on Tuesday
and talk to Grey about it all." "This," adds Mr. Thomson, "underlines

THE BID FOR POWER 73

the fact that up to this point most of the Cabinet were in complete
ignorance of Lloyd George s secret negotiations with Balfour."

After twenty-one meetings the conference broke down owing to the
rigidity of the Tory Diehards. But it showed that Lloyd George could
switch from violendy partisan campaigning one day to plotting with
the Opposition the next, without a care about the betrayal of political
principles any such surrender would involve. For the truth is that a
"National Government" in 1910 or 1911 would have been more of a
mockery than either the Lloyd George-controlled Coalition of 1916-23
or the Tory-manipulated National Governments of 1931-40.

In the end Asquith obtained from the King a pledge to create 250
new Peers in the event of the Lords again throwing out the Parliament
Bill, and this pledge proved decisive. Lord Simon described the final
scene in this prolonged melodrama as a "climax not to be forgotten".
Margot Asquith, in more vivid vein, told how "there were Diehards
and other Peers who were fighting each other; friend attacked friend
and the issue remained uncertain until the last moment ... the Arch
bishop of Canterbury was cursed and blessed as he moved from group
to group, persuading and pleading with each to abstain".

In the end the Parliament Bill was passed by the narrow margin of
seventeen votes, most peers abstaining from voting. Thus the House
of Lords had its weapon of the veto rendered harmless and democracy
prevailed. From across the German Ocean the Prussian war lords
hailed this "storm in a teapot" the Kaiser s own description as a
sign of the frivolity and decadence of the British nation.

The years between 1908 and the outbreak of war in 1914 witnessed
a slow but significant metamorphosis in Lloyd George s political out
look. Though he took pains to hide the fact in public, he became much
less of a Party man. His friendship with Churchill had brought him
into contact with the younger Tories, and in F. E. Smith he found a
companion who was witty, amusing and preferable to some of the
staider Liberals.

Lloyd George s visits abroad became more frequent and these en
couraged him to develop ideas of his own on foreign policy. In 1908
he went to Germany, met the Vice-Chancellor of the German Empire
and expressed his enthusiasm for the "German way of doing things",
allowing himself to be freely quoted by a reporter of Neue Freie Presse
of Vienna, warmly advocating an Anglo-German understanding. Back
at home he was criticised for his intrusion into foreign policy. Later,
after a visit to Stuttgart, the Daily News declared that Lloyd George
would resign from office if more than four new capital ships were laid
down.

The least doctrinaire of men, impatient of tradition and theory,

74 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Lloyd George s mind was unburdened by what Hazlitt called the
"regular gradations of a classical education". To many this would
have been a disadvantage; to Lloyd George it was an asset. Because
he was free from the inhibitions of learning, his mind ranged far and
wide, picking up and storing away information which many politicians
would have disregarded. Whatever he lacked in education and ad
ministrative training was compensated for by his insatiable curiosity
and constant questioning of people. He picked other people s brains,
but, unerringly, he knew what to reject and what to accept. His
"private intelligence service" was talked about as a joke in the smoking
room of the House of Commons some years before the war, but it was
much more comprehensive and better organised than was generally
realised at that date. From the time he was at the Board of Trade,
LI. G. had built up in haphazard, but certainly not ineffective, fashion
a system of contacts in all continents, providing him with a wealth of
industrial, naval, military and political intelligence. Between 1908 and
1923 he was one of the best-informed men in Europe, and in Cabinet
discussions he was frequently better briefed than departmental
ministers on subjects within their own province.

One of the principal links in his private intelligence chain was a
fellow-countryman named Isaac Roberts, a relative of his youthful
friend from Caernarvon who had emigrated to Patagonia. It was
Isaac Roberts who aroused LI. G. s interest in the Welsh settlement in
Patagonia and in trade with Argentina, an interest which was later
developed by his close association with Viscount St. Davids. Roberts,
who had contacts in many countries, urged Lloyd George to con
centrate on finding out how Britain s control and influence over all
areas where oil was to be found could be extended. It was this pre
occupation with the subject of oil that led LI. G. to form an acquain
tanceship with one of the strangest characters ever to have sat in the
House of Commons Ignaz Trebitsch, otherwise known as Ignatius
Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln, the Hungarian Jew who became an
English clergyman, a member of Parliament, a spy against Britain
and, finally, a Buddhist monk.

As a young man Trebitsch had met Isaac Roberts in South America
where he had acted for him as an adviser on oil prospects in the
Americas. When, having been ordained a deacon of the Church of
England by the Archbishop of Montreal, Trebitsch came to Britain
in 1903 he was appointed curate at Appledore in Kent. Later, armed
with a letter of introduction from Isaac Roberts, he made the acquain
tance of LI. G. One of Trebitsch s churchwardens at Appledore has
told how Lloyd George came more than once to listen to the curate
preach: "One day he told me he was going to London to see Lloyd
George. If the interview was satisfactory, Trebitsch said, he would
leave the Church."

THE BID FOR POWER 75

Presumably the interview was satisfactory, for Trebitsch gave up
his curacy, went to live in Hampton and changed his name to Timothy
Lincoln. Lloyd George welcomed the new recruit to the Liberal fold
and promised to sponsor him. Then Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, the
cocoa manufacturer and a philanthropist of the Society of Friends,
engaged Lincoln as a research specialist, sending him all over the
continent to investigate the conditions of the labouring classes. Years
afterwards Rowntree explained: "For three and a half years Lincoln
was my head investigator in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary and
Switzerland. I chose him because he was an accomplished linguist,
being able to speak ten languages, and also because of a personal
recommendation from Mr. Lloyd George."

It is not without some significance that the man whom Mr. Rowntree
selected upon Lloyd George s recommendation was engaged on the
very type of research which LI. G. himself most urgently required in
connection with his schemes for national insurance.

Nothing could have suited Lincoln s purpose better than these trips
round the continent with all expenses paid by Rowntree. Under the
guise of a student of the lot of the working classes he was able to collect
all sorts of information useful to him, not only to further his ambitions
for a political career, but to establish business contacts and, ultimately,
for espionage.

When his naturalisation papers were granted he was adopted as
Liberal candidate for Darlington in April, 1909. Two facts about this
nomination are of interest: the meeting at which he was adopted was
private and, though Darlington was a Quaker stronghold, Lincoln did
not owe his candidature to his employer. Seebohm Rowntree later
repudiated that he had sponsored Lincoln s political career in any way,
though he admitted that some of the money he advanced to him may
have been used for election expenses.

Whoever foisted Lincoln on to the Liberals of Darlington remains
somewhat of a mystery, but it is possible that Lloyd George played a
part in it. Certainly Lincoln received on the eve of poll the following
letter from LI. G. : " You have my heartiest good wishes in your contest
at Darlington. A win at Darlington would be a great victory for Free
Trade and Liberalism, and I am fully confident that the vigour with
which you have conducted your campaign and the excellence of our
case will combine to defeat the forces of reaction and Protectionism.*

Liberals looked askance at this black-bearded eccentric, but Lincoln
attracted to his side the more advanced radicals as he expounded a
fiery, left-wing brand of Liberalism. Despite his broken English, his
oratory made a considerable impression on audiences, and his election
programme in January, 1910, was notable for a remarkable address to
constituents which was headed: "This is the last will and testament of
we, the people of Great Britain and Ireland, defenders of our faith in

76 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the country we call our own, in which we have been graciously per
mitted by the Lords to exist."

This was the bitterly fought Commons versus Lords election, and
Lincoln made a devastating attack upon the upper House with the
slogan: "That which God hath given let not the Lords take
away."

Whether the electorate was apathetic, amused by this phenomenon
in their midst, or bemused by his mixture of patriotic and religious
fervour, one cannot tell, but he was elected by a majority of twenty-
nine votes and soon important Liberals, business men, stockbrokers
and company promoters were flocking to the London home of the
new M.P.

Lloyd George was at this time closely interested in the Galician oil
fields and Lincoln was his chief informant on the subject. Lincoln,
however, lost so much in speculations in this part of the world un
doubtedly it was not his own money that he was unable to raise the
funds to stand for Parliament at the next election. When his creditors
were called together early in 1911 he had gross liabilities of 17,118,
due, he claimed, to the investment of some 20,000 in the proposed
amalgamation of certain pipe-lines and oilfields in Galicia.

According to Moses Roberts, Lloyd George "Used Trebitsch Lincoln
as an adviser on the oil market. This arrangement dated back many
years and I believe LI. G. actually met Lincoln through Isaac Roberts
in the Argentine in 1896."

This association may amount to little more than a minor political
diversion in Lloyd George s career, but it indicates how the Welshman
cultivated the strangest and most diverse personalities when he felt
they could be of use to him.

Lloyd George s usually ebullient spirits were at their lowest ebb in
the months which preceded the first shot in World War I. The Liberal
Government was wilting under the blows of the Ulster rebels who were
openly threatening civil war in Ireland, and LI. G. was profoundly
pessimistic about the future. In this he showed a great deal more
imagination than some of his colleagues, though his deductions were
somewhat wide of the mark. He feared there would be war, yet sought
excuses for avoiding rather than averting the calamity. His moods
took on a dangerously escapist form and he retreated more often to
Caernarvonshire, there to consort with some of his former pacifist
cronies and talk of quitting politics altogether.

Lloyd George wanted to know the strength of pacifist feeling in the
country and whether he could waft himself to power as its sole articulate
interpreter in the Government. "Intimate peace-loving friends in
Wales," wrote Dr. Thomas Jones, "had been urging Lloyd George to

THE BID FOR POWER 77

stand for isolation and keep the country free from foreign entangle
ments, and he was aware that his own strong distaste for armaments
was shared by many Liberals."

Early in January, 1914, he gave to the Daily Chronicle what Asquith
called "a heedless interview", calling for economy in the naval esti
mates and arguing that there was an improvement in Anglo-German
relations. F. E. Smith attacked these views as being those of a "clumsy
amateur whose hands are already too full and who has never lost an
occasion in compromising and injuring this country in attempts to
advertise himself".

It is notable that, though Lloyd George did not take kindly to any
criticism, he never seemed to mind the sharpest barbs from F. E.
Smith s tongue. Their personal friendship remained unimpaired.

Immediately after giving his Daily Chronicle interview Lloyd George
went to Algeria for a holiday. This was an admirable time and place
for an exodus from Britain s winter gloom, but relaxation was not what
he had in mind. He chose Algeria because he had been tipped off by
Trebitsch Lincoln that oil had been tapped in this annexe of Metro
politan France and that there was an excellent chance for Britain to
obtain concessions.

Proof of this was supplied by a former official of the SodiU d Etude et
Recherche du Petrole, who was asked to make a report of LI. G. s Algerian
visit for French oil interests. " We knew all about Trebitsch Lincoln,"
he said, "and both the Deuxieme Bureau and private oil interests were
watching his activities for we suspected he was a double agent for
Britain and Germany.

"That was what alarmed us, for we feared that Lincoln, with his
known friendship for Lloyd George, was planning to divide up North
African oil areas by working out concessions for Britain and Germany.

"Lloyd George was very astute. He asked several questions about
the extent of our prospecting, how much capital we needed. He even
forecast that the oil area in Algeria would prove to extend into Tunisia
from Gap Bon across the Kairouan pocket to Sfax, Gafsa and the Isle
of Djerba. It wasn t until after World War II that this forecast was
actually confirmed."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer must have acted promptly in
advising that Britain should invest in Algerian oil, for, in 1915, one
of his oldest associates in the Liberal Party, the Master of Elibank,
went out there on behalf of the oil company of S. Pearson and Com
pany and tried to get concessions. By then the French Government
suspected that this was part of a deeply laid British Government plot
and they flatly refused to co-operate. Yet in 1919 Lloyd George tried
again, this time through the medium of Sir Basil Zaharoff, who secured
concessions to the extent of one-third for the British and two-thirds
for the French.

78 THE MASK OF MERLIN

In the next few months of 1914 Lloyd George began a campaign to
organise a movement towards pacifism in the radical Press. He argued
that "if we went on spending and swelling the Navy s strength, we
should wantonly provoke other nations".

His campaign brought him into opposition to Admiral Jellicoe, a
vendetta he pursued vindictively for some years.

But the Tories, while noisily demanding more warships, were be
having as though the only menace on the horizon was not Germany,
but the Irish Nationalists. D. W. Brogan traces this "unprecedented
collapse of the political sense of the English governing class" in the
years before the war to humiliations inflicted by the Boers being
destructive to imperial self-esteem. But the truth was that since the
passing of the Marquis of Salisbury there had been no stern hand to
keep in check the delinquent aristocrats and irresponsible filibusters
who formed the hard core of Toryism.

So the Curragh episode, one of the most deplorable in modern history,
became a mutiny simply because there was, as A. P. Ryan has summed
up, "A classic confusion of orders." Thus it was that a group of Army
officers, urged on by the Tories, encouraged in a disgraceful manner
by Sir Henry Wilson (who deserved to be dismissed from the Service),
made it known that they were not prepared to carry out their duties
to the Crown by putting down any attempt at armed insurrection by
Ulstermen against Home Rule. The political temperature in Britain
in these months can only be compared to that of France when the
Croix de Feu was rampant, or Spain shortly before the Civil War.

Politically, Trebitsch Lincoln had during his brief Parliamentary
career followed a policy which was very similar to Lloyd George s.
Some of his speeches, indeed, might almost have contained phrases
written by LI. G. In one such speech at Darlington, Lincoln told his
constituents: "It is no use, it is worse than useless, to cry out against
the building of big ships while we employ methods of diplomacy and
carry on a foreign policy which gave birth to dreadnoughts. People
say we must have a strong Navy and I say, too, we must have a strong
Navy, but let us change our foreign policy and then other nations will
follow.

"Let us encourage a policy of peace and then we shall be able to
diminish our armaments. Our relations with Germany are much better
than they were a few years ago. They could be better still with a
different approach. We should regard each other not as rival nations,
but as two great Empires/*

In July, 1914, little more than a week after the assassination of
Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo, Lloyd George told a group of bankers
at the London Guildhall: "In the matter of external affairs the sky

THE BID FOR POWER 79

was never more perfectly blue." No one so shrewd and well informed
as the Chancellor of the Exchequer could possibly have believed that
this was other than a travesty of the facts. Not even the bland assurance
of Sir Samuel Hoare early in 1939 that "a golden age of prosperity "
was "just around the corner" can compare with this tergiversation.
Lloyd George went on to say: "Take a neighbour of ours." This was
a reference to Germany. "Our relations are very much better than they were
a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see,
more especially in the Press of these two great, I will not say rival nations,
but two great Empires."

The italics emphasise those parts of Lloyd George s speech which
were practically identical with what Lincoln had said a year or two
earlier. Was it just a coincidence that the Hungarian Jew and the Welsh
man thought on the same lines and that they used the same phrases?
Or could it be that Lloyd George had employed Lincoln as a sounding
board for his own opinions and had, in fact, supplied him with material
for some at least of his speeches?

As Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George skilfully set out to
mobilise financial and City opinion against participation in the war
by Britain. Long dealings with the City had convinced him that
businessmen generally were always against war unless they could get
something out of it. Thus he sought in the City right-wing allies who
would make uncomfortable but seducible bedfellows for the left-wing
pacifists.

One finds ample evidence of the way his mind was working by his
statement in Pearson s Magazine in March, 1915, that "a poll of the
electors of Great Britain would have shown ninety-five per cent against
embroiling this country in hostilities. Powerful City financiers, whom
it was my duty to interview this Saturday (August, 1914) on the
financial situation, ended the conference with an earnest hope that
Britain would keep out of it."

Lloyd George s Guildhall speech must have been just what the
Prussian Junkers wanted to hear. If anything were needed to encourage
the belief that Britain would remain neutral, that was it. LI. G. was,
in effect, the appeaser-in-chief of Germany.

Just as Montagu Norman, Lord Stamp and other bankers were pro-
German during 1934-39 so in 1914 was there a partiality towards
Germany and a peace movement in the City of London. Business and
banking interests in London were closely linked with their counter
parts in Berlin and Vienna. So it was comparatively easy for LL G.
to find allies in financial circles.

Sir Walter Cunliffe, Governor of the Bank of England, an upright
but ineffectual man, was told by the Chancellor that "this war storm
will produce a financial crisis of the first magnitude". Furthermore,
said LI. G., he had evidence from an unimpeachable source on the

80 THE MASK OF MERLIN

continent that international financiers in Paris and elsewhere were
deliberately fomenting war to stir up a crisis. "This war talk is all a
ramp by cosmopolitan bankers. If we stand firm and aloof from what
is going on in Central Europe, everything will settle down normally."

What was the unimpeachable source on the continent? French
intelligence reports of the period insisted that Trebitsch Lincoln was
" feeding anti-French stories of speculation on the Paris Bourse to the
English Chancellor". 1 After March, 1914, there is no evidence that
Lloyd George and Lincoln maintained any direct contacts. If they
did, it must have been a carefully guarded secret. But equally is there
no evidence that Lloyd George repudiated Lincoln who, when war
came, was still a member of the National Liberal Club and for several
weeks after the outbreak of war worked as a censor of Hungarian and
Rumanian correspondence at the War Office and Post Office.

Sir Walter Cunliffe consulted colleagues in the banking world. In
a state of panic, after they had heard the Chancellor s warnings, they
asked CunlifFe to go back and urge on Lloyd George that they were
totally against Britain being drawn into war. Once again the capitalist
forces were on the side of the big battalions.

On the very day, July 23, that Austria was handing an ultimatum
to Belgrade, the Chancellor announced in the House of Commons that
"next year there will be a substantial economy without interfering in
the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy 3 . Eight days later
he assured the Cabinet that Britain could not afford a war, which
would mean "immediate bankruptcy for her".

The panic in the City of London at the end of July, 1914, was some
thing unprecedented. The utter chaos in the financial structure should
have provided ample justification for nationalising the Bank of England
immediately. The merchant bankers had absolutely no knowledge of
modern economic theory at this time. Indeed none of them knew
exactly what foreign balances the nation held. How could they?
There was no means of knowing; even the Treasury was completely
in the dark.

Lord Morley in his Memorandum on Resignation cast some light on
these intrigues between Lloyd George and the City when he referred
to "a very remarkable piece of intelligence communicated to the
Cabinet" by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. According to Morley,
LI. G. told the Cabinet:

"He had been consulting the Governor and Deputy Governor of the
Bank of England, other men of light and leading in the City, also cotton
men and steel and coal men in the north of England, in Glasgow, etc.,
and they were all aghast at the bare idea of plunging into a European
conflict; how it would break down the whole system of credit with
London at its centre, how it would cut up commerce and manufacture

1 Documents politiquis de la guerre.

Topix Picture Service

A portrait in his early days as M.P.

Radio Times Hulton Picture Library

Dame Margaret Lloyd George.

THE BID FOR POWER 8 1

they told him how it would hit labour and wages and prices
and, when winter came, would inevitably produce violence and
tumult."

Asquith was caustic about the panic in the City. "They are/ he
said, "the greatest ninnies I ever had to tackle. I found them all in a
state of funk like old women chattering over their teacups in a cathedral
town." It was an apt commentary. No one could either believe or
understand what was happening in financial circles. Confidence had
disappeared overnight; everyone was screaming to sell and stock
brokers were rushing around stampeding the market; withdrawals
from the banks assumed abnormal proportions, London, the financial
centre of the world, was revealed in those days as the House of Usher
of banking circles. Within a few days its legend of stability and omnis
cience was destroyed for all time. Up went Bank Rate to ten per cent.
There was a clamour for gold such as Midas could never have imagined.
But if the City panicked, Lloyd George had certainly done everything
to stimulate the stampede and by word of mouth and lack of action
to publicise stories of a financial crisis.

Later poor Cunliffe, who considered he had been disgracefully
misled by the Chancellor, said: "Mr. Lloyd George was indeed lucky
that Bank Holiday fell on August 3 and so allowed a day s grace for
measures to be taken to avoid a serious crisis. If it hadn t been a Bank
Holiday, the whole finance of the nation would have collapsed in
ruins."

In the event the holiday for the banks was extended a further three
days to enable safety measures to be taken. These could and should
have been carried out earlier.

Yet it was unlike Lloyd George to neglect to take action swiftly
when a crisis developed: this failure to do so may perhaps be explained
by his increasing doubts about how the threat of war should be met.
Three years previously, despite his occasional pacifist speeches already
mentioned, he had shown his concern about the international situation
by writing this letter to Winston Churchill:

"I have been reading the Foreign Office letters. They are full of
menace. ... I am not at all satisfied that we are prepared, or that we
are preparing. Weeks ago when I thought war a possibility I urged
upon Grey the importance of Russia as a factor. I wanted him to
ascertain definitely what Russia would do, and could do, in the event
of war. . . . We ought to know what R. is capable of before we trust
the fortunes of Europe to the hazard. We are even now almost at the
point whence we can t recede."

In another letter to Churchill he showed even greater foresight,
urging that "150,000 British troops supporting the Belgian Army on
the German flank would be a much more formidable proposition than
the same number of troops extending the French line. It would force

82 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the Germans to detach at least 500,000 men to protect their lines of
communication ".

But the mood of 191 1 had been replaced by pessimism in the summer
of 1914. Lloyd George as Chancellor stressed again and again that in
his opinion war would mean financial ruin. Did he deliberately delay
taking the requisite financial measures because he hoped that by doing
so he would confront the Cabinet with a picture of economic chaos if
Britain entered the war? No one, least of all his colleagues, could
quite say what was going on in his mind. His activities do not seem
to have been confined to financial and economic matters in those last
desperate days of July. Long afterwards Count Mensdorff, Austrian
Ambassador in London in 1914, stated that at the end of July he
received "assurances from a very prominent British politician" that
Britain would in "no case intervene if war broke out". This politician
was certainly not Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, who had
conversations with the Ambassador on July 28 and left him in no
doubt that Britain could not stand on one side. The archives of the
Austrian Foreign Office show that Count MensdorfF, "Had constant
access to Lloyd George who was consistently in favour of a peace policy
at this time and regarded Austria s case as a strong one and Servia s
as unsatisfactory. He saw no reason to support Servia in any circum
stances."

In case this seems to savour of propaganda on the part of Austrian
archivists who might be searching for excuses after the event, it is
interesting to note that Asquith himself in his contemporary notes
shared this viewpoint to some extent. He wrote on July 26: "The
curious thing is that on many, if not most, of the points, Austria has
a good and Servia a very bad case." But he obviously differed from
Lloyd George in his interpretation of the situation, for he added: "But
the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe. There is a
brutality about their mode of procedure which will make most people
think that this is a case of a Big Power wantonly bullying a little one,"

Meanwhile the battle in the Cabinet went on: at what point was the
honour and word of Britain committed to standing behind France,
Belgium and Russia in their hour of peril? That was the vital question
on which no one but a conscientious pacifist had any moral right to
dissent. Asquith, Churchill, Grey and Haldane had no doubts what
ever. Any infringement of the neutrality of Belgium meant that
Britain must enter the war, or her word in future would be worthless
and suspect.

Lloyd George, Lord Beauchamp and John Simon were the waverers,
ever seeking excuses for inaction; Morley and Burns, taking at least an
honest pacifist view, were adamant against war at any cost. Asquith s
diary comment on his Cabinet at the time was: "Winston, who has a
pictorial mind, brimming with ideas, is in tearing spirits at the prospect

THE BED FOR POWER 83

of war, which to me shows a lack of imagination; Crewe is wise and
keeps an even keel; no one can force Grey s hand; LL G. is nervous;
Haldane, Samuel and McKenna very sensible and loyal."

It was touch and go at this time as to who would break up the
Cabinet first Churchill, straining at the leash to mobilise the Fleet,
or Lloyd George, painting a picture of financial doom and chaos.
Between Churchill and Lloyd George passed a barrage of staccato
messages trying to establish a bridge between their opposing points of
view. On August i, Churchill wrote to the Chancellor: "I am most
profoundly anxious that our long co-operation may not be severed. I
implore you to come and bring your mighty aid to the discharge of
our duty."

The turning point for Lloyd George came when he acquiesced in the
decision to send an ultimatum to Germany. Only Burns and Morley
resigned from the Cabinet. What may have caused this change of
mind was an intimation that, if he persisted in opposing intervention,
the Tories would be prepared to join in a Coalition Government from
which he would be excluded.

There is, however, a more illuminating clue to his sudden switch
from being the exponent of pacifism to that of the driving force in the
conduct of the war in Walter Runciman s description of his state of
mind in Master and Brother, by A. C. Murray:

"When the crisis came it found Lloyd George vacillating. Right up
to tea-time on Sunday, August 2, he was doubtful of the action he
would take. He told us that he would not oppose the war, but he
would take no part in it, and would retire for the time being to Cric-
cieth. He would not repeat his experience of 1899-1902. I remember
him saying that he had had enough of standing out against a war-
inflamed populace . Right up to the moment we received news that
the Germans had crossed the Belgian frontier, he left us in doubt as
to what was his view and what action he would take."

Moral obligations, the honouring of pledges and treaties had no
place then in his mental acrobatism. In the Cabinet he argued that if
Germany did no more than trespass on a small corner of Belgium, "it
might be overlooked". At the back of his mind was a firm determina
tion never again to be on the losing side, never again to face the mass
disapproval of his pro-Boer days. Had that experience cut deeper into
his soul than he himself thought possible at the time? This tendency
to "overlook" marked a further stage in the disintegration of his
character.

If he had doubts as to what his countrymen thought, they must have
been quickly dispelled at midnight on August 4, when, with the tolling
of Big Ben, the tocsin of patriotism sounded in the hearts of the crowds
who gathered outside Buckingham Palace and sang "God Save the
King". For a brief hour Britain was in mafficking mood again and

04 THE MASK OF MERLIN

short shrift was given to pacifists and doubters. Later that mood was
to be mellowed by the noble fatalism of Rupert Brooke, but it was also
to allow itself to be transmogrified into hysterical flag-wagging, the
distribution of white feathers by foolish spinsters of uncertain age and
a Germanophobia which was more intent on destroying so stalwart a
patriot as Haldane than on concentrating on overcoming the supreme
symbol of the Junkers, the wretched, envious German Emperor who
telegraphed to his wife:

"Pleased to be able to tell you that by the Grace of God the battles
of Cambrai, St. Quentin and La Fere have been won. The Lord has
gloriously aided. May He further help."

THE LIE THAT SINKETH

"Tis not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that
sinketh which doth the harm."

Francis Bacon

When Asquith was quizzed in the House of Commons in 1910 on his
plan of action if the Lords continued to thwart the will of the Commons,
he made four answers which were later to be twisted into one of the
worst examples of distortion ever employed in the history of British
newspapers.

These answers were:

" We had better wait and see."

"I am afraid that we must wait and see."

"The hon. member had better wait and see."

"The noble lord must wait and see."

The request to "wait and see" was remembered by Lloyd George.
Before the war had long been in progress he was cajoling Lord North-
cliffe to use it out of its context as a useful quotation for misrepresenting
the Prime Minister as one who believed in "waiting and seeing" as a
policy for waging war. By that time only students of Hansard could
remember on which occasion the phrase was first used.

This was but one typical example of the technique of the "lie that
sinketh" by which various politicians of the period sought to wage war
for their own personal aggrandisement. It was a heedless phrase that
dogged Asquith for the rest of his political life so that "wait and see"
was the image by which he came to be wrongly recognised by a new
generation. Thus it was in World War I that politicians, newspaper
magnates and mere wishful thinkers welcomed lies that helped to make
their wishes become realities; they combined to use the misfortunes of
war for besmirching their enemies and scrambling over their shoulders
to arrive in comparative comfort at "the pinnacle of sacrifice pointing
like a rugged finger to heaven".

On the morning of August 5 the Chancellor went back to the
Treasury to wrestle with financial problems. Possibly the chaos which
faced him took his mind away from the war. He was no economist,
nor had he a flair for abstruse monetary posers, but he was exhilarated
by the discovery that the experts at the Treasury were often completely

86 THE MASK OF MERLIN

baffled by the conundrums which war posed and that almost as often
their assessments of a situation were glaringly inaccurate. The truth
is that Treasury experts and the cosseted, donnish economists had
lived too long in the cloistered calm of middle-class Edwardian stability,
smug and safe in the knowledge that the pound sterling was the world s
safest currency and that God was, in His heaven, looking down benignly
on the paladins of monetary witchcraft. From Cunliffe to John May-
nard Keynes the latter was predicting financial ruin" if specie pay
ments were suspended they were all wrong at some time or other.

When the experts were proved wrong, Lloyd George took puckish
pleasure in their discomfiture. He seemed to draw strength from the
errors of others. Their confusion gave him a chance to jump ahead
of them and he would cover up his own ignorance of the intricacies of
high finance by alternately bullying and coaxing officials. At the
Treasury he showed boldness, power of decision and imagination, but
he rarely stopped to look beyond an immediate problem. He was the
architect of creeping inflation. Money was wanted at once. All right,
take it and spend it. It could always be borrowed. Never mind the
cost, or future inconvenience. Forget the National Debt. There were
always sinking funds which could be diverted.

"At the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George s work was not as successful
as at the Board of Trade," wrote Charles Mallet. "The truth is he
did not always master very thoroughly the financial problems with
which he had to deal. There are stories, well authenticated, of Treasury
officials who saw with dismay important papers tossed aside, while
the Minister invited them to talk to him instead."

Lloyd George never let the prospect of inflation worry him and he
was guilty of encouraging it by failing to increase taxation until after
people had liberally and ostentatiously adapted themselves to rising
incomes.

From the New World the financial tactics of the Chancellor and
his haphazard, makeshift plans for buying goods from U.S.A. were
noted with alarm by shrewder experts. Mr. H. P. Davison, a leading
partner in the House of Morgan and wholeheartedly behind the Allied
cause, was distressed to observe "the helter-skelter and at times almost
frantic" fashion in which different Allied purchasing agencies were
bidding against each other in the American markets. The recklessness
with which the British agencies in particular forced up prices and
wasted their money offended him, according to his partner and bio
grapher, Thomas Lamont.

But for Lloyd George it was now war at all costs. By September
I 9&gt; I 9 I 4&gt; k e had so far forgotten his suggestion that a minor trespass
on Belgian territory might be overlooked that he could tell a gathering
at the Queen s Hall with all the fervour at his command:

"I am fully alive to the fact that whenever a nation is engaged in

THE LIE THAT SINKETH 8j

war she has always invoked the sacred name of honour. Many a
crime has been committed in its name; there are some being committed
now.

"But all the same, national honour is a reality and any nation that
disregards it is doomed. Why is our honour as a country involved in
this war? Because we are bound by an honourable obligation to
defend the independence, the liberty and the integrity of a small
neighbour that has lived peaceably, but she could not have com
pelled us because she was weak.

"The man who declines to discharge his debt because his creditor
is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard."

To some of his Cabinet colleagues this last sentence must have
appeared as the very quintessence of hypocrisy when they recalled his
obstructiveness only a few weeks previously. But, oblivious of the irony
of his political metamorphosis, the Chancellor proceeded to fascinate
the nation with a series of passionately patriotic speeches, shot now
with silky cadences, then with forceful condemnation. His energy was
indisputable. He worked long hours at the Treasury, while finding
time to make speeches outside Parliament, and gradually began to
take the keenest interest in military operations. John Buchan wrote:
"Of all the civilians I have known, Lloyd George seems to have
possessed in the highest degree the capacity for becoming a great
soldier. But he might have lost several armies while he was learning
his trade."

Most of the Cabinet were disposed to leave purely military problems
to the experts. Only Churchill and Lloyd George set themselves up as
exponents of strategy, and the latter rapidly developed a contempt for
several of his colleagues whom he rated as incompetent when it came
to the arts of waging war. Within a few months of war starting, Lloyd
George had come to dislike Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener and both
inside and outside the Cabinet it often appeared that he deliberately
tried to antagonise the War Minister.

In choosing Kitchener as an adversary, Lloyd George fastened upon
the one man in the Government who, at the beginning of the war,
was a national hero and enjoyed the confidence of the greatest number
of people. On August 3, 1914, Kitchener was on his way back to
Egypt as H.M. Consul-General, but he had hardly boarded the channel
boat at Dover than he was ordered back to London by Asquith. With
out any preamble the Prime Minister told him he was to be Secretary
of State for War. This was a popular move in that it took the direction
of the military right out of the sphere of party politics, a highly desirable
change in view of the Curragh rebellion and the open hostility of some
of the Ulster-born generals for the Liberal leaders. "The Constable
of Britain," as Churchill called Kitchener, was at this time the most
powerful man in the country; he had his defects; he was shy, saturnine

88 THE MASK OF MERLIN

and secretive and had been too long away from Britain to be acclima
tised to its political processes. His mistrust of politicians was well
known; Asquith was one of the few in whom he had complete trust.

True, he neglected to take full advantage of the Territorial Army
created by Lord Haldane, but he raised in fourteen months, without
either compulsion or a national system of registration, an army of
2,257,521 men in the United Kingdom alone. He forecast that it
would be a long war and overruled those Lloyd George was among
them who said it would be finished in nine months. "The Chancellor
of the Exchequer will find war is not a matter of simple gestation,"
he told the Cabinet. "It will last for three to four years."

Nor was he a man who would rely solely on expert advice. When
his civil servants at the War Office insisted that no modern war could
possibly last a year and that 50,000 soldiers would be enough for a
volunteer army, he gave them a scathing look, said nothing, but added
a nought on their draft for a recruiting appeal.

Without question the war thrust a great strain on the looseness of
Cabinet procedure which, though workable in peacetime, lacked the
cohesion and impetus to swift action so vital in fighting for survival:
as Sir Edward Spears said, "The old coat of democracy, never intended
for wear at Armageddon, was showing white at the seams."

That was an understatement; the seams had already burst and an
unwieldy Cabinet could not satisfactorily cope with the day-to-day
problems of war. John Terraine wrote that "Cabinet meetings were
not minuted; there was no follow-through of any Cabinet decision,
beyond the sense of responsibility of individual Ministers; there was
not even a precise official definition of the decisions arrived at. The
fact that this system ever worked at all is a remarkable tribute to the
innate orderliness of the British character".

It was really a tribute to the type of minister which Asquith most
liked to have around him: men like Grey, Haldane, Crewe and Samuel.
Such men could make even so obviously outdated a system work, but
to Lloyd George and Churchill, both essentially impatient men, it
was anathema.

At the end of November, 1914, the opposing sides had dug them
selves into positions which, except for minor changes, they were to
occupy for the rest of the war. Stalemate had been reached. It was
then that the feud between the "Easterners" and the "Westerners"
on the conduct of the war developed. Grey, as Foreign Secretary, was
a redoubtable "Westerner", like Asquith; that is to say, he believed
the war must be won in the west and that diversions in the east, how
ever much they held the attractions of a "short cut to victory", tended
to weaken the effort in the west. Grey had an unerring judgment for
what was practicable. Thus he never did anything to upset relations
with the United States at a time when American commerce with the

THE LIE THAT SINKETH 89

Central Powers had almost ceased, with disastrous results for the U.S.
economy. "With a skill and foresight which one can only admire, the
British Foreign Office now advanced over the thin ice presented by
this delicate problem," wrote the American Walter Millis in Road to
War.

Lloyd George s mind was like a flight of swallows questing restlessly
for the dawn of spring that would break the monotony of winter dead
lock on the Western front. With Churchill he was the chief protagonist
of the strategy of the "Easterners", who took the view that imaginative
surprise thrusts could shorten the war by making a quick drive for
victory in the east at far less cost of life than the toll taken by the
bloody struggle in the mud of Flanders.

Churchill and Lloyd George both pressed this viewpoint on Asquith
and the Prime Minister agreed to set up a committee of the Cabinet,
in effect a War Council, to consider "all purposes connected with the
higher direction of the war". This was an improvement on the slow
and cumbersome machinery of the Cabinet for examining new strategic
proposals.

The ill-fated Dardanelles expedition was its unfortunate first progeny.

Two vital factors in modern history have been largely ignored by
those who have dealt with the events of the first two years of World
War I. First was the reckless and improvident custodianship of the
Treasury by Lloyd George, a heritage which has never since been
eradicated and which has made creeping inflation through increased
Government spending an insidious and persisting malaise in the British
economy. Second, and the sole reason that the deadliest effects of
Lloyd George s financial policy were never fully felt for some years,
was American aid to Britain.

When Roosevelt announced "Lease-Lend" and when General
Marshall launched his brave European Recovery Programme, each
was following a tradition established in World War I not by an
American Government, but by private bankers. In the first instance
the loans by these bankers were dictated by a natural desire to recover
from the depression of the autumn of 1914 and to pave the way to
the business revival in U.S.A. in 1915 by enabling the Allies to pur
chase munitions in America.

In the United States isolationists took a less realistic view. La
Follette s Magazine castigated the bankers and arms merchants with
the rhetorical query: "What do Morgan and Schwab care for world
peace when there are big profits in world war? We are underwriting
the success of the cause of the Allies. We have ceased to be neutral in
fact as well as in name."

But this was a narrow and unfair view. Neither Britain, nor the

go THE MASK OF MERLIN

other Allies, could buy the sinews of war without dollar credits, a
difficulty foreseen by American bankers long before it was appreciated
in London or Paris. J. P. Morgan and Company were alarmed by the
recklessness of Lloyd George: "He has no thought for the final bill/
declared Morgan. They were sufficiently alarmed to take the initiative
in finding an answer to it. That answer was the flotation of a war
loan whereby the American people could continue to supply the Allies
by providing them with the money to pay for the supplies.

Lloyd George at first declared himself "uninterested" in this plan,
but when the crisis became acute and Britain faced bankruptcy, an
Anglo-French Joint High Commission, headed by Lord Reading, went
to New York for the purpose of selling to the Americans the first big
Allied war loan.

Except for the generous and bold initiative of J. P. Morgan and
Company and the financial backing which they gave in 1915,
Britain must have suffered the biggest financial crash in her history.
From that day onwards sterling lost its dominance in world finance
and Britain became irrevocably entangled in a state of indebtedness to
the United States. But, looking at the situation from a broader view
point, it now meant that the economies of the Old World and the
New were so closely linked that each was concerned in the fate of the
other. It would be churlish not to pay tribute to the fact that J. P.
Morgan and Company took incredible risks in the early days solely
because their sympathies were wholeheartedly with the Allies. The
policy of this banking house was bold, imaginative and enlightened;
it sign-posted the routes which governments have followed.

Lloyd George s increasing interest in strategic matters was one
reason why he failed to come to grips with the problems besetting the
Treasury. The whispering campaign against Kitchener grew; it was
the same reckless technique of half-lies which had led to the downfall
of Haldane. Half-lies soon grew into the "lie that sinketh", so that
in his autobiography Haldane told how "my motives and the nature
of my efforts when I went to Berlin in 1912 were grossly misrepresented
by some newspapers. Every kind of ridiculous legend about me was
circulated. I had a German wife; I was the illegitimate brother of the
Kaiser; I had been in secret correspondence with the German Govern
ment ... on one day, in response to an appeal in the Daily Express,
there arrived in the House of Lords no less than 2,000 letters of protest
against my supposed disloyalty to the interests of the nation ... I
had gone to Germany too often and had read her literature too much,
not to give ground to narrow-minded people to say that Germany was
my * spiritual home* ".

The whispering campaign against Kitchener took a more insidious
form. No newspaper dared at this stage to criticise openly the man who
was a national hero, but in the lobbies of the House of Commons

THE LIE THAT SINKETH gi

malicious gossip was bandied around. Kitchener, said the gossips, was
effeminate, his handwriting was like a woman s; he had a passion for
collecting wild flowers; it was even asserted as proof of his "madness"
that, as a young subaltern in Cyprus, he had kept a bear as a pet. In
fact the bear was the pet of a Cyprus police officer, Lord John Kennedy,
with whom Kitchener had shared a house.

The image grew of Kitchener as an obstinate, antediluvian character
who had rigid views and too orthodox a training for modern war. Yet
his military career had not been purely conventional, and he was
balloonist and intelligence officer with the French in the Franco-
Prussian war, he had made a survey of Palestine and even spent one
of his periods of leave roaming around Egypt, disguised as a Levantine,
collecting information about Arabi Pasha s revolt, and he was
sufficiently interested in the broader aspects of life to make a study of
Ottoman law and to work out a scheme for rescuing the Egyptian
fellahin from moneylenders. But at the War Office, with intrigue,
malicious gossip and wicked slander emanating from back-biting
politicians, he was unhappy and ill at ease. The more he was attacked
in Cabinet the more silent he became. Yet Asquith found him "most
pleasant to work with".

He detested the popular Press and not without reason. The ridicu
lous optimism of some of these papers angered him with their stories of
"Belgian victories" and Germans starving and committing suicide,
when in fact the Allies were being steadily forced further back into
France.

The Lloyd Georgian opinion of Kitchener can be judged from his
remarks to Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) : "Kitchener talked
absolute twaddle, Max. No, that s not quite right. Let me put it this
way: he has a mind like a revolving lighthouse. Sometimes the beam
lights up all Europe and the opposing armies in vast and illimitable
perspective. Then the shutter comes round and for several weeks you
get blank darkness."

As the war progressed Lloyd George courted the Press increasingly.
Not content with having the ear of the radical papers, he sought the
friendship of the right-wing newspaper proprietors, Beaverbrook,
Northcliffe and Riddell. Of these men Max Aitken, as he then was,
was easily his shrewdest friend and critic, and the relationship between
them survived for a lifetime, despite all their many differences on
policy. On the other hand, Lloyd George s friendship with Northcliffe
was a stormy, brief-lived affair which eventually proved an embarrass
ment to the politician.

Leakages of Cabinet business mainly in the Northcliffe Press
were continually occurring. Mrs. Asquith noted in her diary: "When
I point out with indignation that someone in the Cabinet is betraying
secrets, I am counselled to keep calm. Henry is as indifferent to the

92 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Press as St. Paul s Cathedral is to midges, but I confess that I am not
and I can only hope that the man responsible for giving information

to Lord N will be heavily punished. God may forgive him: I

never can/

It was unfortunate that Henry Asquith did not listen to his wife s
warnings. He, with Grey, Haldane and Kitchener, were the chief
victims of a smear campaign that not only criticised their roles in the
war, but went so far as to suggest that Asquith s own family were pro-
German. Margot Asquith was at length driven to bring a libel action
in the Law Courts against the Globe and was awarded 1,000 damages.
But still the lies were published. It was her husband s gravest error
that he did not seek a show-down with Lloyd George early in the war
and dismiss him from the Cabinet for revealing state secrets. The
Prime Minister abhorred suspicion and intrigue and would have shrunk
from taking such drastic action against an old colleague. He main
tained that the essential task for a Prime Minister was not to waste
time on what he wrongly regarded as futile matters, but to wage war;
not to break up a Cabinet, but to settle differences of opinion and
achieve unity of purpose. With Lloyd George in a Cabinet that was
an almost impossible task. By this time lust for power had become a
drug to LI. G. He wanted new fields to conquer, finance bored him.
There was no glamour in juggling with figures; the glamour lay in
juggling with vast armies on the chessboard of the battlefields which
he had previously despised.

The year 1915 saw a series of events which gradually worked in
Lloyd George s favour. He himself had gloomily heralded the New
Year with a letter to the Prime Minister complaining that "I can see
no signs anywhere that our military leaders and guides are considering
any plans for extricating us from our present unsatisfactory position".

Then came the calamity of the Dardanelles, an amphibious enter
prise which, by the magnitude of its failure, was to prove a valuable
lesson in how not to wage war during 1939-45.

The Dardanelles operation was, perhaps, the sole chance the Allies
had of successfully breaking into enemy territory in the east. This
was the one occasion on which Asquith concurred in the strategy of the
"Easterners". But this brilliantly conceived Churchillian adventure
was unhappily doomed from the start by its author. Churchill s weak
ness had been to put a sentimental regard for a colleague before a
realistic appreciation of his demerits. The error which led to his down
fall in World War I was his recall of "Jacky " Fisher to the Admiralty.
Both before and during the Dardanelles expedition and the GaUipoli
campaign the quixotic behaviour and disgraceful display of tantrums
by Lord Fisher ruined all hope of success. Fisher not only hated the
conception of the Dardanelles operation, he obstructed its execution
when it was being carried out.

THE LIE THAT SINKETH 93

Mr. Alan Moorehead in an admirable narrative of the Gallipoli
campaign has shown that the naval attack, if pressed, would have
succeeded, and he vindicates Churchill from the charge that he wan
tonly threw away lives in an operation doomed to failure. But, more
important, he showed what the hastily drawn conclusions of the Dar
danelles Commission failed to explain that Turkey might have been
kept out of the war quite easily. This Mr, Moorehead was able to do
because he had studied Turkish sources of information not hitherto
available. Yet, in being an out-and-out enthusiast for the Gallipoli
campaign, Mr. Moorehead neglected to examine the obvious alter
native to that campaign which his research should have pointed
out to him. That alternative was not Salonika, but by diplomatic
and Secret Service channels to detach Turkey from the Central
Powers.

If Fisher was the stumbling block to effective naval-military co
operation in the campaign, certainly failure to take full advantage of
the weaknesses in the Turkish political situation was an equally decisive
factor. Diplomacy in this area was timorous, though the obvious
answer to this criticism must be that put forward by Grey to the
Dardanelles Commission that " diplomacy was perfectly useless with
out military success" to back it up.

Lloyd George s part in the Gallipoli story was negligible, but this
was another occasion on which he blundered into the diplomatic field
and nearly upset the plans not only of Grey but of the Naval Intelligence
Department of the Admiralty. According to Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt,
LI. G. was convinced against all available evidence that a gift of a
million pounds to Enver Pasha would change the policy of Turkey
and even bring that nation over to the Allied side. The idea behind
this suggestion was sound: it would have been wiser to have tried to
detach Turkey from Germany before launching a full-scale operation.
But the method proposed was little short of madness; there was never
the slightest evidence from intelligence sources that it had any chance
of succeeding.

Yet, so convinced was Lloyd George, that he wanted to send a note
through an intermediary, saying: "I authorise you to make such
arrangements on my behalf as you may deem desirable to guarantee
British financial assistance under these conditions/ Grey was furious
and absolutely forbade the note to be used. 1

A much sounder scheme was that evolved by the N.I.D., under
Admiral Hall. Hall had always been interested in the Balkans and
his N.I.D., which did as much towards winning the war as any single
intelligence agency, knew a great deal about Turko-German relations.
Hall s aim was to try through his agents to persuade Turkey to break
with Germany and to promote revolution against Enver Pasha and

^-Documents politiques de la guerre

94 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the "Young Turk 5 * Party then in power, or to encourage the more
reasonable members of the Party to make peace with Britain.

A message came through to the famous Room 40 in Naval Intel
ligence H.Q. that prayers were being offered up in a mosque for the
arrival of the British. Acting on his own initiative and without telling
the Cabinet, Hall sent negotiators a letter guaranteeing 3 minion
for the success of a reconciliation with Britain plan. Further, Hall was
prepared to pay 500,000 for the complete surrender of the Dar
danelles and the removal of all mines.

For a few weeks it seemed as though, unknown to the Cabinet, Hall
would bring off the biggest coup of the war. The Turks were short of
ammunition; Turko-German relations were at their worst and the
chances of success were promising. Hall, from the intelligence reports
before him, knew that the forcing of the narrows would be a hazardous
task for the Royal Navy and that disaster might confront the Fleet if
all precautions were not taken. But he appreciated the importance of
a political coup in this theatre of war. The First Sea Lord, Fisher,
however, always either hostile or lukewarm about the Dardanelles
Plan, ruined all chance of success by putting an end to negotiations.

Thus was a great opportunity lost and when Lord Fisher, in his own
words, "pulled down the blinds" and walked out on his job, that was
the beginning of the end of the Liberal Government. The bombard
ment of the Dardanelles had failed, a military and naval disaster
followed. Churchill was blamed for Fisher s criminal neglect and lack
of resolution and a Coalition Government was formed with Asquith
at its head and with Bonar Law bringing in the Tories.

Mr. Malcolm Thomson has written that "Bonar Law, Balfour and
Carson consulted with LI. G." before the new Government was formed
and that "Bonar Law offered LI. G. the Prime Ministership an
indication as to how far the Tories had moved from their hatred of
him but LL G. refused to supplant his chief". Instead, we are told,
Lloyd George went to see Asquith, told him about the Tory approaches
and found the Prime Minister very willing to agree to a Coalition.
This story is, however, not sufficiently corroborated from other sources
for one to accept it at face value. It sounds very like an alibi for Lloyd
George, and there is no evidence that at this stage any Tory would
have been prepared to serve under LL G.

During the Gallipoli campaign there was further indication of how
Lloyd George used his private intelligence service to obtain information
from the battle-fronts. Some of this information came to him direct
from war correspondents, sometimes confidential dispatches from the
latter were passed on to him by Northcliffe and others. On October 4,
1915, Kitchener had sent a private cable to General Sir Ian Hamilton
warning him about a "flow of unofficial reports from Gallipoli"
criticising G.H.Q, Later Kitchener became convinced that other

THE LIE THAT SINKETH 95

confidential reports intended for him alone, and which he had assumed
to be safe in the War Office files, had been disclosed to Lloyd George.
Sir Basil Thomson, head of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, was
called in to investigate the leakage. Within a few days he discovered
that a clerk in the War Office had passed on copies of certain papers
to the Ministry of Munitions to which Lloyd George had been trans
ferred from the Exchequer. Later Kitchener told Sir George Arthur:
"The man ought to have been summarily dealt with. All I am in
formed is that it was all a mistake and that the man will be sent to
another Ministry. You can be sure he will find a billet with Lloyd
George."

One of the principal mischief-makers during the Gallipoli campaign
was an impressionable, erratic and easily influenced war correspondent
from Australia named Keith (afterwards Sir Keith) Murdoch. In a
lengthy document, painting a picture of conditions approaching
mutiny, Murdoch told a grim tale about Gallipoli. It was a document
which should have been treated with the greatest mistrust and checked
with other sources.

"Sedition," wrote Murdoch, "is talked around every tin of bully
beef on the Peninsula." A copy of this letter came into Lloyd George s
hands. In Mr. Moorehead s book Gallipoli it is stated: "It is only fair
to assume that Lloyd George was sincerely moved by its terms, but
he was also an opponent of Lord Kitchener. ... He urged Murdoch
to send a copy to Mr. Asquith."

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER?

"All that is moulded of iron
Has lent to destruction and blood."

Herbert Edward Palmer

During the latter period of the Liberal Government, Lloyd George
had been the leading figure in a Cabinet Munitions Committee set
up to co-operate with Lord Kitchener at the War Office. Its activities
had been marked by increasing friction due to Lloyd George s self*
appointed role of defender of the private arms manufacturers against
the War Office, a novel task for one who had lambasted the munitions
makers during the Boer War.

Then Asquith put Lloyd George in charge of munitions in a newly-
created department. There was a suggestion at the time that LI. G.
should either be Joint-Secretary of State for War with Kitchener,
sending the latter out to the Western Front as Commander-in-Chief,
or that he should completely supersede Kitchener. It was a typical
feeler, put out by the new Minister of Munitions and cautiously venti
lated in the Press, as to how far he could extend his powers, but, not
unexpectedly, Kitchener refused to consider any such arrangement.

Much has been written about the shell shortage of 1915, a great
deal of it arrant nonsense that suggests it was solely a British defect.
Sensational journalism has been blithely accepted as fact by far too
many historians of this war. The whole question of the shell shortage
needs to be studied against the background of a war which had de
veloped on a scale which neither belligerent had believed possible.

Practically every expert on both sides had been proved wrong not
only in confident assertions that the war could not last a year, but in
equally emphatic forecasts about the amount of ammunition required.
The Germans expected a blitzkrieg in 1914 as much as they did in
1939; the truth was that both belligerents had a shell shortage. The
gigantic consumption of munitions in this most wasteful and futile of
all wars had far exceeded the expectations of the commanders in the
field.

Naturally, the Germans, who had been preparing for war for years,
had an initial advantage over the British in this respect, but by the
end of 1916 they were themselves in a grave position owing to shortage

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER 97

of munitions. The German General Staff had believed the war could
be finished and won in one short, sharp battle. The French General
Staff had anticipated a war of only a few months duration and, while
they had provided for repairing guns, had made no provision for re
placing them.

Until the Battle of the Marne neither of the two adversaries had
seriously thought about the problem of supplies, if the war lasted
beyond two years. When the shell shortage occurred it really amounted
to two irreconcilable problems manpower and gun-power and the
poser for the politicians was which should receive priority.

In his War Memoirs Lloyd George summed up thus: "The War
Office was hampered by a traditional reactionism. Its policy seemed
ever to be that of preparing, not for the next war, but for the last one
or the last but one. . . . The whole business (i.e. supplies of munitions)
was at the outset jealously retained by the War Office in its own hands.
The result was shortage, delays, misfits and muddles."

It was Lloyd George s case that Kitchener was personally responsible
for the shell shortage and that the War Minister hampered the activities
of the Ministry of Munitions. Statistics show that in the first fourteen
months of the war Kitchener expanded the production of shells twenty-
seven-fold, the production of trench mortars by [fifty-five-fold and
that of hand-grenades by 6,ooo-fold. Admittedly this still was in
sufficient for the type of war that was being waged, but the achieve
ment was unparalleled in history and no similar ratio of increased pro
duction was realised at any other period of the war.

From a study of the records of the German General Staff it is
apparent that there was a shell shortage in Germany before the end of
1914. In 1915 General Sixt von Arnim referred to the "overwhelming
British artillery" and "a shortage in our reserve supplies of munitions".

Kitchener had from the beginning taken the view that shell con
sumption was going to be vastly in excess of what the experts claimed.
Indeed, Kitchener was almost the only military man in Britain who
accepted the conception of long-drawn-out trench warfare as expounded
by M. Emil Bloch of France, who had also been a prophet without
honour in his own country. Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, a brave
soldier but an unimaginative general, had contemptuously dismissed
Bloch s views on ammunition consumption in a major war as "Bloch s
tosh".

Shell production in December, 1914, was 871,700; by the same
month in 1915 it had increased to 23,663,186; at the end of 1916 it
had risen to 128,460,113. These are impressive figures, but, while
Lloyd George can claim to have improved the output after he became
Minister of Munitions, the two sets of ratios cannot properly be com
pared. In fact, Lloyd George benefited from the impetus originally
provided by Kitchener and he also had a free hand and the full backing

g8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

of the Prime Minister in a new department specially designed to cope
with the problem. Similarly with small arms: production had been
stepped up ten-fold by Kitchener, but only two-fold by Lloyd George.
Apart from this there is the indisputable fact that the Battle of the
Somme was fought entirely on ammunition supplied by the War
Office alone. These supplies may not have been enough, but they are
eloquent testimony to what Kitchener achieved. Indeed in April, 1915,
when he was made Minister of Munitions, LI. G, told the House of
Commons that the output of munitions had been increased nineteen-
fold under the Kitchener administration.

These figures and criticisms are not meant to belittle Lloyd George s
substantial achievements at the Ministry of Munitions, but to reply to
his unfair criticisms of Kitchener and even more to those of LI. G/s
two-faced ally among the generals, the erratic and unreliable Sir John
French, who raised the question of the shell shortage as an excuse for
his own failures. French, who indulged in political intrigue of a type
which should have called for disciplinary action, had never forgiven
the War Minister for a personal intervention against him in France
in 1914. Lloyd George now saw in him a welcome ally with whom
to hammer both Kitchener and the War Office.

While French was writing letters to Asquith in fulsome terms, he
was also sending secret messages to LL G. complaining about the lack
of shells and seeking to undermine the Government in general and
Kitchener in particular. The War Minister summed up the situation
in a note which he circulated, claiming that, against his own judgment,
he had "yielded to the pressing importunities of Sir John French and
consented to send out infantry before the supply of artillery ammuni
tion had reached the proper scale. If the Government have made a
mistake, it has been, in Lord Kitchener s opinion, due not so much
to their failure to produce ammunition in greater quantities, as giving
in to persuasions to send out more troops. Lord Kitchener feels that
it would be a grave mistake for the Government to repeat this and does
not wish to send out reinforcements until the supply of artillery am
munition has reached the standard of seventeen rounds per day for
the existing Force and has expanded sufficiently to enable the same
proportion of ammunition to be supplied to the new troops as they
go out"

The British front, alleged Lloyd George, was being starved of
supplies. Yet he himself at the same time was illogically arguing that
the way out of stalemate on that same front was to double its length.
This, it was pointed out, could only aggravate the munitions shortage-
He, the amateur strategist, wanted to mobilise the engineering firms
which were outside the armaments industry, but the War Office
insisted that, if this were done, it would not mean more munitions,
but a vast quantity of faulty munitions. Lloyd George replied that

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER 99

almost anything would be an improvement on the Ordnance Depart
ment of the War Office which, he said, was "a failure in the past, chaos
in the present and hopelessness in the future".

There is no doubt that the Ordnance Department needed a thorough
reorganisation and that LI. G. had pinpointed serious faults in it. But
it was a defect of the Minister of Munitions that he would drag per
sonalities into his criticisms, that he would seek to destroy and replace
rather than to adapt and improve. Certainly he showed great fore
sight in appreciating that a huge arsenal of munitions was the nation s
most urgent requirement. As Minister of Munitions he showed more
flair than at the Exchequer; his dynamism, his zest for finding out for
himself and his restless mind caused a great influx of ideas where they
had been sadly lacking. He had found at Woolwich Arsenal "stacks
of empty shells which were being slowly and tediously filled, one at a
time, with ladles by hand from cauldrons of seething fluid. The pro
duction of the fuses for detonating the shells was governed by the same
lack of imagination and consequently there was a similar deficiency
in output."

But it was easier to propound the urgent need for changes in methods
of production, but less easy to carry them out swiftly and effectively
through private firms. In the first place the Army was fast absorbing
the skilled labour which could make munitions. Lloyd George, who
had established unofficial contacts with private manufacturers and
industrialists who were anxious to make money while war lasted,
insisted that these firms could produce munitions in greater quantities
than the Ordnance Department. Kitchener had little faith in the
promises of these industrialists that they could achieve this, and in the
first year of the war he was largely right. Many of these firms were
incompetent and eager only to win contracts. They not only failed
to deliver the goods on scheduled dates, but often produced faulty
work. 1

Nor had the private manufacturers, in "the early stages at least, the
technical expertise or the skilled labour to do a proper job. Von
Donop, of the Ordnance Department, stressed that there must be no
risk in arms manufacture of the use of materials "too far below the
accepted standards". Kitchener expressed his view that both he and
the Prime Minister would have been "hanged on the gallows of public
opinion if any such catastrophe had happened to the British as befell
the French, who lost 800 guns and many lives and suffered a serious
set-back in their plans through the use of defective shells".

This was the crux of the problem: how most effectively to step up
shell production. To stress it is not to denigrate Lloyd George s efforts,
or his remarkable drive at the ministry, but the appearance of getting

1 By May, 1915, the Army should have had from private contractors 481,000 B H.E. 18-
pounder shells; only 52,000 were then delivered.

IO Q THE MASK OF MERLIN

on with the job had to be weighed against the risks of too sudden
changes. Thus it was that those who considered these risks often
appeared to be hampering the war effort, and Lloyd George through
Northcliffe saw that they were so presented to the public.

The root of the shell problem was that, with the best will in the world,
it was no use trying to catch up on the Germans lead in munitions
supplies by turning out increased shells of the same type with which
the war was started. Kitchener insisted that he must first find out
exactly what type of shell was most needed and then concentrate on
its production. When Lloyd George was glibly talking about shells
in 1915 as though they were all alike, no one knew with any marked
degree of certainty whether it was shrapnel or high explosive that was
needed at the front. It took some months to convince the experts that
high explosive was the answer for field artillery.

This was the background to the arguments that ranged from across
the Cabinet table to the dinner tables in Mayfair, from golf course
chats at Walton Heath to newspaper offices in Fleet Street. But if the
shell shortage was the excuse, there was little doubt that Asquith was
the main target. "LI. G. and Co. are out to smash the Prime Minister,
but Grey and I intend to stand on each side of him to protect him from
such baseness," Haldane wrote to Mrs. Asquith.

Kitchener s comment to Asquith, when asked why he was so secretive
and had not told the Cabinet something which he had only mentioned
casually to the Prime Minister, was: "You I can trust, but all these
damned politicians talk to their wives, except for LI. G., who talks to
other people s wives."

Once after a munitions row with LI. G., Kitchener tried to resign
in the middle of a Cabinet meeting and was only stopped by the
Postmaster-General, who backed to the door of the Cabinet Room and
so cut off the War Minister s line of retreat.

An obvious solution to the munitions problem might well have been
state control over all manufacturers and industries concerned with
arms production. It would have been the only way for more shells to
have been produced safely, speedily and adequately. But in 1915-16
Lloyd George did not suggest such a measure. The one-time pacifist
was almost indecently eager to give the arms manufacturers the chance
to make huge profits, providing they gave him the shells. Had he
produced a radical plan to control arms production and curb profits,
he might have avoided the labour troubles with which the country
was confronted in the last years of the war. It might be argued that
any such plan would have been exceedingly difficult to realise because
neither the Tories nor business men would have submitted to controls,
and the Labour leaders would not have agreed to conscription of
labour. But Lloyd George made no move in this direction, not even
an attempt to get business men and Labour leaders round a conference

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER 1 01

table to reach some compromise. The only thing he seemed anxious
to control was the liquor trade. Asquith wrote: "This volatile person
age goes off at a tangent on the question of drink. His mind apparently
oscillates from hour to hour between the two poles of absurdity, cutting
off all drink from the working man which would lead to something
like a universal strike or buying out the whole liquor trade of the
country and replacing it by a huge state monopoly."

Yet, when Lloyd George gave evidence before the Royal Com
mission on the Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms in 1936,
he took a very different line. Then he argued in favour of a state mono
poly for arms manufacture and completely contradicted the attitude
he had adopted in 1914-16. "When in 1914 it came to the need for
increasing our supply of munitions on an enormous scale, private
arms firms broke down completely. Private manufacture broke com
pletely down in the war. Orders were given and accepted, but not
fulfilled. It is a lamentable story of failure."

These were the very arguments which both Kitchener and von
Donop used; the only difference was that they did not carry them to
the logical conclusion of seeking fuller control over the manufacturers.
In World War I there was an unanswerable case for state control of
the armaments industry from every point of view, from the test of
efficiency, safety and speed of production, and certainly on the grounds
of expenditure and on ethical considerations. The appalling loss of
life of which LI. G. so frequently complained, the failure to supply the
Russians with arms in adequate quantities, the profiteering and
racketeering of the industrialists at home, all these things could have
been avoided or mitigated if Lloyd George had urged in these years
what he so vigorously proclaimed in 1936.

Not unexpectedly the Lloyd Georgian view was opposed at the
Royal Commission s sitting by those directly interested in arms manu
facture, men like Sir Charles Craven and General Sir Herbert Law
rence, while Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey (now Lord Hankey), as
Secretary to the Cabinet and Committee of Imperial Defence, said
that "the prohibition of private trading in arms would be disastrous
to Imperial defence".

At a time when a major switch-over from the production of shrapnel
to high explosive shells would have meant a disastrous delay of ten
weeks, Lloyd George was writing to the Prime Minister: "Private
firms cannot turn out shrapnel because of the complicated character
of the shell, but the testimony is unanimous that the high explosive is a
simple shell and that any engineering concern could easily produce it."

This was again contradicted by LI. G. in his diatribe against the
private arms firms before the Royal Commission. Yet in 1915 he
added in his note to Asquith: "This has been the experience of
France. 5

102 THE MASK OF MERLIN

This claim was not substantiated by facts which ought to have been
in his possession as Minister of Munitions. Previously LI. G. had
urged that shrapnel could and should be manufactured by private
firms. Far from preventing what LI. G. called "the horrible loss of
life", any big switch-over to high explosives would "not have pro
duced," stated Kitchener, "any high explosive shell for ten weeks or
more, and during this period the provision of the absolutely necessary
amount of ammunition for the field-guns would have been seriously
imperilled just when Sir John French was pressing for every round."

This was a typical example of Lloyd George "playing politics" with
shell production, swearing that black was white in order to gain some
political kudos. As far as the argument that "the high explosive is a
simple shell that any engineering concern could easily produce it",
this was a deliberate attempt by Lloyd George to mislead his own
Prime Minister. The whole question of the right design for this type
of shell was still a matter of research and experiment not only in Britain
but in France. According to the French War Office their leading
ordnance specialist at that time was "still not finally satisfied as to the
right pattern of the high explosive shell, the best fuse to be employed
for it and the nature of its filling".

So much for the claim that "this has been the experience of France " !

*****

While at the Ministry of Munitions, Lloyd George was once again
the friend of big business and the industrial-financial oligarchies with
whom he curried favour when at the Board of Trade. He was caught
up too deeply in the mesh of international armaments intrigues to be
a free agent. For the man to whom he turned for help and advice
was Sir Basil Zaharoff, chief agent of the Vickers Company, with a
roving commission to go where he liked and sell arms to whomever he
could at a commission. When war came in 1914 Zaharoff was at the
zenith of his power and, with the aid of Lloyd George, soon filled the
role of unofficial chief inter- Allied munitions agent.

With Zaharoff, Lloyd George made an ingenious bargain that en
abled the Welshman to show how he was obtaining more shells at
lower cost. An essential part of this bargain was that Zaharoff should
co-operate in reducing costs on the understanding that he was person
ally allowed to make larger profits by selling more shells and guns.
Thus as Minister of Munitions Lloyd George was able to claim that
he had reduced the cost of eighteen-pounder shells from 22^. 6rf. each
to is*, and of Lewis guns from 165 to 35 each. It was, of course, a
considerable achievement.

True, the profits of the British armament industry were limited by
law during the war; it was not permitted for them to exceed by more
than 20 per cent the average net profit of the last two business years

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER 103

before the war. Any excess had to go to the Treasury. But the orders
were so vast that profits still remained high and Vickers increased its
capital during World War I from 10 million to 13,500,000, an
increase which by no means indicated the extent of its profits.

In January, 1916, Lloyd George was once again making a dangerous
personal and unauthorised incursion into the realms of foreign policy.
On January 14 he dined with Colonel House, the roving Ambassador
of President Wilson. LI. G. was in expansive mood and he told House
that the war could only be ended by the neutral intervention of President
Wilson.

"This should come about," he said, "round about September next,
when the slaughter that is now being planned rebounds on the heads
of the planners and proves once again to be utterly ineffective. Terms
should then be dictated by the President, terms which the belligerents
would never agree upon if left to themselves."

A complex statement, but it left Colonel House in little doubt as to
its implications. Fortunately, before he got in touch with Washington,
House repeated what LI. G. had told him to Grey and Balfour. The
latter, aghast at what had been suggested, hastened to explain that
this was simply Lloyd George s idea and that he had never mentioned
a word of that kind to the Cabinet. They left House in no doubt that
it was contrary to British policy.

Meanwhile the so-called "Shell Scandal" and the growing demand
for conscription within the Cabinet were all used as excuses for attempting
to clip Kitchener s powers. First it was Lloyd George alone who forced
the issue; then, as events seemed to move against the War Minister,
Carson and Bonar Law began to murmur against his authority.

The vital issue was conscription. Again it was Lloyd George, the
former pacifist, who was the most vigorous exponent of the necessity
for conscription. With Churchill and Carson, LI. G. would have
supported compulsory military service much earlier in the war. Indeed,
as for back as the Constitutional Conference of 1910, as has already
been mentioned, in a secret memorandum proposing a Party truce,
LI. G. had asked that the question of compulsory military service
should not be shirked. Kitchener was against conscription. When a
memorial service to mark the anniversary of the war s outbreak was
proposed for St. Paul s Cathedral, Kitchener commented: "I want this
service to be a great recruiting occasion. The Archbishop could, in a
short sermon, stir up the whole congregation, which would be a far
better way of doing things than all this intrigue about conscription." 1
Certainly there was no clear-cut desire among the population for
conscription sooner than 1916. Even then the measure had to be
steered skilfully through a House of Commons which contained a
Liberal majority to whom compulsory military service was anathema,

l Aatotiograpfr, by Margot Asquith

104 THE MASK O p MERLIN

It is still debatable whether conscription improved the military
situation, though it removed the causes of much bitterness and con
troversy because at least each citizen was now treated alike. Auckland
Geddes, who was Minister of National Service in the later years of the
war, expressed the view afterwards that "with, perhaps, more know
ledge than most of the working of conscription in this country, I hold
the fully matured opinion that, on balance, the imposition of military
conscription added little if anything to the effective sum of our total

war effort".

* * * * #

Kitchener, worn out with the strain and responsibilities of office and
the growing intrigues against him, was ageing visibly. As War Minister
he had worked longer hours than most of his colleagues and, never a
gregarious man, he tended to avoid social life increasingly and in con
sequence to rely more on his own judgment and less on that of his
subordinates. Without doubt the nagging feeling that he had enemies
in the Cabinet and in the newspaper world preyed heavily on a mind
that was far more sensitive than was generally realised and this seriously
affected his judgment and sapped his energies.

The War Minister s attention was in the early months of 1916 pre
occupied with the problems of Russia. Whatever his shortcomings in
other directions he had great foresight on this subject. He was con
vinced that the fate of Russia was of paramount importance to the
Allies, and he frequently foretold of an attempt by underground forces
in Russia to compel the Russian Government to make a deal with
Germany and contract out of the war.

Kitchener stressed the need for giving Russia greater military support
and supplies. He sneered at the "Easterners" for being blind to what
constituted the Allies* most vital line in the east the Russian front.
It was, he argued, much more vital than any "Balkan diversions".
Here again he clashed with LL G., bitterly reproaching the Minister
of Munitions for failing to keep his promise to Russia regarding
supplies of munitions. Lloyd George insisted that munitions poured
into Russia in excess of what Britain could legitimately spare might
result in these arms being used against us on some future occa
sion. But, speaking before the Royal Commission on the private
manufacture of armaments in 1936, he again told a very different
story:

"Undertakings were given by our armament firms to the Russians
with even worse results," he then said. "Not even any appreciable
percentage of the obligations undertaken was ever discharged. The
Russians depended upon them and found themselves with no means
of defending their lives against the German attack. The feeling against
the British firms, as I know, was exceedingly bitter in the Russian
Army. The failure was attributed to breach of faith and, there is no

MANPOWER OR GUN-POWER 1 05

doubt, partly contributed to the Russian collapse and the Russian
disgruntlement with the Allies."

In making this statement in 1936, Lloyd George, without directly
saying so, was admitting his own culpability in 1916, For the res
ponsibility for supplying the Russians with arms was then clearly
his.

Kitchener s reputation in military circles in Russia was great, and
his influence and opinions carried great weight with the Czar. Through
diplomatic channels the Czar indicated that he would welcome a visit
from Kitchener. Early in May a secret invitation was sent to the War
Minister from the Czar, quite apart from the confidential approach
made to the British Government. It is also certain that Kitchener had
been making overtures or writing letters himself either to the Czar or
to someone else close to that monarch, for the Russian Ambassador in
Holland told the British Ambassador in the Dutch capital: "Lord
Kitchener s urgent representations and inspiriting messages have in
duced the Czar to consider the whole matter of munitions supply from
a new angle. The Czar now believes that a visit from Lord Kitchener
can boost morale in Russia among the fainthearts at the Court. The
Czar wants advice and he thinks it might help if the control of certain
things, possibly supplies, were taken into British hands."

The italics are the author s: it is important to note the emphasis
on munitions and supplies generally. This would normally be a matter
for the Minister of Munitions, but Lloyd George, no friend of the
Czar and a great critic of the Russian Government, did not see eye to
eye with Kitchener on this subject.

There are various and contradictory versions of this proposal to
send a mission to Moscow. The Prime Minister, mindful of Kitchener s
personal influence with the Czar and his high standing with Russian
generals, strongly urged acceptance of the Russian invitation by the
War Minister, but there is no evidence that he asked Lloyd George to
accompany him.

On the other hand, Dr. Thomas Jones stated in his book, Lloyd
George, that in April, 1916, "Asquith thought Lloyd George should go
to Russia. For some days the composition of the mission was in doubt,
until Asquith decided the matter by announcing in the House of
Commons on May 25 that the Minister of Munitions had agreed to
devote his energies to the promotion of an Irish settlement, which had
been newly bedevilled by the Easter Rebellion."

This can hardly be correct, as in April the question of a visit to
Russia had not yet been raised.

Mr. Malcolm Thomson s version is that " Lloyd George was planning
to visit Russia with Kitchener. The Easter Rebellion upset this plan
and Kitchener had to go alone at the last moment," Mr. W. F.
Burbidge in Wizard of Wales stated: " Lloyd George was invited to

106 THE MASK OF MERLIN

accompany the mission (to Russia) , but because of his interest in the
problems of the Irish question he declined."

LL G/s own version in his War Memoirs was that he had decided to
go with Kitchener when he received a letter from the Prime Minister,
asking him "to take up Ireland, at any rate for a short time. That
letter saved my life. Much against my own inclination, I decided I
could not refuse Mr. Asquith s request, so I had to tell Lord Kitchener
I could not accompany him on his voyage."

In Asquith s papers there is no reference to LI. G. having been
invited to go to Russia either with or without Kitchener. It is certain
that Grey would have opposed the idea of LL G. making the trip;
the prospects of the mischief-making Munitions Minister, with his
penchant for interfering in foreign policy, visiting the Court of the
Czar are unlikely to have commended themselves either to Asquith
or Grey.

Lloyd George s visit to Ireland had ended and he was back in London
before Kitchener set off for Russia, so the excuse that it was the Irish
Mission which caused the Russian visit to be cancelled does not hold.
All the evidence seems to suggest that at one time LI. G. would have
liked to go to Russia alone and that, for some reason or another, he
gave the impression to his staff at the Ministry of Munitions right up
to the last moment that he expected to go with Kitchener. At a few
hours notice he sent for Mr. Leslie Robertson, of the Ministry, and
deputed him to "take my place. I find I cannot go myself". Yet,
according to his own statement in the War Memoirs, he had known he
would not be going at least two weeks before this.

But equally all the evidence points to the fact that the Prime Minister
did not intend, nor did he ask, LI. G. to make the trip. Asquith s own
private secretary at the time, the late Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter,
had no knowledge of any such proposal and completely discounted it.
Sir George Arthur, Kitchener s right-hand man, knew nothing of the
matter and considered it "highly unlikely".

On June 5, Kitchener and the other members of the mission sailed
in the cruiser Hampshire from Scapa Flow, destined for Archangel.
When only a mile and a half from the shore between the Brough of
Birsay and Markwick Head the ship hit a mine and sank within fifteen
minutes. Kitchener went down with her.

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST

"Pleas d with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit."

John Dryden

Kitchener s death profoundly affected the morale of millions of his
countrymen in that midsummer of 1916. His prestige in the country,
despite the whispering campaign against him, was as high as it had
ever been.

For Lloyd George the way to the premiership was through the War
Office and, with Kitchener out of the way, he was a natural candidate
for the post. As soon as the news of Kitchener s death was received, he
was plotting to succeed him. An inspired paragraph in The Times of
June 12 stated that the new War Minister would "Almost certainly
be Mr, Lloyd George. We learn that Bonar Law called on Asquith
to press Lloyd George s claims ".

Many ridiculous rumours circulated at this time, attributing Kit
chener s death to a plot engineered by his enemies, both Lloyd George
and Lord NorthclifFe being mentioned as originators of the plot. There
is, of course, no doubt that the Hampshire was sunk by a German mine
and one can dismiss any such fantastic allegations without question.
Nevertheless, Lloyd George s behaviour in the days immediately pre
ceding Kitchener s departure is difficult to explain. There is the in
disputable fact that LI. G. himself gave the impression that he was
going to Russia although he had never been asked to go. There is also
abundant evidence that details of Kitchener s mission to Russia had
been leaked to the Press and, though nothing was printed, news of the
mission was known in Fleet Street eight days before the Hampshire
sailed. Lord Riddell declared: "Lloyd George had a presentiment
about the Hampshire. About a week before she sailed he told me that
Kitchener was going in this ship and that he was glad he wasn t sailing
in such an old tub. * Probably Lloyd George s motives in the political
activities which preceded the mission to Russia will for ever remain
an enigma. All that seems certain is that he did divulge the information
to certain people.

Within a few months of Kitchener s death Lloyd George was angling

107

IO8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

for support from Bonar Law in a scheme which, say the biographers of
Asquith, "LI. G. was hatching for a War Council with himself at the
head of it, and to consider his plan for getting rid of Sir William
Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, whom he considered
to be a great obstacle to his schemes, by sending him on a mission to
St. Petersburg."

Bonar Law, whose inability to make up his mind was at times a
serious handicap, must have scented an unsavoury plot, for, according
to Lord Beaverbrook, he then took the view that "in matters of office
and power Lloyd George was a self-seeker and a man who considered
no interests but his own".

Robertson, advised by some of LL G. s enemies among the pro-
Asquithians in the Cabinet that it was a scheme to get him away
from the War Office, refused to go.

When Lloyd George succeeded Lord Kitchener at the War Office,
Mrs. Asquith, with feminine intuition, wrote in her diary: "We are
out; it can only be a question of time now when we shall have to leave
Downing Street."

Few shared her misgivings; many reproached her for even thinking
that Lloyd George might be disloyal to his chief. Even Asquith him
self showed no signs of doubting the War Minister. Why should he
when only the previous year he had recorded in his own diary: "LI. G.
declared that he owed everything to me, that I had stuck to him and
protected him and defended him when every man s hand was against
him and that he would (i) rather break stones, (2) dig potatoes, (3)
be hung, drawn and quartered than to do an act or say a word or

harbour a thought that was disloyal to me His eyes were wet with

tears."

Yet, from the moment he went to the War Office, Lloyd George
never ceased to intrigue for the premiership, sometimes in the guise of
patriotic critic of the Cabinet of which he was a member, more often
through his close relations with the Press lords, all of whom were eager
for varying reasons to oust Asquith.

It has been suggested that Lloyd George was estranged from Asquith
by some of his colleagues in the Cabinet. There is very little evidence
that this was the case; indeed, if these so-called enemies of Lloyd
George had vigorously opposed his appointment to the War Office,
LI. G. would never have acquired the influence he eventually wielded.
Asquith s error was not that he allowed himself to be estranged from
his War Minister, but that he disregarded the existence of intrigues
and refused to enter into arguments with his critics. The Prime
Minister s case went by default. Mr. J, A. Spender wrote: "I myself
went to him several times and begged him to be on his guard. I tried

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST IOQ

to put it to him that this time he was faced with something more than
the ordinary Press attacks which he had grown to despise, that there
was in fact a concerted movement with important backing within his
own Government to displace him. He said he was sick of all this
gossiping and whispering and determined to take no notice of it."

Lloyd George stopped at nothing to denigrate the man who "pro
tected him and defended him when every man s hand was against
him". Thus was the legend preserved that in 1916 Asquith was
flabby, lacking in drive and losing his grip, while Lloyd George was
the selfless patriot trying to bring order out of chaos.

The events which led up to the resignation of Asquith have been
described at great length by various authorities. But it is not true
that "at a crisis of history Lloyd George turned muddle into system
and purpose". John Terraine writes: "By the end of 1916, when Mr.
Lloyd George became Premier, the outlook from his point of view
and he was the leader of those statesmen and some few soldiers who
felt particularly depressed by the course the war had taken seemed
thoroughly black. After France s heavy losses in 1915 and the terrible
strain that the Germans had inflicted upon her at Verdun at the
beginning of the new year, the British Army had been forced, before
it was really ready, to assume the main role in the West. The result
had been the Battle of the Somme, with its 415,000 British casualties
and the virtual destruction of Kitchener s volunteer armies, for the
gain of a very narrow strip indeed of muddy ground in Picardy. The
battle, with all its terrifying consumption of human life . . . had not
prevented the Germans from detaching sufficient strength to crush
Rumania almost as soon as she had thrown in her lot with the Allies."

That was one side of the picture. The truth is that there was no
crisis in 1 9 1 6 when Lloyd George made his bid for power. In November,
1916, Sir William Robertson, then Chief of the General Staff, attended
an Allied conference at Chantilly. Of that conference he later wrote:
"The exhausted condition of the German armies was not then as well
known to us as it has since become, but we knew sufficient about it
to realise the wisdom of taking full advantage of the successes gained
in the Verdun and Somme campaigns, first by continuing to exert
pressure on the Somme front as far as the winter season would permit,
and secondly by preparing to attack the enemy early in 1917 with
all the resources that could be made available before he had time to
recover from his difficulties. The conference decided on a plan of this
nature, but it was not carried out."

The man who failed to carry it out was the man who became Prime
Minister a month later Lloyd George.

In an apologia made in a speech to the Manchester Reform Club
on December 6, 1919, Lloyd George alleged that "in December, 1916,
Russia had practically collapsed". Yet this statement is completely

110 THE MASK OF MERLIN

coatradicted by what he said on December 20, 1917: ". . . That in
December, 1916, the Russian Army was better equipped with guns
and ammunition than it had ever been during the whole period of the
war."

Certainly the Russians had been weakened, but they had still
managed to launch a brilliant offensive under General BrusilofF,

Lloyd George also claimed that at the end of 1916 the cause of the
Allies was in peril and "would be doomed unless new energy could
be imported into the struggle," Yet M. Hanotaux, who was French
Foreign Minister, said that from November, 1916, he was convinced
that victory had been assured, while Ludendorff, the most objective
of the German generals, took the view that at the end of 1916 "the
Germans were completely exhausted on the Western front".

Asquith s verdict on LI. G. s Manchester apologia was: "I am sorry
to have to say it, but I say it with the utmost deliberation and emphasis,
that a more slovenly travesty of quite recent history has never been
presented by a responsible statesman. "

In 1916 Britain fought the Battle of Jutland, which, however dis
appointing its immediate results may have been, sealed up the German
High Seas Fleet and its ports from which it never again emerged. If
victory were not actually within sight, it was at least "the beginning
of the end".

It might be thought that in December, 1916, a man with drive
anxious to turn what Dr. Thomas Jones called "flabbiness into reso
lution", would have urged on the Cabinet the need for hitting the
Germans really hard with an immediate onslaught on the Somme
front. That would have made sense in the light of the Chantilly dis
cussions. But it was not what Lloyd George urged. Instead he was
conspiring with the Press lords to paint a picture of his own "dark
estimate and forecast of the situation". He was openly advertising his
aversion to any big push on the Western front by complaining of the
"bloody assaults on the Somme". Yet the series of operations on the
Somme had in fact saved Verdun. Lloyd George knew that British
public opinion had been shocked by the decimations of the Somme,
but instead of succouring the downhearted and stressing the need for
that "knock-out blow" of which he had talked so glibly not long
before, he sought to capitalise the public s anguish in his favour and
against Asquith.

On December 5, 1916, when the greatest need was for Cabinet unity
to support to the fullest extent the military experts plea for a new
drive against the enemy, Lloyd George was harping back on the
Rumanian debacle in a letter to Asquith: "There has been delay,
hesitation, lack of foresight and vision. The latest illustration is of our
lamentable failure to give timely support to Rumania." Yet it was
Lloyd George himself, as War Minister, who had the fullest responsibility

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST III

for the arrangements for bringing in Rumania. On the Prime
Minister s instructions he had gone to Paris the previous August to
negotiate with M. Briand and General Joffre on this very question.
Britain was then preoccupied with the battle of the Somme and there
were no guns or ammunition to spare. All this had been explained
to the Rumanians who had been warned that the only direct aid for
them could come from the Russians. It had been made fully clear to
the Rumanians that if they failed to get help from the Russians, they
could expect no immediate aid from Britain.

This intelligence had been faithfully conveyed to the Rumanians
by Lloyd George; he was fully appraised of the risks of the situation.
To try to exploit the Rumanian debacle as he did to Asquith was to
deny his own responsibility in the matter.

Just how defeatist Lloyd George was during this period and how
unfitted to win the confidence of the generals is shown in a quotation
from Lord Hankey s book, The Supreme Command 1914-18. "We are
going to lose the war," said Lloyd George to Hankey on November 9,
1916. It was his rejoinder to an illuminating remark of Hankey s: "I
told him that personally I had never the smallest illusions about
crushing Germany. The best I had ever hoped for at any time was a
draw in our favour and a favourable peace extorted by economic
pressure."

Here then is the clue to the malaise of panic, depression and intrigue
which spread in the highest political circles at the end of 1916. For
long the suggestion was that it was merely a desire to have a more
vigorous conduct of the war which actuated the anti-Asquith poli
ticians, but these varying comments of Lloyd George and Hankey, the
two men in the land who knew most about the day-to-day develop
ments of the war, reveal that it was an innate pessimism which was the
real cause of the trouble.

The final break with Asquith came over Lloyd George s demand
for a small War Committee being set up to run the day-to-day conduct
of the war, thus removing it from what Mr. Malcolm Thomson in his
book David Lloyd George surprisingly calls "the futile discussions of the
Cabinet". In other words, Lloyd George would preside over a com
mittee which settled war policy while his own Prime Minister became
a mere rubber stamp for his decisions. Mr. Thomson adds: "It is also
very clear that Lloyd George had no desire to displace Asquith. He
did not covet the Premiership."

It is odd that Mr. Thomson should so boldly make this assertion
when the root difficulty (according to Lord Beaverbrook) "was
that Bonar Law had formed the opinion that in matters of office
Lloyd George was a self-seeker and a man who considered no in
terests but his own." By now even so long-suffering and uncom
plaining a man as Asquith had seen the dangers ahead sufficiently

112 THE MASK OF MERLIN

clearly to write to Bonar Law: "There is one construction, and one
only, that could be put on the new arrangement that it had been
engineered by him (LI. G.) with the purpose, not perhaps at the
moment, but as soon as a fitting pretext could be found, of his dis
placing me/

Nevertheless Asquith did not entirely turn down the Lloyd George
plan, and some accommodation could have been obtained if Lloyd
George had wished. Instead there appeared in Reynolds News an article
which, said Lord Beaverbrook, "Was like an interview with Lloyd
George written in the third person." The gist of that article was that
LI. G. was prepared to resign if his terms were not granted. But any
possibility of a compromise between Asquith and Lloyd George was
ruined when on the following day it was obvious that the most con
fidential matters discussed between the two men on the previous even
ing had been disclosed to The Times to form the basis of a leading article.

Both the Reynolds and Times articles angered leading Tories as much
as the Liberals, and at this stage it looked as though they would turn
against Lloyd George and insist that he should submit to the Prime
Minister s demand to be chairman of the War Committee. Had
Asquith continued to insist on this point and had he called a secret
session of the House of Commons, explained the situation and asked
for a vote of confidence, there is little doubt that he would have won
the day. Probably his trump card would have been the need for con
tinuity of government at a time when the Chantilly conference de
cisions for a new drive on the Western front needed to be implemented.
By forcing the fall of the Asquith Government, Lloyd George prevented
a new assault from being put into action, thus not only prolonging
the war an extra year, but causing tens of thousands of casualties which
need not have occurred.

Bonar Law was in a dilemma. He had tried in his pawky, pathetic
manner to keep friends on both sides. In doing so he had revealed
his own colourlessness and lack of ideas, confused his Party and left
himself temporarily isolated. Lloyd George, sensing this, urged that,
if Asquith resigned, Bonar Law should be considered as his natural
successor, always providing that Asquith would serve under him. But, if
Asquith declined to serve under anyone, then he, Lloyd George, should
be the choice. Bonar Law fell into a subtle trap. By accepting any such
understanding, he threw away any chance he had for the premiership.
This was fortunate for the country, for Bonar Law had neither the
ability, the drive nor the temperament to be a successful War Premier.
His innate pessimism would have brought about his own downfall,

Asquith was completely misled on all sides. He was misled in the
first place into thinking that an accommodation could be made with
Lloyd George, though he was under no illusion that it would be the
last accommodation he could make without losing all his prestige. He

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST 113

was misled by those of his Liberal colleagues such as Edwin Montagu,
who failed to warn him of LL G. s plots because they desired to keep
both men in the same team. He was deliberately deceived by Bonar
Law who failed to inform him of the vital resolution which had been
passed at a Conservative Party meeting. This resolution stated that:

"We share the view expressed to the Prime Minister some time ago
that the Government cannot go on as it is. It is evident that a change
must be made and in our opinion the publicity given to the intentions
of Mr. Lloyd George makes reconstruction from within no longer
possible. We therefore urge the Prime Minister to tender the resig
nation of the Government. If he feels unable to take that step, we
authorise Mr. Bonar Law to tender our resignation."

This was indeed an incoherent and complex resolution which needs
clarifying. It surely was essential that the Prime Minister should have
seen the exact phrasing. Asquith made it clear in his book. Memories
and Reflections, that he was never shown the document. Mr. Robert
Blake, in his biography of Bonar Law, confirms this: "Bonar Law had
the resolution in his pocket, but he never showed it to Asquith."

Bonar Law was not of the same view as the majority of his Con
servative colleagues. They were angry with Lloyd George and wanted
the resolution to make that clear. This the resolution obliquely im
plied, but certainly not strongly enough. By this time Bonar Law
wanted Asquith to go, whereas most of the Conservatives merely wanted
Lloyd George brought under control even if breaking up the Govern
ment was the only way of doing it.

At a meeting of Liberal Cabinet Ministers (Lloyd George was not
present) full support for Asquith was pledged, and they undertook not
to serve in any Government under Lloyd George or Bonar Law. But
two factors undermined Asquith s position; first, the death blow dealt
by Arthur Henderson, who declared that Labour would join a Lloyd
George Government; secondly, the uneasiness felt by many Tories that
a reconstructed Asquith Government, without Lloyd George, might
mean an alliance between Asquith and Lansdowne with a bid for a
negotiated peace. In this second factor existed an astonishing paradox*
Lloyd George, the man who had told Hankey that "we are going to
lose", was reluctantly but admiringly regarded by some of the Tory
rank and file as the apostle of the "drive for victory"; Asquith, who
unostentatiously believed the military position favoured the Allies, was
suspected of being a secret ally of Lansdowne, Such uneasiness was
utterly unjustified as Asquith, though respecting Lord Lansdowne,
had not supported this Conservative s well-intended "Peace" memor
andum which he thought was badly timed. 1 The Prime Minister did

1 On November 13, 1916, Lord Lansdowne presented a memorandum to the Cabinet
setting out his personal views on the case for a negotiated peace. Asquith was regarded with
unjust suspicion because he had not joined in the reproaches levelled at Lansdowne,

114 THE MASZ- OF MERLIN

not think the Allies could possibly get reasonable terms for peace at
this stage of the war.

It is still hard to understand why Asquith did not seek to explain
his viewpoint on the situation to a secret session of the House. Perhaps
the liberalism of his temperament made him too proud to take this
advantage; more probably he was weary of the internecine warfare
within the Cabinet and reluctantly came to the conclusion that resig
nation was the only step he could take compatible with patriotism and
dignity. He resigned and Bonar Law went to see the King. Charged
with the task of forming a government, he went to see Asquith and
invited him to serve in it. Asquith, as Lloyd George had anticipated,
refused to serve. This was not so much due to stubbornness as the fact
that Asquith never had a high regard for Bonar Law as a statesman.
In his refusal he was fully supported by his other Liberal colleagues
in the Cabinet. So Bonar Law returned to the Palace and recom
mended the King to send for Lloyd George.

Thus, on December 6, 1916, Lloyd George was requested by the
King to form a government. At the age of fifty-three he became Prime
Minister. As Churchill put it, he "Seized the main power of the state
and the leadership of the Government. I think it was Carlyle who said
of Oliver Cromwell: He coveted the place; perhaps the place was
his."

Few will deny that "seized" was an apt word, but the reasons for
the seizing of power could not be attributed to selfless patriotism. The
war situation when Asquith resigned was better than it had ever been
and far better than it was a year later. Indeed, Asquith may well
have taken the view thtet if there was to be a change of government
this was the most propitious moment for it, though this was a view
certainly not shared by most military experts, especially as the com
bination of Asquith and Robertson had been working so well.

True, there was a weariness among the people, an acute desire for
something dramatic to resolve the deadlock on the Western front, but
in two years the Asquith administrations had made steady strides
towards a victory which Kitchener had declared would only be
achieved after three years. Military conscription had been steered
successfully through Parliament at the right psychological moment.
Hindenburg summed up the view of the German generals at the time
when he said of the position at the end of 1916: "There was no doubt
that the relative strength of our own and of the enemies forces had
changed still more to our disadvantage at the end of 1916 than had
been the case at the beginning of the year."

Tirpitz was even more illuminating. He "seriously doubted whether
we could hold out for another year". Field-Marshal Haig was able to
tell French newspapermen at the beginning of 1917 that the prospects
of victory "this year are rosy".

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST

This, then, was the considered military opinion of both sides as to
the true position when Lloyd George became Premier. Where is the
justification for his "dark estimate and forecast"? More important,
where was the drive to achieve some dramatic coup to end the dead
lock. Nowhere is there any record that Lloyd George had any positive
plan for ramming home the Allies undoubted advantage at this time.
Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice told us that "LL G. lacked the
Duke of Wellington s one o clock in the morning courage" the
courage which in the midst of troubles and difficulties sees also the
enemy s troubles and difficulties. "Unrivalled in a sudden crisis, he
had not the temperament to endure a long-drawn-out battle and to
give at its end that extra push which means victory."

Lloyd George was from the beginning of his Premiership impeded
by his own pathological aversion to seeking a decision on the Western
front. He had a fatal flaw as a war-time Prime Minister: he was in
capable of trusting his own military leaders. He hated Sir William
Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and would have
liked to curtail the powers conferred on him by Asquith. His pet
aversion, however, was Haig. He would have dismissed both men
had he felt strong enough to withstand the storm of criticism such an
act would arouse. But, failing to win any support for such a move at
home, he sought to intrigue with the French to get rid of them. It
would be unfair to deny that he was genuinely appalled by the loss of
life with so little result to date on the Western front; the 415,000
British casualties on the Somme had deeply angered him. He was also
intensely bitter at what seemed to him to be the unthinking prodigality
of the generals in proposing to hammer away again on the same front.
Notwithstanding all this, he had nothing very practical to offer in
place of this war of attrition.

There is evidence that Lloyd George had been in touch with politi
cians and generals in France to bring about Haig s downfall long before
he had been Premier. Marshal Lyautey, at one time French War
Minister, testified that LI. G., when in France, was continually deni
grating Haig. He told Lyautey that Haig lived in "such blatant
luxury that he never had any conception of what the fighting men had
to put up with". An even more disagreeable trait was his attempt to
play up to the Anglophobe French generals by stressing his Welsh
ancestry. "You and I understand each other better than these English.
My country and yours are culturally closer together. The English lack
our fire and imagination. Why, the close resemblance of the French
and Welsh words for * church 3 prove our affinity/ he told Colonel
D Alen&lt;jon, General Nivelle s staff officer, who was an inveterate
Anglophobe.

Within two days of becoming Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in
league with M. Painleve, the French Premier, was planning to send

Il6 THE MASK OF MERLIN

two British divisions to Salonika, thus disregarding the need for an
immediate push on the Somme. Sir William Robertson sent a secret
telegram to Haig, saying that this proposal was "most unsound. No
military reasons can be produced to justify such a procedure ".

Lloyd George s utter failure to carry a majority of the Liberals with
him against Asquith was demonstrated by the complexion of the new
Government. It contained seven Liberals, fourteen Conservatives and
one Labour member, compared to the previous administration of
fourteen Liberals, ten Conservatives and one Labour. By far the most
important change which LI. G. introduced and perhaps the most
valuable contribution he made to governmental administration was
the creation of a small War Cabinet of six members which met daily.
He also initiated a Cabinet Secretariat and an Imperial War Cabinet
which brought the Dominions more folly into sharing responsibility
for the conduct of the war. These innovations definitely strengthened
not only the constitutional machinery, but the bonds of Common
wealth, and from the long-term view of history they may go down as
one of Lloyd George s most sagacious acts.

Until he came to power there had been no record kept of Cabinet
discussions or decisions, largely due to the tradition of secrecy in the
conduct of Cabinet business. Indeed, secrecy had been carried so far
that in Victorian days black blotting paper was used in the Cabinet
Room to prevent any tell-tale scribblings being revealed in the waste-
paper baskets. But, since Lloyd George himself had shown such a
cynical disregard for this tradition of secrecy, he had no hesitation in
arranging that all business must in future be recorded and minutes of
all conclusions reached in the Cabinet circulated to the ministers
concerned. Lord Simon, who for part of his life was a political adversary
of Lloyd George, stated in his book, Retrospect, that, "I am one of the
few ex-Cabinet Ministers now living who has had actual experience
at first-hand of both systems and there is not the slightest doubt that,
when the comparison is made, the one which now prevails (i.e., that
introduced by LI. G.) is not only to be preferred, but is absolutely
essential."

Though Lloyd George took the credit for the change, the idea
originated with Sir Maurice Hankey. In the official biography of
Lloyd George it is stated that Hankey talked with LI. G. and "urged
him to insist on a small War Cabinet being set up to run the day-to-day
conduct of the war". Between Hankey, the soldier-civil servant, and
Lloyd George there had developed a remarkable affinity for so in
congruous a pair. How close and remarkable this association was may
be judged by the manner in which each aired his pessimistic views on
the other and how, two days after LI. G. became Premier, he called
Hankey to the War Office to condole with him as "the most miserable
man on earth".

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST 117

But while a small War Cabinet can be, as was proved in World War
II, of the utmost value, it can also deteriorate into a thinly veiled form
of dictatorship, which was exactly what happened under Lloyd George,
often with disastrous consequences. It could never be said of Lloyd
George s wartime government, as he himself said of the Asquithian
Cabinets, that Parliament was the only thing it was afraid of. The
larger Cabinet and the slower Asquithian method might have been
laborious and seemingly less effective, but they were the essence of
democracy and provided time for careful deliberation before decisions
were reached. Slow as the old system might be in time of war, it could
have prevented some of the blunders of 1917-18.

In the early months of 1917 Lloyd George wasted much time in
exploring new schemes for switching the military initiative from the
west to the east. At a conference of the Allies at Rome in January he
produced a plan for transferring several divisions from France to the
Italian front with the object of dealing a blow at Austria. This was
kept secret until the last moment as LI. G. feared opposition from his
own military advisers, but hoped to forestall this by winning Italian
support. But if he thought to find allies among the Italians in this
matter, he was wrong: the Rome conference merely referred his plan
to the generals.

When he returned to Paris, Lloyd George was informed by the
French that General Nivelle had a scheme for breaking through the
German lines on the Western front and achieving a speedy victory
possibly "in forty-eight hours". A month earlier LI. G. would have
decried the idea as half-baked and nonsensical and the antithesis of
his own views on strategy. Now he made another right-about-turn,
which showed how easily he could be swayed from one plan to another.
Nivelle was invited to London for discussions, and when the Italians
eventually reported favourably for action on their front, they found
LI. G. had changed his mind.

Thus within two months of his coming to power Lloyd George had
squandered all hope of an early victory. He had refused to implement
the Chantilly plan for a new drive on the Somme, he had advocated
action on the Italian front and then repudiated his own project, and
finally agreed to the hastily conceived and foolishly optimistic Nivelle
plan at a time when the Chantilly decisions should have been translated
into action. The extraordinary feature of this muddled, patchwork
military planning by an amateur strategist, heedless of his advisers,
was that for one brief period Lloyd George became a "Westerner" in
strategy.

What had happened to bring about this change? The blindness and
obtuseness of Lloyd George to the chances of victory through a major
assault in the west at this period are most clearly illustrated in Haig s
diary. The latter recorded: "I asked Mr. Lloyd George to look at the

Il8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Western front as a whole. He stated that, although he recognised the
west as the principal theatre, he could not believe that it was possible
to beat the German armies there at any rate, not next year ." This
was on December 15, 1916.

Yet if any proof were wanted that Germany was in a desperate
situation and anxious to play for time it was surely contained in the
"peace note" issued by the German Chancellor on December 12. The
Chancellor suggested negotiations but gave no hint as to conditions.
True, the note was arrogantly worded, but the intention was clear
to alienate the neutrals from the Allies, if the latter bluntly rejected
the suggestions, and to play for time while the German armies were
regrouped.

The reason for Lloyd George s policy switch was that Nivelle s plan
gave him a chance to ignore the plans of Robertson and Haig, and by
working with the French to diminish the authority of the British
generals and relegate them to positions of less importance. It was a
gamble, but, if it succeeded, LI, G. would enhance his prestige at home
and in Paris. Nivelle not only believed he had a formula for breaking
through the German lines, but insisted that, if he failed, he would be
able to break off the battle within forty-eight hours without great loss
of life. Nivelle may not have been a great general, but he possessed
the very qualities which Robertson and Haig lacked and which Lloyd
George most admired an imaginative approach to strategical pro
blems and an easy and lucid exposition of his arguments. Even more
important, he spoke fluent English and was able completely to win
over Lloyd George by his insistence that his plan would mean "no
more Sommes, but just one short, sharp battle".

One of the Prime Minister s quirks was a belief in phrenology.
Throughout his life he asserted that the shape of a man s head was a
sure sign of the extent of his abilities. Mr. Malcolm Thomson has told
us that in 1884 LI. G. went up to London and visited a phrenologist at
Ludgate Circus, who "amazed him by the accuracy of his character
delineation, but went far to ruin the impression by his diagnosis that
Lloyd George would one day be Prime Minister". When he met
Nivelle, LI. G. was greatly impressed by the bumps on the French
general s head and deemed them to be "deserving of every confidence
and reminiscent of Napoleon." 1

From LI. G/s point of view, it must be admitted that, superficially,

^ l How keenly LI. G. was interested in this subject was revealed by Professor Millott
Severn, a phrenologist who examined some 250,000 skulls in his lifetime. Professor Severn
^called LL G. coming to sec him as Chancellor of the Exchequer: "Mr. Lloyd George has a
wonderful amount of length of head, as well as base, which gives hin&gt; physical stamina and
iustaining power. It is my firm opinion that our present Prime Minister owes his success
rery largely to his knowledge of phrenology, not only insofar as his personal advancement is
xttcemed, but also as to his ability to judge the mental calibre of his colleagues." This may
HT may not be, but it is on record that LJoyd George claimed that Neville CJhamberlain^
&gt;cad was "enough to disqualify Mm from high office".

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST

the Nivellc plan had many attractions. The Prime Minister was
sufficient of a realist to know that he was mistrusted in certain high
circles in London and that he needed a quick and devastating coup to
overcome this antagonism to him. No one had a deeper personal dis
trust of the Welshman than King George V, though the Sovereign
tried hard to conceal this and to get along with him. The King was
seriously perturbed at Lloyd George s accession to the Premiership and
feared an attempt by the Prime Minister to sack Haig. He was also
afraid that the new Premier would mishandle the neutrals and especi
ally U.S.A. Privately the King told Haig that he had written to Lloyd
George advising him "to use the greatest caution in what he says in
the House of Commons ", referring to the German Chancellor s sug
gestions, taking the view that the enemy s peace proposals should not
be rejected before the conditions were known so as not to antagonise
the neutrals.

The King had been increasingly aware of Lloyd George s dislike of
Haig, and been determined to protect him, for on December 28, Haig
received by King s Messenger "a charming letter from the King in
which he says, I have decided to appoint you a Field-Marshal in my
Army. I hope you will look upon it as a New Year s gift from myself
and the country. " Promotion of Haig was certainly a blow at Lloyd
George s scheming.

The comments of the military on LL G. during these days are
particularly significant. General Maurice told Haig: " Lloyd George
is so sketchy and goes into nothing thoroughly. He only pressed
forward measures which he thinks will meet with popular favour."
Even more damning, Maurice expressed the view that he did not think
LI. G. "really cares for the country, or is patriotic. It is, indeed,
a calamity for the country to have such a man at the head of
affairs."

When the Prime Minister sprung his project for putting the British
Army under the French Ctommander-in-ChiePs orders in February,
1917, Hankey told Haig and Robertson that "LI. G. had not received
full authority from the War Cabinet for acting as he was doing".

The Prime Minister had attempted to undermine Haig s authority
by conducting secret negotiations with Major Bertier de Sauvigny, a
French liaison officer attached to the British War Office. When the
conference at Calais, at which the Premier s plan was to be put forward
as a, fait accompli, was arranged, no hint was given as to the main subject
under discussion. It was stated that the purpose of the conference was
to discuss transport difficulties on the French railways and, to lend
credence to this idea, Sir Eric Geddes, who was in charge of railway
transport at the War Office, was detailed to attend. Neither Haig
nor Robertson had then been told about the proposal to put the
British Army under Nivelle*

J20 THE MASK OF MERLIN

To put the British Commander-in-Chief, who was fully occupied
on his own important front, under the control of the Commander-in-
Chief of another army in the middle of an important phase of the war
was militarily unsound whichever way one looks at it. The placing of
British troops under an American general in World War II cannot
be regarded as a parallel, for in this instance the plan was made before
the campaign was launched. Similarly there is no comparison between
the appointment of Nivelle in 1917 and that of Foch as supremo in
1918. But it was even more senseless when one considers that Nivelle
was a new and inexperienced Commander-in-Chief and that the French
Army was at this time showing unmistakable signs of mutiny. Haig,
whose role was reduced by this move to little more than that of an
Adjutant-General, privately told Robertson that he did not believe
British troops in these circumstances would fight willingly or effectively
under French leadership. General Micheler, of the French Army,
stated that "It does not matter what the politicians may decide,
the French soldier is not going to fight after the autumn."

That this was a most inauspicious moment for putting British troops
under French leadership was confirmed by Briand, then French
Premier, who was horrified at the idea of Lloyd George contemplating
such a change in opposition to his two leading soldiers.

Nivelle seems to have been as much under Lloyd George s spell as
the latter was under his. Doubtless the intrigues with Colonel D Alen-
gon had borne fruit. LI. G. had already intimated to D Alen^on his
desire that Sir Henry Wilson should be made head of the British
Mission at Beauvais as soon as he returned from Russia. D Alengon
presumably must have passed this information on to Nivelle, for
on February 28, the French general was writing peremptorily to
Haig, more or less ordering that Wilson should be drafted to this
post.

Haig s correspondence with the King on this subject may have been
undesirable from a strictly constitutional viewpoint in these modem
times: it is easy to see how secret communications between a general
and his Sovereign behind the back of the Government could lead to a
thoroughly dangerous situation besides being undemocratic. Yet it
should be realised that the constitutional relationship between monarch,
government and the Armed Forces has always been elastic, thus
allowing scope for the intervention by the monarch in unforeseen cir
cumstances, and also that in 1917 the evolution of this relationship
from Queen Victoria s occasional outbursts of authoritarianism to
wards an absolutely neutral form of sovereignty had not been com
pleted. If the King interfered in these matters, he could also claim
that Lloyd George had undemocratically deceived his own Cabinet
and was using his powers dictatorially and therefore unconstitutionally.
The King was, in the last resort, the only man to whom Haig could

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST 121

legitimately appeal and, in the circumstances, there was some justifi
cation for this correspondence, especially as Lloyd George had not
secured the full authority of the War Cabinet for what he was trying
to do, and, what was even worse, had delayed for four days com
municating to the King his decision to put Haig under Nivelle s
command.

Lord Stamfordham, acknowledging Haig s letter to the King, wrote:
"You can well understand it was anything but agreeable reading to
His Majesty. The King was unaware either that the question of the
Command on the Western front had been discussed at the War Cabinet,
or that it was to be the principal matter for consideration at the Calais
conference."

So Lloyd George had been guilty of withholding vital information
from his Sovereign information on a matter which concerned the
safety and survival of the King s people. The King was now con
vinced that the Prime Minister was hoping to force Haig to resign:
it was probably this knowledge which caused him to beg Haig to
dismiss from his mind "any idea of resignation". It is hard to accept
the view that this mild intervention was unconstitutional.

Nevertheless, as these intrigues on all sides (the King s, Haig s,
Lloyd George s and all others) went perilously near to undermining
constitutional government and military discipline, it is essential to
examine differing viewpoints. Lord Beaverbrook, in a biting summing-
up of Haig in Men and Power , commented: "With the publication of
his Private Papers in 1952, he [Haig] committed suicide twenty-five
years after his death." The brilliance of the epitaph obscures the real
merits of Haig. In his diaries he made no effort to disguise his pre
judices, his somewhat pathetic attempts to "get along" with Lloyd
George, nor did he cover up his own intrigues. It must be conceded
that Haig himself was not free of intrigue; he had, under great provo
cation, intrigued against French and to this extent was a disloyal sub
ordinate, though as French was himself a prince of intriguers he made
it extremely difficult for any subordinate to trust him. Equally there
can be no question that Haig did not hesitate to trade on his friendship
with the King and without doubt this was the one factor which pre
vented Lloyd George from sacking him. The most damning indict
ment one can make against Haig was that he countenanced wholesale
slaughter of his troops on the Western front, but then so did many
other commanders in the field and, though such slaughter never pro
duced worth-while immediate results, it cannot be said that, if the war
was to be won, it was unnecessary. Haig s critics have tried to have it
both ways, pointing to his incoherence at the conference table, yet
failing to admit his lucidity and ability on paper; damning him as an
administrator and yet attributing his doggedness and lack of imagina
tion in the field to stubbornness and vanity. Haldane, who worked

122 THE MASK OF MERLIN

closely with Haig when he was at the War Office, referring to the
creation of the Imperial General Staff, said, "Haig had a first-rate
General Staff mind ... he grasped the situation completely and gave
invaluable guidance in the fashioning of both the Regular first line
and the Territorial second line. *

Once the head of government starts to intrigue behind the back of
his own Cabinet and his Sovereign, a chain reaction of counter-plots
is almost inevitable. LI. G. had infected his colleagues with his own
deceits, and soon members of the Cabinet were writing behind his back
to the generals and the latter in their turn were intriguing with Cabinet
Ministers. The allegedly more united Cabinet was actually a hive of
imbroglios, with Curzon and Derby writing to Haig without the
knowledge of Lloyd George.

While these discussions were going on the Germans were escaping
from the difficult position in which they had been placed on the Somme
battlefield. The essence of the Chantilly plan for a new offensive on
the Somme was that the French army, weakened by heavy losses,
would have to play a secondary role to the British. Therefore, if the
Chantilly plan had been carried through, there was more reason for
giving complete command to a British than a French C.-in-C. But
some French generals so hated the idea of playing a secondary role
to Britain that they had campaigned for the replacement of Joffre by
Nivelle with the result that French military policy was reversed against
the wishes of most French politicians.

Nivelle s idea was that the French army should have a greater share
in any new drive and the British army less. Lloyd George, ever with
an eye to winning favour with the British public, approved the idea,
believing that it would enhance his popularity by saving the British
from further heavy losses and that, if all went wrong, the French could
be blamed. He had always been cynical in his attitude to the French,
whom he never really liked and against whom he had frequently
intrigued. At the same time he was quite prepared to advertise to
them his Welsh descent and to stress that they and he together were
more than a match for the "unimaginative English".

Yet the British army early in 1917 was in a far better position to
make a new drive against the Germans than were the French, and
the new plan meant the British taking over a longer front something
LI. G. had hitherto strongly deprecated and thus being unable to
maintain pressure on the Somme. This was more than the Germans
had dared hope for. They immediately began their retreat to the
Hindenburg Line.

This withdrawal by the Germans was interpreted by the British
General Staff as a vindication of the British actions on the Somme,
since it obviously implied a refusal by the enemy to fight the British
on that ground. News of the retreat was reported to General Gough,

THE AMATEUR STRATEGIST 1 23

but no action to follow through was taken by either the British or the
French. In retrospect this dilly-dally policy by the Allies was the
biggest blunder of the war. It prevented a possible victory for the
Allies before the end of 1917 and hastened the collapse of the Russian
armies. It was a prime cause of mutiny in the French army and, but
for America s entry into the war, might have undone all progress
towards victory and even resulted in the defeat of the Allies.

Under these conditions Nivelle s alternative offensive was launched.
In the light of suggestions that the changes in political and military
leadership in Britain and France resulted in a speeding-up of the war
effort it is worth recording that the Nivelle plan, though originally
timed for mid-February, was three times delayed and was not put into action
until two months later, by which time the Germans had learned all about it and
had ample reserves to meet the push. Within two days of the launching of
the French offensive on the Aisne on April 16, it was clear that disaster
lay ahead.

To make matters worse, there was a French political crisis at the
time. Lyautey resigned after being shouted down in the Chamber of
Deputies, and this speedily brought about the fall of M. Briand s govern
ment. The latter was succeeded by M. Ribot, but with the main power
held by M. Painleve, the new Minister of War, French morale was at
a very low ebb.

Nivelle lost the support of his senior commanders, Micheler and
Petain, and finally of his Government. So the situation arose of a
British army being under the command of a French general whom
his own government did not trust. His offensive, it is true, was not as
expensive in manpower losses as many contemporary actions, but it
failed to achieve its object, revealed serious organisational defects and
brought about Nivelle s immediate disgrace and widespread mutinies
in the French Army.

Such was the state of affairs in the late spring of 1917. LI. G/s first
attempt to overrule his military advisers was doomed to failure and,
ironically, the one successful feature of the whole affair was the capture
by Haig s army of the Vimy Ridge.

In November, 1916, the Chief of the General Staff had asked for
an extension of the age of military service, knowing that there would
almost certainly be a steady reduction in Britain s fighting strength if
this were not done. Indeed this, perhaps more than anything else,
was the crucial issue when the Asquith Government was being under
mined in December, 1916. It was the most powerful argument why
political differences should be shelved and prompt action taken. But
the Government fell and the measures taken by Lloyd George were
paltry and insufficient. Not until January, 1918, were some minor
amendments to the Military Service Act of 1916 made, and these
merely provided for an extra 100,000 men, far less than had been

124 THE MASK OF MERLIN

requested by the Army Council* Yet the British fighting strength was
fast declining by midsummer, 1917. The result of this dilatory action
by the Lloyd George Government was that not a single man of the
additional 100,000 was trained to meet the German attack of March,
1918. The Prime Minister, so freely vaunted as the war-winner and
statesman of resolution and speedy action, was in fact always too late,
too slow and too obstinate to take expert advice.

This is what came about from having a dictatorial Premier deter
mined to run a war in his own makeshift, amateur fashion. It nearly
cost the Allies the loss of the war: in terms of human life it cost tens of
thousands.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting, too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don t give way to hating,
And yet don t look too good, nor talk too wise ..."

Rudyard Kipling

To a generation which has committed If to the category of homespun
texts framed on a cottage wall, or bracketed it alongside the works of
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, these lines may have little meaning. But in
World War I they were the soundest advice that could have been
offered to British commanders in the field.

"Donkeys leading lions" is how one modern historian has described
these commanders. Maybe the lions appreciated the stolid, if negative,
qualities of the donkeys better than that historian. At least these lions
did not mutiny against their commanders.

In the last two years of this appalling war the British people lived
in a fog of bewilderment, an incoherent state of mind that fluctuated
between the extremes of optimism and pessimism, between the flam
boyant, bogus patriotism of the music-hall songs and the knowledge
that out in Flanders the opposing armies were locked in a hopeless
stranglehold in a sea of mud, winning a few yards this way or that at
a cost of thousands of lives.

The Lloyd George Government preferred the fog to enlightening the
people. That was why, though on the surface morale was higher in
Britain in World War I than in World War II, the foundations of that
morale were far less sure, much more easily eroded. The people in
1940, wrote Sir Harold Nicolson, "are disheartened by the fact that
they do not know what they are fighting for." It is true that only
after Churchill came to power in 1940 did the people become really
war-minded and realised they were fighting for survival. In World
War I the people were fed on imperialist illusions. The man-in-the-
street never was in any doubt that Britain, the mistress of the seas,

12/5

126 THE MASK OF MERLIN

must win in the long run; he was confident of Britain s superiority and
efficiency to a much greater extent than was the Prime Minister. That
was the reason why Lloyd George never had to issue edicts against
"alarm and despondency" as did Churchill in a later war. On this
evidence it might perhaps be argued that a nation so fed on illusions
of national superiority and the belief that "one Briton was the equal of
three Germans" could not be told the truth. But to withhold the truth
from the people in wartime is always a dangerous policy and, at its
best, a risky expedient. With the advent of Lloyd George to the
Premiership the subtle technique of the small "He that sinketh" had
given way to that of the "big lie", a method which Dr. Goebbels
copied a generation later. There was no frank talking to the British
people from their wartime leader, none of that confidential, fearless
fireside homily which Sir Winston Churchill used in a later war. The
music-hall soubrette and Horatio Bottomley were the recruiting ser
geants and if a military disaster occurred the generals were always the
culprits.

Many of the Liberals forming the Opposition had held positions in
the previous Government and were therefore keenly aware of the need
for not embarrassing the new regime in a critical stage of the war.
Neither Asquith, nor his chief colleagues, attempted to make political
capital out of their opposition to the Government. Though in private
Asquith never minced matters in giving his opinions on the conduct
of the war, his biographers have revealed that he deliberately refrained
from making an "effective" speech because it might have been a
"grave disservice to the Allied cause".

The Government itself was, perhaps, the strangest combination of
politicians ever to have installed itself at Westminster. Most of the
Tory ministers who had been eager to push LI. G. out of the Asquith
Government showed astonishing alacrity in jumping on to the Welsh
man s Coalition coach. Arthur Balfour, whom LI. G. had tried to
elbow out of the Admiralty, and whom Asquith had stoutly defended,
"passed from one Cabinet to the other," said Winston Churchill, "like
a powerful, graceful cat walking delicately and unsoiled across a
rather muddy street." Indeed, so anxious were the Tories to scramble
to power that they made it comparatively easy for the Premier to fill
the places left by the pro-Asquithian members of the last Cabinet.

Lloyd George s astutest catch was Dr. Christopher Addison, who
had been his Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Munitions,
and who was now given charge of this Ministry. It was Addison, an
intriguer in the lobbies, who whipped up 126 Liberal M.P.s to pledge
their support of the new Government.

The Labour supporters of the new Government Lloyd George was
able to cudgel and charm into submission in turn: they were singularly
inept and uncritical. The Prime Minister s ploy was to play off one

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 127

Tory minister against another; to smirk and joke about Curzon s
pomposity to Bonar Law and Carson, to flatter Curzon to his face and
to dazzle and bewilder Arthur Balfour with his buoyant and gay
approach to day-to-day problems. To such a misanthropic cynic as
Balfour such lighthearted resilience appeared like the alchemy of the
human soul.

By this time Lloyd George had patched up his quarrel with D. A.
Thomas (Lord Rhondda) and made him President of the Local
Government Board. Not that LI. G. had forgotten his marked dislike
for Rhondda, but he felt it wiser to have an enemy in his camp than
out of it. Rhondda was especially interested in infant mortality and
he urged the creation of a Ministry of Health. The attitude of the
Prime Minister to so progressive and sensible a proposal can be summed
up by his indifferent comment: "Rhondda contracted quite a passion
for the health of babies . . . however, the call of duty was powerful
enough to interrupt that passion."

The "call of duty" was the summoning of Rhondda to tackle the
Ministry of Food. Rhondda agreed to accept this onerous and un
popular office in return for a promise that a Ministry of Health would
be established within five months. That promise was not kept. It is
noteworthy that, despite pressure on the Cabinet, Rhondda was unable
to get his food rationing plan put into force until February 25, 1918.
Yet each week for months there had been as many as a million people
standing in queues in the London area alone, many of them patiently
waiting for the food which often enough was all gone by the time their

turn came.

* * * * *

For a short time after the failure of Nivelle s attack, Lloyd George
found himself in agreement with the British generals. Both Haig and
Robertson made it abundantly clear that if the Germans were given
any respite they would be free to crush the Russian armies which
Kerensky was desperately trying to rally.

Meanwhile the Germans had intensified their submarine offensive.
It has frequently been argued that Lloyd George had to force the
convoy system on an unwilling Admiralty, and to some extent this is
true. Admiral Jellicoe was unco-operative on the question of extending
the convoy system and, indeed, in many ways he showed a deplorable
lack of imagination for a Service chief. The Admiralty s timidity on
the subject of convoys was also echoed by the Foreign Office who had
what they considered "legitimate doubts" about extending the system
too soon. The joint arguments of the Admiralty and the Foreign
Office were that they were not antagonistic to change, but that a convoy
system earlier in the war could not have been effectively employed in
the Atlantic without impairing strength elsewhere. In 1914-18 Britain
faced the menace of a powerful German battle fleet close to her own

128 THE MASK OF MERLIN

coasts, which was not the case in World War II. Politically, too, there
were certain arguments from the Foreign Office side against a convoy
system in the Atlantic while U.S.A. was still neutral. U.S.A. was
then extremely touchy on the subject of the freedom of the seas, and
it was Germany s final error that she failed to respect this national
touchiness and eventually brought America into the war against her.

On this subject Lloyd George was undoubtedly right and the
Admiralty experts wrong, while the Foreign Office regard for the
niceties of diplomacy did not take into account the fact that the U-boat
campaign threatened to achieve by sea a victory that was impossible
on land. This was a subject on which LI. G. was able to bring to bear
his imagination, his genius for improvisation and drive. Even these
qualities were not enough: it required his talent for downright rudeness
and defiant abuse before he broke down the Service chiefs at the
Admiralty. The latter allied themselves with the Foreign Office against
the Prime Minister and found excuse after excuse for taking no action.
If on military matters Lloyd George can frequently be criticised, full
credit must be given to him for the programme he devised for beating
the submarine menace. He more than any man helped to end the
U-boat menace, and it was perhaps his greatest achievement of the
war.

He roundly denounced the timidity of the Admiralty and insisted
that it ill-behoved the Mistress of the Seas to fail to take offensive
action against the U-boats.

Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt, British naval attache in Washington, wrote
in his diary: "Up to the end of January, 1917, it was touch and go
whether the U-boat campaign would do more harm than the whole
of the German Army. More than 300,000 tons of British shipping had
been sunk by submarine. Our intelligence experts are agreed that
Germany can starve us out by midsummer if this rate of destruction
is maintained.

"Hall [Admiral Hall of the N.I.D] has done his best to make this
clear to the Admiralty, but they don t seem to listen. All now depends
on the P.M., who is putting up a magnificent fight for a proper convoy
system. He is the one man who has listened to our intelligence reports
and has asked Hankey to work out a plan.

"Am told that LI. G. horrified the Admirals by suggesting warships
could escort merchantmen across the Atlantic. Unheard of/ said
Jellicoe, tramps and merchantmen have no idea of discipline. They
would never keep in station. LL G/s reply to this was: The Royal
Navy aren t the only seamen in the world, you know. In the name of
Nelson where s your offensive spirit? Are you afraid of presenting a
target to the enemy? Isn t your job to draw him out and sink him? "
Jellicoe s obstinacy persisted, but Admiral Beatty was finally won
over to support the idea for giving LL G. s plans a trial* In April,

P.A. -ReuterPhot os

Camping with his wife in the Welsh mountains as Moel Heboz.

Lloyd George with

Col. Sir Maurice Hankey.

The coalition Prime

|f^ k i&gt;* :i i Minister cracking a joke
with Marshal Foch and
*5 Aristide Briand.

Topix Picture Service

PI :,

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 1 29

1917, the convoy system was generally adopted and a "Grow More
Food at Home" campaign was launched on the Premier s instructions.
Here, without question, was an instance of LI. G. s drive and imagina
tion, his restless, critical mind destroying official inertia, even to the
extent of descending personally on the Admiralty and challenging
their figures not only on the availability of warships but of the total
number of merchantmen requiring protection. It proved the turning
point in the war at sea.

In May, 1917, the Prime Minister actually went to Paris to press
for a continuation of the fight on the Western front. For once even
he had no new ideas for waging war.

But his lack of respect for officialdom and experts in contrast to
Asquith s deference to them, while giving him occasional triumphs
when the experts were wrong, was always liable to be a serious defect.
His quicksilver mind was not so much apparent in the sense of con
structive mental fertility, but in being able to switch from one policy
to its opposite without any inhibitions. Soon he was to change his
mind again, consequently having an unsettling effect not only on the
generals but on the troops. So often did LI. G. s mind dart off at a
tangent on some fantasy of amateur strategy that, wrote Major-General
Sir Frederick Maurice, " At least 20 per cent of the time of the General
Staff at the War Office was occupied in explaining either verbally or
in writing that the alternative projects put forward were either strategic
ally unsound or wholly impracticable."

Lloyd George rushed to Rapallo at the height of the crisis on the
Italian front solely because he wanted to institute the Supreme War
Council, which he saw as a medium for giving him still greater powers*
He insisted that the British military representative on this Council
should be entirely independent of the C.I.G.S. and should give his
advice direct to the War Cabinet.

In theory the setting up of such a Council seemed a wise move
towards unity, especially as America had now joined the Allies. In
practice its machinery was far too cumbersome and its effectiveness
destroyed by the conflicting interests of the powers forming it. The
most disturbing feature was that the British military representative
chosen by Lloyd George was Sir Henry Wilson, who was opposed to
the views of the C.I.G.S. Thus at a time when Britain s voice should
have been of the utmost importance in the counsels of this body, it
was weakened by the obvious divergence of views between Wilson and
the C.I.G.S. All the other powers composing the Council were repre
sented by their Chiefs of Staff, or the latter s spokesmen.

All the time, of course, LL G. s tactics were directed as much against
Haig as Robertson. The previous March, Haig had noted in his diary:

130 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"Apparently the last thing the War Cabinet would like would be that
I should resign. LI. G., in Wigram s opinion, would then appeal to
the country and might come back as a dictator/* Two days later he
commented: "The King was most pleased to see me and stated that
he would support me through thick and thin, but I must be careful
not to resign because LL G. would then appeal to the country for
support and would probably come back with a great majority."

Such a statement clearly implies that Lloyd George had a majority
of the nation behind him, and at that time there is little doubt that he
had. His allies in the Press had ensured that: the pall of silence and
propaganda over Britain had effectively obscured from the people the
truth about Nivelle s disastrous campaign, the widespread mutinies
in the French Army and the futile bloodshed of Passchendaele which
achieved far less than the slaughter on the Somme the previous year.
In his War Memoirs, LL G. posed the question: "Who and what was
responsible for the delay that wrecked the chance of success? " It was,
he argued, due to the workings of a divided command. "As it was, the
armies were never given a decent chance. The stubborn mind of Haig
was transfixed on the Somme ... it took him a long time to extricate
his mental top-boots from the Somme mud/

To this attack Lord Trenchard, Sir Noel Birch and Sir John David
son made a joint reply in 1936, dealing with an allegation by Lloyd
George that Haig had overlooked able men and that his military
appointments were governed by favouritism. "Mr. Lloyd George says
that Lord Haig appointed Sir Herbert Lawrence as Chief of Staff and
implies that this appointment was governed by favouritism. But
General Lawrence was not appointed by Earl Haig. He actually
wanted to appoint someone else."

Volume IV of the War Memoirs, which dealt with Passchendaele
it would be more accurate to describe this campaign as the Third
Battle of Ypres created a furore all over the world. From General
Sir Alexander Godley in Wellington, New Zealand, came the state
ment that "Passchendaele was forced on the British command by
circumstances. The French had suffered so sorely that somebody had
to fight and the duty devolved upon the British. The attack on Lord
Haig is wholly unwarranted."

Nor was the defence of Haig at this time merely a matter of the
generals and ex-generals ganging up against Lloyd George. The
attack on Haig brought thousands of letters from ex-rankers to news
papers and military organisations. A challenge to Lloyd George to
repeat on a public platform in Wales the allegations against Haig was
made at a meeting of the Vale of Glamorgan District Committee of
the British Legion at Cardiff. Nearly thirty branches were represented
and they passed a resolution deprecating LL G. s criticism that Haig
sacrificed 400,000 lives for the sake of personal vanity.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 13!

Lloyd George tried to bolster his case by misquoting from the jottings
in Sir Henry Wilson s diary. His own version of a meeting between
Wilson and Foch was that the latter "wanted to know who it was
who wanted Haig to go on a duck s march through the inundations
to Ostend and Zeebrugge. He thinks the whole thing futile, fantastic
and dangerous". In a reply in a letter to The Times, General Sir
Frederick Maurice claimed:

"Mr. Lloyd George has misinterpreted Sir H. Wilson s diary. In
1928, shortly after the publication of the diary, Marshal Foch came to
England ... I showed him the passage in Sir Henry s diary and asked
him what the reference to the duck s march meant. I took down his
reply:

"*I had just come to Paris to be Chief of the General Staff and had
heard that Haig wished to relieve the French detachment at Nieuport,
on the Belgian coast. When Wilson came to see me I asked him what
this meant. Did Haig mean to go with the Belgians on a duck s march
through the inundations? I did not then know of Haig s plan for a
landing on the Belgian coast. "

This trivial detail about a "duck s march" is significant in that the
inundations made by the Belgians were far to the north of Haig s
proposed attack by land. The preparations for the landing were made
with great secrecy.

Mr. Herbert Russell, a war correspondent who, in his own words,
was "through the Passchendaele show from the first day to the last",
can perhaps be relied upon to give an independent view of the affair.
Mr. Russell wrote to The Times: "Nivelle had launched his long-
proclaimed offensive and failed disastrously. The French had their
tails down. Haig was told that he must do something or they would
throw their hand in.

"Where else could Haig have done something ? Mr. Lloyd George
says that Petain wanted him to deliver a heavy attack on the Italian
front. Haig could not afford to denude his own front with Petain
incessantly asking the British to take over still more of the line.

"Strategically, the Passchendaele scheme was perfectly sound. As
originally planned the Navy was to have delivered a simultaneous
attack, but this was abandoned. What killed the operations was the
weather. The ceaseless, pitiless downpour of rain, day after day, was
almost unbelievable. The ground became one vast bog.

"As to the conduct of the operations; I was permitted to attend the
daily conferences of the Chief of Staff to the Second Army, General
Sir Charles Harington, and ... I have no hesitation in saying that
never throughout the whole of the world struggle was there finer staff
work displayed. . . . The routing of movements was a marvel of
efficiency*
"Mr. Lloyd George makes allusions to misleading bulletins which

132 THE MASK OF MERLIN

turned defeat into victory . It fell to my lot to send more dispatches
than any other single individual and this allegation is too untrue to
even arouse a glow of resentment.

"Mr. Lloyd George asks us to believe that so little did the Passchen-
daele offensive really trouble the Germans that they were able to
detach troops for the capture of Riga. Anybody with knowledge of the
situation at that time knows that these German troops were set free
by the Russian revolution."

In the Official History of the 1314-18 War is this statement: " On July
28, 1938, Mr. Lloyd George told Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds,
with whom he was then on very friendly terms, being of the same age,
that he felt he might have misjudged Haig and Robertson, that he had
kept no diary or notes and had relied for the material of the Passchen-
daele chapter and other technical matters on a well-known publicist
on military matters who had assisted him."

As a final comment on this bitter controversy two statements by
Lloyd George make a contradictory epitaph. One was made when
Haig died in 1928: "Earl Haig was a man of unfailing courage and
tenacity of purpose. My personal relations with him were always of
the very best. He behaved not merely like a great patriot, but like a
great gentleman."

But in 1936 LL G. wrote: "Haig gambled on the chance that the
Germans would break rather than face the dread alternative of a con
fession of failure to the politicians, who had deposed Lord French for
a less stupendous error of judgment at Loos. Whilst hundreds of
thousands were being destroyed in the insane egotism of Passchendaele,
every message or memorandum from Haig was full of these insistences
on the importance of sending him more and more to replace those he
had sent to die in the mud."

The answer to this, in part at least, is the fact that during this period
Lloyd George had signally failed to develop British military resources
to the full. It took six months for a measure affecting manpower to
produce the requisite additional soldiers for the Western front.

No one was more deeply grieved than Haig when the casualty
figures came in; he was not insensitive to the appalling slaughter. No
British commander ever had a harder choice to make, but it is certain
that any wavering on his part would have meant even bloodier battles
and even greater losses in the face of German forces who had had time
to re-group and re-deploy.

By May, 1917, Nivelle had been dismissed. But those who thought
that LL G. had learned his lesson about using too small forces on the
Western front were swiftly disillusioned. The following month the
Premier was again thinking up new diversions, and Sir William

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 133

Robertson was warning Haig: "There is trouble in the land just now.
The War Cabinet, under the influence of Lloyd George, have started
quite among themselves, plus Smuts, to review the whole policy and
strategy of the war. . . . The Lloyd George idea is to settle the war from
Italy and today the railway people have been asked for figures regard
ing the rapid transfer of twelve divisions and 300 heavy guns to Italy!
They will never go while I am C.I.G.S., but all that will come later."

These were prophetic words. Lloyd George was making his last
attempt to get rid of Robertson and Haig.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister, in the face of keen resistance by the
Tories, brought Churchill back into the Government as Minister of
Munitions in July, 1917. It required considerable political courage to
do this, for Bonar Law, the Deputy Prime Minister, was strongly
opposed to such a move, while the Conservative rank and file most
unjustly considered Churchill responsible for the Dardanelles disaster.
It would be unfair to suggest that LI. G. merely wanted Churchill as
an ally of the Government instead of a possible critic on the Asquithian
benches, though such a thought must have crossed his mind. Churchill
had a tremendously high regard for Asquith, though he admired and
was fascinated by Lloyd George. The latter was equally fascinated by
Churchill s energy and drive, and for many years he retained for him
an affection which outlasted almost any other political friendship in
his life.

In October, Robertson, who had just seen various members of the
Government, wrote to Haig: "He (LI. G.) is out for my blood very
much these days. Milner, Curzon, Carson, Cecil and Balfour have
each in turn expressly spoken to me separately about his intolerable
conduct during the last week or two. I am sick of this d d life. I
can t help thinking he has got Painleve and Co. here in his rushing
way so as to cany me off my feet. But I have got big feet."

The situation on the Western front was becoming steadily worse.
The collapse on the Russian front had enabled the Germans to bring
extra divisions into Belgium and France. To counter this new threat
the General Staff urged that Britain should merely act defensively in
all secondary theatres of war and bring back to France as many troops
as could be spared. There were at least 1,200,000 troops scattered
elsewhere and a large number of these could have been sent to the
Western front.

But Lloyd George was adamant. He denounced any suggestion of
caution in the east and insisted that the only way to victory now lay
through a new attack in that theatre of operations. For this reason he
told Allenby to drive the Turks out of Palestine and forbade the
transfer of any of the 100,000 troops in that area, despite the most
vehement opposition from the French.

Thus the Western front was rendered extremely vulnerable for the

134 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Allies. Nor was the compromise eventually arrived at between the
"Easterners" and the "Westerners" in any way satisfactory. It merely
meant that Allenby was to attack with the proviso that he could have
no reinforcements from the west. Sir William Robertson protested
against this plan and warned that it could only lead to disaster. He
was over-ruled and removed from the post of C.I.G.S., his place being
taken by Sir Henry Wilson.

Early in 1918 there was real consternation on the Western front.
Haig knew that the attack would come against his Third and Fifth
Armies: he repeatedly warned the Cabinet of this. The previous
November he had to send five divisions to Italy and had received no
replacements, notwithstanding his losses at Passchendaele, the de
pletion of the French armies and the longer front which he had taken
over. If he had permitted any further troops to go to Palestine, it is
almost certain that Ludendorff s attack would have succeeded in the
spring, the British armies would have been crushed and the Channel
ports captured.

The Supreme War Council was put to the supreme test and found
wanting. Its only chance of influencing events before the Germans
launched their next assault would have been to create a strategic
reserve of troops. But as long as the tug-of-war between "Easterners"
and "Westerners" continued none of the generals on the Western
front was prepared to part with troops for such a reserve. It is signifi
cant of the doubts which the politicians must have felt that none of
them tried to coerce the generals into contributing to such a reserve.

Lloyd George insisted throughout his War Memoirs that Haig
"viciously resisted" the idea of unity of command. Yet it was Haig
not Lloyd George who pressed for Foch to be made Generalissimo.
The two men s conception of unity of command differed; the soldier
wished for unity in the field, the politician for unity and complete
power in a Supreme Council which would coerce the generals into
absolute submission to the politicians.

The Prime Minister seems at this time to have had only one main
aim to prevent further action on any major scale on the Western front,
despite the spate of intelligence reports which showed the enemy was
planning a vast new attack. The voluble and conspiratorial Sir Henry
Wilson was the chief instrument in achieving this by his replacement
of the chief of the "Westerners", Robertson. A second and even more
deplorable factor was the deliberate withholding of troops from Haig
so that he could not possibly mount another offensive. It may seem
incredible that any statesman claiming to be a patriot could devise
such a tortuous and frustrating policy which, in effect, meant endanger
ing the lives of whole battalions of British soldiers and risking, even
courting, defeat. The Prime Minister had neither heeded the warnings
of the military, nor those of his own more far-sighted colleagues.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 135

Winston Churchill, who was back as Minister of Munitions, wrote in
World Crisis: "The Prime Minister and his colleagues in the War
Cabinet were adamant. They were definitely opposed to any renewal
of the British offensive in France. They wished to keep a tight control
over their remaining manpower until the arrival of the American
millions offered the prospect of decisive success." But Churchill was
not providing Lloyd George with the excuse that there was wisdom in
waiting for the Americans. He went on to say: "They were fully
informed of the growing German concentration against Haig and
repeatedly discussed it. Haig was accordingly left to face the spring
with an army whose 56 infantry divisions were reduced from a 13 to 10
battalion basis and with three instead of five cavalry divisions."

Yet the Prime Minister smoothly talked of the Western front being
"over-insured".

The Germans started their great new offensive on March 21, 1918.
Three days later Haig realised that in relying on Petain, the general
who became the arch-defeatist and apologist of 1940, he had made a
fatal error. For once Sir Henry Wilson had been right: he had advised
Haig that "he would have to live on Petain s charity and he would
find that very cold charity". Now, to his dismay, Haig learned that
Petain, far from putting all his efforts into preserving the link between
the British and French armies in front of Amiens, was anxious to fall
back to cover Paris. Petain was already showing his innate pessimism
and defeatism; he even urged the British to fall back and defend the
Channel ports. It was then that Haig, in desperation, telegraphed to
London for Foch to be named as generalissimo. Haig, the man whose
mental top-boots were supposed to be sunk deep in the Somme mud,
devised the one formula which eventually proved the right combina
tion. What LI. G. had tried to achieve by intrigue and devious methods
to unify the direction of the Allied war effort was actually the work
of his detested Commander-in-Chief.

Two men eventually sought to penetrate the curtain of silence which
surrounded all these moves. They were Colonel Repington, who had
left The Times to become military correspondent of the Morning Post,
and Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice.

Colonel Repington, a somewhat conceited, but on the whole objec
tive, observer, wrote an article attacking the Versailles Committee.
On the face of it this was a direct challenge to Lloyd George and a
defence of all that Haig and Robertson stood for. The Prime Minister,
always swift to counter-attack, immediately decided to prosecute
Repington under the Defence of the Realm Act for revealing military
secrets. On February 21, 1918, at Bow Street, Repington and the
editor of the Morning Post were each fined 1,000.

In his article Repington had written: "Newspapers have been
strictly enjoined not to refer to one of the chief results of the CounciL

136 THE MASK OF MERLIN

In this way it is hoped that criticism will be burked. But there are
times when we must take courage in both hands and risk consequences.
One of the decisions taken is against all sound principles and can only
breed confusion in a defensive campaign such as that to which we are
restricted at present. ..."

The chief point of the article was that while it was the duty of the
Commander of the General Staff to issue orders of the War Cabinet to
the Allies, there was now interposed the "Versailles soldiers under the
presidency of General Foch, and the British general on this body is
not apparently under the War Office, nor was he appointed by them.
He owes his elevation to Mr. Lloyd George s favour alone".

In a reference to this incident in his War Memoirs, Lloyd George
stated that he knew "nothing comparable to this betrayal in the whole
of our history". He claimed that it was immediately "appreciated"
in Germany and that Professor Delbruck, the famous authority on
military questions, expressed his thanks for it in his magazine of
February 24, 1918. "Repington s betrayal might and ought to have
decided the war."

Presumably LI. G. was trying to shift at least some of the blame for
the losses inflicted by the German attack of 1918. It makes a useful
if untenable alibi for the grim tale of Allied defeats during this period.

In January, 1918, the Government had decided that 100,000
additional men would meet the needs of the Army, but in April, when
all hell was let loose on the Western front, 400,000 more were pro
vided. Yet Robertson had asked for 500,000 the previous July. The
men were in Britain: they could have been sent. Lloyd George alone
refused to dispatch them.

It was the Prime Minister s attempt to cover up this manpower
shortage which led to the unexpected broadside launched by Sir
Frederick Maurice. On April 9, 1918, on introducing the measure to
extend the age of military service to 51, the Prime Minister stated
that our armies in France were stronger than they had been the
previous year and denied that forces which might have been kept in
France had been sent elsewhere.

This date is important. On April 9 the German advance was ham
mering home a devastating attack in the neighbourhood of Armen-
tires. The Portuguese were running away through the British lines,
taking their guns with them. Foch had on the same day declined to
take over any part of the British line. It is not surprising that Lloyd
George was anxious to put the best possible complexion on a situation
which reeked of catastrophe.

General Maurice was in France when he first heard of the Premier s
statement. Among officers and men it had aroused great indignation
not merely because of its palpable falsity, but by the implication that
Haig was to blame for not making the best possible use of his forces.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 137

Having just handed over his post at the War Office he was awaiting
a new appointment in France General Maurice was in a position to
know how false this statement was. He immediately wrote to the
C.I.G.S., drawing his attention to. it and stressing the adverse im
pression it had made among the troops.

Hearing nothing from the War Office, Maurice risked his whole
future career for what he believed to be his duty to the country. For
it was Maurice who, in his capacity of Director of Military Operations
at the War Office, had supplied the Prime Minister with the figures
giving the strength of the Allied armies on the Western front early
in 1918. He wrote a letter to the Press, denouncing the Prime Mini
ster s statement.

"The facts are beyond dispute," he wrote. "The total strength of
the Army in France on January i, 1917, was 1,299,000 and on January
i, 1918, was 1,570,000. But in 1918 there were included in this toted
strength 300,000 unarmed British labourers and Chinese coolies who
did not appear in the 1917 figures, while the fighting troops in 1918
were more than 100,000 weaker. Between January i and March 21,
when the Germans attacked, Haig had to disband 140 battalions for
lack of men to replace the losses we had suffered. In Palestine and
Egypt there were at the beginning of March 213,600 white troops and
37,300 native troops. The extension of the front of the Fifth Army
was undertaken because of the pressure which M. Clemenceau brought
to bear on our Government."

If the public could not grasp the academic niceties of the pros and
cons of the Versailles Committee, as expounded by Colonel Repington,
they could at least understand this positive exposition of facts and
figures. The curtain of silence had been pierced; the Maurice Letter
produced an immediate sensation. At last Asquith made a real attack
on the Government, feeling that the issues were too serious for further
forbearance towards the ministry of the day. He asked Bonar Law
what steps the Government proposed to take to examine the allegations
contained in the letter. Tories as well as Liberals swarmed to the
attack, and the postbags of M.P.s were filled with angry and anguished
letters from parents of soldiers.

As soon as it was apparent that the Government was in serious trouble
Bonar Law, more or less off-the-cuff, .promised that the Government
would appoint two judges to inquire into the charges. Then, between
the making of this promise and the Parliamentary debate on the
Maurice Letter, the Government changed their minds and sought for
excuses to withdraw the promise of an inquiry.

Lloyd George, who loved a political fight, decided wisely, as it
happened, from his own point of view to make the issue one of con
fidence in the Government. He answered Maurice s criticism in what
was a remarkably adroit and sophistical parliamentary performance

138 THE MASK OF MERLIN

by claiming: "The figures that I gave were taken from the official
records of the War Office, for which I sent before I made the state
ment. If they were incorrect, General Maurice was as responsible as
anyone else. But they were not incorrect."

It was easy for Lloyd George to juggle with figures and, from his
position as Prime Minister, to refute the allegations. Who was to gain
say him? Robertson had gone and the new C.I.G.S. was unlikely to
quarrel with the man who had given him this post. Despite the fact
that Maurice, a man of great integrity, had risked his professional
reputation by implying that the Prime Minister had deliberately used
figures he knew to be fklse in order to mislead the House of Commons
and the country, the invoking of the vote of confidence had the effect
of silencing most of the doubters. Only 106 had the courage to vote
for a select committee to inquire into the general s allegations. The
Government easily won the day. Nevertheless a hostile vote of 106
against a Government engaged in war was an unprecedented rebuff.

General Maurice was placed on half-pay. No one dared to suggest
a court-martial, and the Prime Minister probably realised he was
lucky to get away with his vote of confidence without risking even
more damaging disclosures.

Hankey in his own memoirs has preserved a discreet silence on this
question, which suggests that he personally was ignorant of the figures
on which LL G. was working. Yet Hankey went out of his way to
imply that Lloyd George, a year earlier, when he became Premier,
was right in questioning the alleged superiority of Allied manpower
over the Germans, On this occasion LI. G. was anxious to show that
the previous administration had lagged behind in the provision of man
power and, in justifying his own "dark estimate" of the situation,
proving that it would be unwise to launch the agreed new drive against
the harassed Germans. The War Office had then estimated that the
Allies had a superiority of one million men, whereas Sir John French
put the figure at 530,000. LI. G. should have known that French
always underestimated his own strength; no general ever clamoured
louder for more troops. But, says Hankey, LI. G. seized on this point,
scoffing that soldiers must be ignorant of simple arithmetic. After
searching criticisms and a reassessment of the figures with McDonogh,
the Prime Minister announced that the original estimate had been
prepared before Christmas when the German ranks had been depleted
by heavy fighting and that since then large drafts had arrived to increase
their strength. His deduction was that it was not safe to count on a
total Allied superiority of more than 100,000 men. By that time it
was the end of January, 1917. Three vital months had been lost.

So twice Lloyd George juggled with figures in this war; once to halt
an offensive, the second time to bluff when an offensive was mounted
against his country.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 139

It is necessary to take further chronological liberties in order to
follow this issue to its logical conclusion. In 1922 General Maurice
wrote a letter to Lloyd George, challenging him to substantiate or
withdraw his allegations that Maurice "was as responsible as anyone
else" for the figures he had been given.

"I have waited patiently for the time to come for me to challenge
that statement," wrote the general. "The facts are that in January,
1918, when there was still time to apply remedies, my department
warned Ministers of the danger which our diminishing strength on the
Western front constituted. On May 9 you said: When you talk about
fighting strength, who are the combatants and who are the non-
combatants? Are the combatants these men who stopped the advance
of the German Army to Amiens? They are, if you begin to make a
distinction between combatants and non-combatants. I am speaking
of General Carey s force they would not be treated as combatants.

"Now I have before me the composition of Carey s forces and all
the men in that force, with the possible exception of a few stragglers,
were included in the fighting strength of our armies in France, which,
as the returns at your disposal at the time showed, had been diminished
on January i, 1918, as compared with January i, 1917. You made
that statement because these same returns showed that, though the
fighting strength had been diminished, the non-fighting strength had
been increased by 410,897, of whom 190,197 were unarmed native
labourers, and you wished to prove that the non-fighting strength was
available for fighting.

"In your speech you went on: But I will leave that. Take the
ordinary technical distinction between combatants and non-com
batants.

"You then quoted a note which had been prepared in the Directorate
of Military Operations in reply to a question put by Sir Godfrey
Baring on April 18 as justifying your statement of April 9 Le., nine
days before.

"That note, which you read to the House, ran:

" From the statement included it will be seen that the combatant
strength of the British Army was greater on January i, 1918, than on
January i, 1917.

"On this you based the assertion that I had supplied you with the
figures from which you made your statement of April 9. You said
that when you had at your disposal returns showing the diminu
tion of the fighting strength of the Army in France on January i,
1918.

"Now the facts with regard to the answer given to Sir Godfrey
Baring on April 18 are:

" (i) My successor as Director of Military Operations arrived in the
War Office on April n. On Sunday the I4th I went to France with

140 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Lord Milner and returned to London late on April 17. On the i8th,
the day the answer was given, I was engaged in formally handing over
to my successor and I knew nothing either of the question or of the
answer until I read your speech on May 9.

"(2) I have since learned, and this the Duke of Northumberland
is ready to confirm, that the answer was required in a hurry by Mr.
MacPherson, then Parliamentary Secretary at the War Office. In the
hurry a mistake was made in the answer and the whole strength of our
Army in Italy was included in the strength of our Armies in France.
With the addition of all these troops, a slight increase in the fighting
strength on January i, 1918, as compared with January i, 1917, was
shown, and the note you read was drafted accordingly.

"The mistake was discovered shortly afterwards and was reported
to your principal private secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and later to Mr.
MacPherson.

"The fact is, then, that you used on May 9 an accidentally incorrect
return made on April 18, to justify what you said on April 9, though
you had at your disposal a return showing that the note of April 18
was incorrect. You will, I understand, find records of all this in the
War Office.

"Now I am prepared to believe that, in the hurry of preparing your
speech on May 9, you did not verify all the facts : that you were not
aware that Carey s force was almost wholly composed of combatants,
and that you were not informed of the circumstances which led to the
answer given on April 1 8 to Sir Godfrey Baring. If that is so, the hurry
was due to the fact that you decided to refuse the inquiry for which I
asked and to make an ex parte statement to the House."

The Duke of Northumberland, who was in 1918 the head of one of
the sections of the Military Operations Directorate, sent a letter to
Maurice stating:

"The Prime Minister s conduct in making his statement on May 9
and in declining to withdraw the imputation that you have supplied
him with incorrect information is the more outrageous in that the
Military Operations Directorate had repeatedly drawn his attention
to the decline of the fighting strength of the Allies in France and to
the steady increase of the enemy s forces on the Western front. These
figures were continually challenged by Mr. Lloyd George, who in
sisted that the Allied strength was greater than was represented.

"The figures showing the increase of the German forces in the
months preceding the great attack of March 21 were given weekly in
the summary of operations circulated to Ministers, and in the same
document during the same period the decline in our fighting strength
was more than once stressed.

"The Prime Minister knew the figures sent by the Operations
Directorate and, with this knowledge fresh in his mind, made the

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 14!

utterly false statement of April 9, and one month later actually pre
tended that if a too-favourable estimate had been given, the fault lay
with the Military Operations Directorate, whose warnings he had
consistently disregarded."

While Sir Frederick Maurice s letter was scrupulously fair, and
even tried to provide the Prime Minister with a loophole for a graceful
apology, without too much loss of face, the Duke of Northumberland s
blunt and categorical statement leaves little doubt that the Prime
Minister deliberately lied. On this evidence it seems obvious that Lloyd
George had for his own ends deceived both the House of Commons
and the country*

But he showed no signs of contrition. His only reply to Maurice
was made through his private secretary, then Mr. E. W. M. Grigg
(later Lord Altrincham). Mr, Grigg wrote:

"The Prime Minister has received your letter of the I5th and
directs me to acknowledge it. What he said in 1918 he said in good
faith and upon the information supplied to him; and he does not think
it will be injurious to the public interest or unjust to you if he leaves
your criticism, like much more of the same character, to the unpre
judiced judgment of posterity.

"As regards your threat to publish, he would refer you with all
courtesy to a short observation made in similar circumstances by the
Duke of Wellington."

This cryptic observation shows that a Prime Minister who had
already tried on Napoleon s hat in Paris and was delighted to find it
fitted, now imagined he was as capable of safely flaunting public
opinion as was the Iron Duke when the latter entered politics. Pre
sumably it refers to a riposte by the Duke to his former mistress,
Harriette Wilson, when she asked him through her publisher how
much he would pay to be omitted from her autobiography. Wellington
is said to have replied: "Publish and be damned!"

These letters were eventually published.

In his book Men and Power : 1917-18, Lord Beaverbrook quotes from
the diary of Lady Lloyd-George (who in this period was Miss Frances
Stevenson, the Prime Minister s secretary). She wrote: "Having been
reading up the events connected with the Maurice debate in order to
help LJ, G. . . . am uneasy in my mind about an incident which
occurred at the time and which is only known to J. T. Davies (the
Prime Minister s confidant) and myself.

"I was in J. T. Davies s room a few days after the statement (i.e.
the Prime Minister s statement in the Commons) and J.T. was sorting
out red dispatch boxes to be returned to the departments. Pulling
out a W.O. box, he found in it, to his great astonishment, a paper
from the D.M.O, containing modifications and corrections of the first
figures they had sent. . . . J.T. and I examined it in dismay and then

142 THE MASK OF MERLIN

J.T. put it in the fire, remarking, Only you and I, Frances, know
of the existence of this paper. "

Had Lloyd George seen this paper? And how is it the matter was
never satisfactorily cleared up in view of the men whose honour and
reputation were affected by the Maurice debate? Lady Lloyd-George s
final diary comment was: "And as the official statistics since com
piled seem to justify LL G/s statement at the time, it were better
perhaps to let sleeping dogs lie."

After the publication of the Beaverbrook book Lady Lloyd-George
declared in a letter to The Spectator that the War Office message was
not discovered until some time after the Commons debate on General
Maurice s charges. But Miss Nancy Maurice, the general s daughter,
commented to the author, "I think Lady Lloyd-George s memory has
let her down, which would be natural when she is writing about what
happened so many years ago. What she says now contradicts what she
wrote in her 1934 diary which Lord Beaverbrook quotes in his book.
She wrote then that Davies burned the paper a few days after April 9%
and the Maurice debate was a month later on May 9,"

FANDANGO OF VICTORY

"What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to
live in/

Speech by Lloyd George at Wolverhampton
on November 24, 1918

If Britain was lulled into complaisance by a smooth-talker in the
gloomy spring of 1918, fortunately France was heartened by the
presence of a formidable old man with Mongolian features who might
well have presided over the tumbrills of the French Revolution.

Clemenceau the ferocious, the incomparable, had re-appeared to
terrorise the fainthearts into a show of action and to take control at
the very moment of crisis. Nor did he seek to hide the dangers from
the people.

" I will fight in front of Paris. I will fight in Paris. I will fight behind
Paris," he told the deputies of the French Parliament. Is it one of those
providential episodes of history that Clemenceau rehearsed these very
words to Winston Churchill, who was in Paris at the time, before he
made them in public? Could it be that Clemenceau in 1918 not only
carved victory out of thin air by his bellicose utterances, but that he
directly inspired Churchill for his famous "fight on the beaches"
speech which proved the moral turning point in World War II?

The Allied retreat before superior German forces continued; now
it was swift and, in places, disorderly. Before dawn on March 21 the
Germans had opened up with the most devastating bombardment of
the war^ at the same time enveloping the British lines and gun positions
with poison gas. To make matters worse the attack began in a fog
of great density which favoured the enemy, while neutralising the
effect of the British rifle fire and making machine-gun defence
useless.

H. G. Wells, with that glibness with which he was wont to talk
about military affairs, wrote of "General Gough s unfortunate col
lapse" as being "more honourable to our hearts than our heads".
But General Gough and the Fifth Army did not collapse. Their ranks
were shattered, they fell, they died, but there still remained a gallant,
indomitable fighting minority which forced the Germans to a stand
still. Their gallantry, not the arrival of the Americans, turned the

144 THE MASK OF MERLIN

situation from disaster into hope and prevented the enemy s headlong
drive for victory.

What was most remarkable in this battle was that many of the
troops were half-trained men of doubtful stamina and often stunted
growth; in physical fitness they were not to be compared with the
Eighth Army of World War II or the highly trained, technically skilled
and superbly fit body of men who formed the spearhead of the Nor
mandy invasion in 1944. Yet the men of the Fifth Army fought above
themselves. Many of them went for forty-eight hours without food or
drink. Some battalions fought two German divisions in a single day,
while others were reduced to mere skeleton forces of anything from
200 to twenty men. On one occasion only two machine-guns out of
forty-eight were left in action.

But General Gough, leader of the Fifth Army, had been sacked on
Lloyd George s personal instructions; here was a new scapegoat for
another failure. The first man to give the British public some inkling
that a great wrong had been done was Robert Blatchford. Writing
in the Illustrated Sunday Herald of October 13, 1918, seven months after
wards, Blatchford was able to let in a little light and truth.

"I may at last venture to attempt some account of a glorious and
tragic epoch of the war hitherto obscured by an invidious fog of official
mystery," he said. "The story of this retreat has never been given to
the country. Instead we have had vague speeches, dubious hints and
ominous silences, and it is not too much to say that there has accumu
lated in the public mind an indefinite but dark suspicion that our
generals or our armies failed before the German attacks in March and
that our Fifth Army, under General Gough, was badly and ingloriously
defeated.

"The March retreat, so far from being discreditable to our soldiers,
was more arduous and more brilliant than the famous retreat from
Mons. It was a retreat during which the Fifth Army contested every
bit of ground against almost overwhelming odds and in which the
bulk of our regiments fought without rest or sleep for seven days and
nights."

The story of this valiant, rearguard action should have been revealed
to the people months before. It was an epic in military history and
human endurance; never in the annals of war, ancient or modern,
had the human spirit endured so much as in that spring of 1918. The
Fifth Army was on badly defended ground, it had no reserves and no
strongly fortified line in the rear. The enemy had eighty divisions
against Britain s fifteen.

Blatchford wrote: "Officers and men were worn out and yellow
from want of sleep. Staff officers fainted while delivering their reports,
men fired and loaded and advanced and retired, moving like som
nambulists, gunners fought their guns in a kind of horrid dream.

Bassmo & Vandjk

Field-Marsha! Earl Haig.

Trebltsch
Lincoln.

Topix Picture Service

Philip Kerr,

Marquis of

Lothian.

Press Portrait Bureau
Limited London

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 145

"But there is one thing which is not easy to explain. How was it
that with such odds the Germans failed to break our line and get to
Amiens? How did our men, faint with fatigue, cut down to a mere
fringe of their original strength, wet, muddy, hungry and blind for
lack of sleep how did they succeed in holding and stopping what was
meant to be an overwhelming and triumphant advance?

"There is only one explanation with any claim to plausibility. It is
that the Germans were fought to a standstill On the Ancre they were
stopped, and though they snatched Villers-Bretonneux for a few hours
in early April from the thin British garrison, they never got beyond it."

At a conference in Beauvais on April 3, 1918, Haig wrote of Lloyd
George: "The Prime Minister looked as if he had been thoroughly
frightened and he seemed still in a fiink. . . . And he appears to me to
be a thorough impostor. 7

It was at this conference that the Prime Minister was nervously
searching for a scapegoat for the retreat. "Gough is unworthy of
further employment," he raged.

"I cannot condemn an officer unheard," replied Haig. "If you
wish to suspend him, you must send an order to that effect."

LI. G. consulted Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for War, who
next day telegraphed Haig, saying: "It is quite clear to me that his
troops have lost confidence in Gough, and, before seeing you, the Prime
Minister had consulted me as to his retention in command of an army,
and, with my full concurrence, notified to you yesterday that, pending
report in detail with regard to recent operations, it was necessary that
he should vacate his command of the Fifth Army and return home."

General Gough s own account of these incidents is as follows:

"That little , Henry Wilson, was Chief of the General Staff

with the ear of Lloyd George. He hated me. I d clashed with him over
Ulster years ago. Then, when he was under me in the 1914-18 war
for a time, I d had to tick him off for writing political letters instead
of attending to his duty. He never forgave me."

General Gough s own view was that if any general should have been
disgraced at this time it was Petain. "Wouldn t fight. In 1918 he
sent me reserves armed with only twenty rounds of ammunition apiece.
They blazed away and then beat it back to Verdun or somewhere
where Petain was sitting on his bottom."

Haig had the painful task of telling Gough, whom he admired, that
he was sacked. Gough made no protest. All he said was: "Very well,
Douglas, you ll have a busy time. I ll say no more. Goodbye and
good luck."

At the comparatively early age of forty-eight, Gough found himself
"disgraced" after a lifetime spent in the Army. He was ordered home,
placed on half-pay and told by Lord Derby that an inquiry would be
held into the circumstances of the battle. Gough believed that such

146 THE MASK OF MERLIN

an inquiry would exonerate him and lead to his reinstatement. Twice
he wrote to the War Office, asking for the date of the inquiry. At length
he was informed that no inquiry was to be held and that he had been
"mistaken in thinking that a promise to that effect had been made".

In the House of Commons, Lloyd George made several statements
which placed blame for the disaster on the Fifth Army in general and
Gough in particular. The Prime Minister inferred that the Fifth Army
was retreating precipitately while the Third Army held on. He claimed
that Brigadier-General Carey s force of signalmen, engineers and labour
battalions held up the German Army and closed the gap in the route
to Amiens for about six days. But General Carey did nothing of the
kind. He was not responsible for the formation of this force. He was
away on leave in England when the force was formed and posted and
did not take command until it had been in position for two days. This
force, which Lloyd George eulogised, was one of several corps formed
and posted under General Gough s direction.

It was a combination of Lloyd George, Lord Milner, Lord Derby
and Sir Henry Wilson which got rid of Gough, but the evidence is in
disputable that the primary responsibility was the Prime Minister s.
The general had to wait nineteen years before he was finally and
completely vindicated. First to open the defence of Gough was Lord
Birkenhead, a Cabinet colleague of LL G. In his book, Turning Points
of History, Birkenhead claimed: "If one soldier more than another
was directly responsible for our victory in that year, that soldier
was General Gough. When the attack came, the British front was
driven back thirty-eight miles, but the Germans were stopped. Amiens
was saved, so was Paris, so were the Channel ports; so was England.
Whereupon Gough was recalled in disgrace. It is known that G.H.Q.
neither recommended nor approved this action, which was due wholly
to pressure from England, where only the apparent success and not the
real failure of the German advance was as yet understood."

Lord Birkenhead disposed of the War Office statement to Gough
that no inquiry had been promised: he said that both LI. G. and Lord
Curzon promised there should be an inquiry into the battle.

By the time Lloyd George came to write his own account of the
battle in his War Memoirs, it was obvious even to his stubborn mind
that he dare not ignore the serious implications of his stand against
Gough. Either he must stand by what he had said and done and face
a storm of criticism, or he must make some sort of apology and silence
further and possibly more damaging evidence in Gough s favour. So
on April 30, 1936, he wrote to General Gough, saying:

"I have written my first draft of the 2ist March battle and the
events preceding it. I promised to let you have a look at it before it
was published. ... I need hardly say that the facts which have come
to my knowledge since the war have completely changed my mind

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 147

as to the responsibility for this defeat. You were completely let down
and no general could have won that battle under the conditions in
which you were placed."

LI. G. did not say by whom Gough had been "completely let
down". Nor did he explain why he had not ascertained the facts at
the time*

This guarded statement was very far from being a thorough vindi
cation. A year later on the anniversary of the battle Lloyd George
was to have attended a reunion dinner of the Fifth Army Old Com
rades Association in London. He declined on the grounds that he had
a cold. But in a letter read at the dinner by his secretary, Mr. A. J.
Sylvester, LI. G. completed his public vindication of Gough:

"The refusal of the Fifth Army to run away even when it was
broken was the direct cause of the failure of the great German offensive
in 1918. I have the best German authority for that statement."

The italics are the author s. Lloyd George implied indirectly that
he was not given the true facts by the War Office or the generals, but
only learned them afterwards from the Germans. He admitted that
the Allied forces were so distributed at the time of the battle that at
the point of attack they were weaker in numbers, in artillery and
reserves than at any point of the whole British line. "That was not the
fault of General Gough. He warned G.H.Q,. in time that the enemy
were accumulating immense forces opposite the Fifth Army. The
obsession of Passchendade still held its grip on G.H.Q., and the
neglected Fifth Army was left in the lurch. Why, then, punish General
Gough?"

The cool impertinence of the last two sentences and the rhetorical
question in particular are typical of Lloyd George s audacity when
cornered. "It is, therefore, a matter of honour and of fair dealing,"
he continued, "that an opportunity should be afforded to a dis
tinguished officer, who is resting under unjustifiable aspersion, to
vindicate himself in the eyes of the country for which he fought."

Yet this admission was only wrung from an unwilling Lloyd George
as a result of further elucidation of the circumstances of Gough s dis
missal in an article published in the previous month s issue of the
Journal of the Royal United Services Institution by Brigadier-General Sir
James Edmonds, the official historian of the war. This article produced
a mass of evidence in the main a repetition of what has been told
in this chapter to vindicate Gough and blame Lloyd George.

Later that same year the story had a happy ending. In the summer
of 1937 General Gough saw King George VI alone. As he handed
him the package which contained the G.C.B., the King said simply:
"I suppose you can take this as a recognition of the gratitude of your
country."

148 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Lloyd George s conditions of peace had been published when
negotiations in Switzerland were proceeding. They included the
restoration of independence to Belgium, Rumania and Serbia, as well
as payment of compensation, the evacuation of all Allied territories
occupied by the enemy and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France.
There was a vague mention of a new "international authority" to
guard the peace, but on the whole it was an uninspiring document,
offering no blueprint for prosperity and security in peacetime.

Dr. Thomas Jones told us that in 1918 "Lloyd George was not
wanting in courage, but it never fell lower than in these months. He
was restless, capricious, agitated, wishing to close down the campaign
in Flanders, haunted by the mounting casualties, harassed by domestic
politics and Press criticism." On January 9, 1918, Lord Derby had
bet the Prime Minister one hundred cigars to one hundred cigarettes
that the war would be over by next New Year s Day. LI. G. disagreed;
he had made up his mind that nothing decisive could be achieved
before the spring of 1919.

Those close to Lloyd George, including his own staff, were shocked
by his undisguised fear during air raids. Sir Harold Nicolson has
declared that: "So far as physical courage goes, he may have been
a coward, though he certainly had moral courage. I ve seen him
trembling and ashen at the sound of an air-raid siren in World War I,
when the risks were pretty remote after all." One of his staff related
how he "scuttled into the basement of the Foreign Office when there
were raids and sang Welsh hymns to keep up his nerve, beads of
perspiration pouring from his face". Even Dr. Jones told how "Lloyd
George had not Churchill s reckless, physical courage, or should one
say he showed greater prudence in danger? During the first world
war he hurried instantly from Downing Street to the Foreign Office
basement at the sound of the siren and during the second he built
himself at Churt a de luxe underground shelter: the military camp at
Aldershot was not far away and he feared he might be one of the
enemy s targets."

When the holocaust broke and the German divisions exterminated
the slender British columns on the Western front, Lloyd George relied
on the elasticity of his mind to cope with the crisis. For the first and
only time in his wartime Premiership he acted promptly and resolutely.
He did what should obviously have been done months before, ordering
the dispatch of a division from Italy and two more from Palestine to
the Western front. It was once said of a French Premier that he mistook
"movement for action"; it could equally be said of Lloyd George that
the agility of his mind and the swiftness of his mental processes gave
the impression of action even when it was lacking. Nevertheless, this
time he acted purposefully. He not only seemed to be in command
after the rout of March-April, 1918, but he ruthlessly and effectively

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 149

took command. Here, belatedly, it is true, was positive proof of the
resilience of the man, of his uncanny intellectual intuition, his gift of
disengaging himself from one problem to tackle another, of his astonish
ing knack of throwing off a pessimism that had appeared as a patho
logical defect one day and suddenly becoming gaily, confidently
aggressive. It was one of the Merlinesque characteristics of Lloyd
George that he became gloomy when all around him were optimistic
and yet drew forth reserves of moral courage from other people s lack
of it. Surround LI. G. with defeatists and prophets of doom and he
perversely gloried in trying to prove that the situation was the opposite
to what they thought. Sometimes in these periods it was. As some of
the Cabinet showed unmistakable signs of gloom and panic, inertness
and lack of phlegm, so he inspired them with a buoyant optimism which
they never previously believed he possessed.

So out of the March 21 disaster he induced the conference at Doul-
lens and, as the situation improved, as at last it was realised that the
Germans had made their last supreme effort, so, as was his adolescently
egotistical habit, the Prime Minister claimed much credit for the out
come of events. Because he had fought for so long for a unified,
superior direction of the Allied cause, he attributed final victory to that
factor, ignoring that Haig had ultimately recommended Foch for the
job of Supreme Commander.

One Cabinet colleague at least was gratified by and almost in awe
of Lloyd George s performance in these dark days. Churchill has gone
on record as saying that "nobody who wasn t with the little man (he
always called U* G. this) in March, 1918, has any right to criticise him.
He alone displayed courage when everybody else was knocking at the
knees." Churchill even went so far as to say that Lloyd George "ran
the first world war better than I ran the second". History is unlikely
to agree with so modest an assessment, for Lloyd George s failure to
inspire trust was always a dangerous defect for a wartime leader, but
it is not difficult to understand what Churchill saw in LI. G. : he sensed
the genius for dominating a situation which LI. G. had in flashes, but
which Churchill over the years developed into a consistently fine art.
But it took Churchill far longer to achieve this mastery of events and
he may well have envied the personality of his elder in the process.
Yet, when that unified direction of the Allied command was achieved,
it did not come in the way Lloyd George had anticipated, and it was
exercised by two men, working in close co-operation, Foch and Haig,
whose ideas on strategy were the opposite to his own. In the end all
was saved. But at what cost. Despite the clever propaganda of the
"Easteners", the war was won on the Western front. The fact that
everything had to be thrown in on this front to force the issue did not
prevent, or even delay, the defeat of the Turks and Bulgars. Victory
was achieved at the cost of wisdom after the event, at the cost of

THE MASK OF MERLIN

300,000 casualties within five weeks 70,000 more than those suffered
in the fourteen weeks of the battle of Passchendaele.

So there was the extraordinary enigma of a Premier who almost
flippantly brushed aside pessimism in his Cabinet, even feigning
elated optimism when the battle seemed to be going badly, and yet
displayed the most marked disbelief as soon as his military advisers
talked of victory.

The constant theme of his memoranda of this last period of the war
was that Haig was "too optimistic 9 . Between February and August,
1918, Lloyd George s emotional pendulum swung in unrhythmic
fashion from chirpy confidence of " over-insuring" the Western front
in the early spring to stark fright at the end of March, then over again
to blithe optimism in April when the experts were nervously adding
up their losses and, finally, to sheer disbelief in the dawning prospect
of victory in the summer. Haig, like Churchill in 1940, like Prince
Charles Edward Stuart on his march to England in 1745, believed in
optimism as a policy -the optimism of the old-fashioned, religiously-
minded general. It has invariably been optimism opposed to logic
which has won Britain her ultimate military victories, while sustaining
grievous defeats in the painful process.

As late as August 21,1918, when Haig insisted that "we ought to do
our utmost to get a decision this autumn", LL G. and his lackey, Sir
Henry Wilson, both argued that the decisive period of the war could
not arrive until the following July. Even when the tide had turned,
the Prime Minister continually probed and quizzed for peace through
negotiation. There had been the secretive visit of the mysterious " Mr.
Coleyn" of Holland in May, 1918, the full purpose of which was never
revealed, but on which Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt reported that "Admiral
Sir Reginald Hall managed to side-track this ridiculous intervention of
Lloyd George s own secret service". Ludendorff wrote in his Krieg-
fthning: "England began to talk about peace at the Hague in June,
1918." The British intelligence services were always on the watch for
some Lloyd Georgian peace manoeuvre that would be launched with
out their being informed.

The war situation in August, 1918, can be compared with that in
August, 1944, in World War II. On both occasions victory was within
sight. In 1918 the military were full of optimism and wanted to take
ftQl advantage of the situation to gain a quick victory; the politicians,
especially Lloyd George, demurred. In 1944 the situation was reversed :
the politicians, including Churchill, saw the value of the quick cut to
victory by a thrust to the north, while the military under Eisenhower
and, to a lesser extent, an ultra-cautious British Admiralty, wanted to
consolidate before moving on.

Haig, so often lambasted by Lloyd George in his War Memoirs as
being obstinate, lacking imagination and incapable of appreciating any

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 151

situation as a whole, saw clearly that Germany was hardly capable of
any further resistance if really pushed. "If we allow the enemy a
period of quiet/* he wrote, "he will recover. The Third Army is
halting today. I cannot think this is necessary. I accordingly issued
an order directing the offensive to be resumed at the earliest moment
possible."

But for Haig the great chance of a quick decision might easily have
been lost and the war could have dragged on until late in the following
year with the probability of revolution in France and serious industrial
discontent in Britain. The French were so war-weary that they were
not anxious to attack again, while the Americans, under Pershing,
were still thinking in terms of victory in August, 1919.

Haig had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Prime Minister
to agree to an attack on the Hindenburg Line. Eventually Lloyd
George concurred, safeguarding himself, however, against its possible
failure by getting Sir Henry Wilson to send the following telegram to
the Commander-in-Chief:

"H.W. PERSONAL. Just a word of caution in regard to incurring
heavy losses in attacks on the Hindenburg Line as opposed to losses
when driving the enemy back to that line. I do not mean to say you
have incurred such losses, but I know the War Cabinet would become
anxious if we received heavy punishment in attacking the Hindenburg
Line without success."

Such a telegram, of course, should never have been marked "per
sonal". Either an order should have been sent, or nothing at all. It
was an incredibly unbusiness-like method of briefing a Commander-
in-Chief, while at the same time seeming to say: "If things go wrong,
be it on your own head."

A lesser man than Haig might have compromised and made a half
hearted attack. "What a wretched lot of weaklings we have in high
places at the present time!" was his summing-up of the situation.

The attack was launched and all went according to Haig s plan.
News came through that the enemy was not only exhausted but cracking
up mentally and morally. By October 6, Marshal Foch was able to
vindicate the Haig policy by declaring that the Allies now had "the
immediate result of the British piercing the Hindenburg Line: the
enemy has asked for an armistice".

When Austria and Turkey abandoned Germany and the Kaiser
abdicated, all was over. The most appalling war in history ended
when Marshal Foch met the German delegates in the Forest of Com-
piegne on November 1 i, and at five o clock in the morning signed the
terms of Armistice. Opinion will probably always be divided as to
whether this war could have been won without such wholesale carnage,
but it remains mainly an academic question. None of the critics of
the generals has suggested how a less bloody victory could have been

152 THE MASK OF MERLIN

achieved. Events were too overpowering for the men on either side
to cope with them. Modern war had reduced generals and politicians
to the status of intellectual pigmies. It is impossible to say that either
on land or sea the war threw up a genius in the strategical sense, and
consequently militarism was dealt a devastating blow which naturally
and rightly produced a wave of pacifism. World War I was won not
so much by brains as by character, not so much by strategy as by
courage. History may reveal that some French generals showed more
flair and panache than their British counterparts, but it also clearly
reveals that in character and courage leaders like Haig and Gough
had more durable and viable assets.

Few commanders-in-chief after a victorious campaign have been so
shabbily treated as was Haig by Lloyd George in 1918. True, eight
days after the Armistice he received a telegram from his Prime Minister
informing him that "His Majesty on my recommendation has been pleased
to approve that the dignity of a Viscountcy be conferred upon you."
But when the King came over to France a week later he told Haig
that he personally had " told the Prime Minister to offer you a peerage ".

Haig s first reaction was to decline this honour until adequate grants
for the British war disabled had been made. He wrote to Wilson saying
he felt very strongly about "the manner in which our disabled had
been disregarded and that until the British Government gave me an
assurance that the disabled, widows and children would be adequately
provided for, I could not accept a reward of any kind."

The Government had not given a hint as to what they proposed to
do for those unfortunate victims of war. All that followed in the
feverish, victory-flushed weeks of November was a great deal of pie
crust oratory. Such talk can be summed up in the fandango-of-victory
oration which Lloyd George delivered at Wolverhampton on November
24: "What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to
live in." This pre-election tub-thumping was quickly to lose its coinage.
A few years later it was being parodied by Davy Burnaby s Co-
Optimists concert party as "a country fit for pierrots to live in".

But the unkindest blow to Haig was a telephone call from the
G.I.G.S s private secretary with a message from the Prime Minister
that the latter wished the Field-Marshal to come to London to take
part in a ceremonial drive with Foch, Clemenceau and Orlando
(Italian Premier), intimating that Haig was to be in the fifth carriage
along with General Sir Henry Wilson. The architect of victory on the
Western front, the man who had triumphed despite the constant sniping
of the politicians at home, was, in his hour of triumph, to be relegated
to the fifth carriage.

For Haig it was the crowning insult from a man who was now

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 153

boasting that the war had been won through his foresight. "The real
truth/ wrote Haig that day, "which history will show, is that the
British Army has won the war in France in spite of Lloyd George, and
I have no intention of taking part in any triumphal drive in order
to add to Lloyd George s importance and help him in his election
campaign."

So Haig told the War Office he would not come to London unless
ordered to do so by the Army Council. LI. G., with the utmost
cynicism, had decided that a snap election right away in the first flush
of enthusiasm for the Armistice was his only chance of winning success
at the polls. His popularity was at its zenith and there was a wide
spread belief among the masses, fed for so long on newspaper fiction,
that he had indeed won the war himself. His colleagues especially
the Tories were only too glad to bask in this reflected glory. And LI.
G. saw the victory parade as a wonderful chance for propaganda for
himself the more so because the King was out of the country, visiting
his troops in France, and therefore the Prime Minister would be the
central figure in the whole affair.

The first Lord Birkenhead said that: "The man who enters into real
and fierce controversy with Mr. Lloyd George must think clearly,
think deeply and think ahead. Otherwise he will think too late!"
Haig could think remarkably clearly, if not deeply; he could also look
ahead with much greater prescience than many of the politicians, but
he could not match the mental agility and speed of speech of Lloyd
George when it came to a conference. On paper Haig could express
himself with lucidity and logic, but in his speech, according to Lloyd
George, he was "devoid of the gift of intelligible and coherent expres
sion ". It was one of Lloyd George s failings that he had a contempt
for men who were tongue-tied, however admirable their characters or
intellect. If a man talked well and brilliantly, whether it was Birken
head, Nivelle or Trebitsch Lincoln, he could overlook almost all his
other defects.

"I am not writing history as a historian," LI. G. told Herbert Fisher,
"but as a solicitor in possession of the documents." But it is not the
documents which he used to lash the generals, but his own deep-rooted,
personal animosity to them. The Memoirs are rarely dispassionate, the
judgment anything but statesmanlike; instead there is the monotonous
theme of the one infallible man of war the author.

Equally childishly treated by Lloyd George were the First Sea Lord,
Admiral Wester Wemyss, and Admiral Hall, According to Lady
Wester Wemyss, Lloyd George was furious with her husband because
after Wemyss signed the Armistice agreement with Marshal Foch he
telephoned the tidings to the King. "The Prime Minister had ap
parently planned a spectacular announcement of the Armistice in the
House of Commons on the afternoon of the nth, the news being

154 T HE MASK OF MERLIN

meanwhile kept secret. This proved impossible after Wemyss s tele
phone call to the King. *

Alone among all the war leaders Wemyss was neither thanked nor
honoured. As to that backroom sailor whose keen political sense had
welded the Naval Intelligence Department into a brilliant organisation
which played a notable part in winning the war, Admiral Hall was
completely ignored. President Wilson once said that "Britain s naval
intelligence was the astutest in the world and a powerful factor in the
final victory." Certainly but for Hall s skilful work at the Admiralty,
America might not have entered the war so soon or so smoothly, for
the political problems of President Wilson were appreciated far more
at the Admiralty than at No. 10 Downing Street. Hall clashed several
times with LI. G. and regarded him not merely on personal judgment,
but on the strength of intelligence reports, as "the last man in the world
to be trusted with top-secret information", 1

Lloyd George, on his part, never forgave Hall for the D.N.I. s
refusal to pass on all information he received. Hall had expected to
attend the Peace Conference as head of the intelligence bureau, but
Lloyd George intimated that he had "no intention of taking Hall to
Paris ". Nor was Hall included in the honours list for his invaluable
efforts in building up what had become one of the finest intelligence
organisations in the world.

Within a fortnight of the Armistice being signed Parliament was
dissolved. Polling was fixed to take place on December 14. Had the
Prime Minister delayed the dissolution for another three months the
results might have been vastly different. He took advantage of a snap
election at a time when his personal popularity was great, when the
troops were absent abroad and war hysteria rampant. In 1918 there
was no education bureau to set vital social problems before the forces,
and the true picture of how victory had been achieved was clear
neither to the ordinary soldier nor the man-in-the-street. A new
electorate based on the recently passed Electoral Reform Act, which
provided for universal male suffrage and extended the vote to women
over thirty, was not only politically inexperienced, but completely
bewildered by the complex Party line-up for this election. One image
alone was clear the image, cleverly built up in the Press, of a great
statesman who by his dynamic personality had produced the final
drive to victory. That was, by and large, the view of Lloyd George
held by the great mass of floating, unpolitically-educated voters. But
this transient mood of the electorate was also welded into landslide
proportions by LI. G. s lively speeches which told the people what they
wanted, if not what they ought, to hear. He was without question
1 From a letter to Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt.

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 155

the most consummate demagogue of modern times, and the lively,
simple imagery, the pungent wit of his speeches, and the charm of that
lilting Welsh accent were intoxicating ingredients in the days which
followed victory. All this was allied to a modernity of approach to
problems and a speed of thought and action hitherto unknown in
British political life so that they made U. G. seem a Titan astride the
affairs of state. His real greatness in this period lay mainly in his
adaptable mental equipment for the merry-go-round style of govern
ment which had succeeded the staid and leisurely coach of state of
Edwardian days, leaving so many names famous in that decade strewn
like flapping fish on a dry beach, politicians who had neither the
temperament, nor the impetus to cope with the rag-time tempo of the
Coalition machine.

Where Lloyd George can be criticised for acting like a demagogue
and abusing democratic processes was in his attempt to turn the
election issue into a personal vote of confidence for himself with what
amounted to a blank cheque for further political action. This move
for a snap election cannot be compared with Churchill s appeal in
I 945- Churchill had not wanted a snap election; he had hoped for a
continuation of the National Government until the war against Japan
was ended. When that was impossible Churchill fought the election
on Party lines and made his policy clear. But Lloyd George wanted
the Coalition to continue in what was almost an attempt at one-
Party government. It was cleverly disguised dictatorship, aided and
abetted by the Tories. Even more undemocratic was his use of black
mail tactics by issuing "coupons" to his supporters. The result was
to give the country one of the least creditable Parliaments in its whole
history.

The campaign had been cleverly organised. The idea was to present
Lloyd George as the saviour of his country and to show that he, and
he alone, was strong enough and had sufficient experience to negotiate
peace terms. Therefore a vote against LI. G. was an act of sabotage
against the state. Sir William Sutherland, the Prime Minister s Press
agent, had first launched this campaign at the height of the German
onslaught of March, 1918, partly to detract attention from the Allied
losses, but equally to safeguard his master s position in the event of
the Western Powers having to come to terms with Germany. At that
time, though he kept his fears to himself and chided his colleagues for
showing pessimism, Lloyd George believed he might have to seek
terms from Germany and, if this happened, he wished to make sure
of retaining the Premiership.

The Tories, who had spent the war sniping at the Liberals rather
than getting on with the supreme task, knew how deep were the rifts
in their own Party and, though they mistrusted the Prime Minister,
feared the rise of Socialism above all else. So they were quite prepared

156 THE MASK OF MERLIN

to cut their immaculate clothes according to the tawdry cloth available
and to snuggle under the mantle of the Welsh Wizard. LI. G. and
Bonar Law had already made an appraisal of the candidates upon
whose support they could count, and the two men decided to go to
the country as a Tory-Liberal Coalition.

But promises of support were not considered enough. Lloyd George
instituted the unprecedented device of issuing a certificate, signed by
himself and Bonar Law, to be given to whatever candidate they deemed
reliable. The Tories, in the main, were only too eager to accept the
certificate as a magic password to victory, but for the Liberals this
device was nothing more or less than a form of moral blackmail. Either
they repudiated their own leader, Asquith, and promised Lloyd George
blind support, or they were damned as men who had deliberately
opposed the effective prosecution of the war. Thus the Asquithian
Liberals were in effect proscribed, and everybody who voted against
the Government in the Maurice debate was singled out as unworthy
of a certificate. The "wait and see" canard was once again nailed
to the masthead of the Government s propaganda.

Having set the pace for the election and introduced methods that
would have been more in keeping with a totalitarian state, Lloyd
George proceeded to allow the election campaign to descend to depths
unknown in modern times. The so-called Liberals far outstripped the
Tories in political "verminism". Asquith dubbed it the "Coupon
Election",

It has been suggested in Mr. Malcolm Thomson s biography that
LI. G. tried for reconciliation with the orthodox Liberals and that he
offered Asquith the Lord Chancellorship. Asquith has put it on record
that no such offer was made to him, and that when he himself raised
the subject of his going to Versailles with LI. G., the Prime Minister
ignored the proposition.

As for the suggestion that LI. G. tried for reconciliation, the facts
belie it. Prior to the election three important deputations of Liberals
from Manchester and from the National Liberal Federation and the
Scottish Liberal Federation called upon both Asquith and Lloyd
George with the object of securing a rapprochement between the two
factions. In each case they failed to achieve their purpose. The reason
for this failure was provided by Sir George Younger, the Conservative
Chief W v hip. He revealed that LL G. "kept the seats he could contest"
and asked him (Younger) to provide candidates for the remaining
Liberal seats -i.e., where free Liberals had been chosen by the local
organisations.

Did Lloyd George disclose to any of these deputations that he had
already asked Younger to put up candidates against a large number of
Liberals? One must assume that he did not, for, when he addressed
his Liberal followers on November 12, he said: "I have done nothing

FANDANGO OF VICTORY 157

in the few years in which I have been First Minister of the Crown
which makes me ashamed to meet my fellow-Liberals. Please God, I
am determined that I never shall."

When he made this statement his bargain with Sir George Younger
was not only signed and sealed, but being carried out.

The main themes for the election were, first, "the land for heroes"
(in which LL G. indulged in such cliches as "the rosy future" and
"the dawn of better things"), the need for a "tough man" to negotiate
"a tough peace" and the absolute necessity of "hanging the Kaiser".
Privately, Lloyd George seems to have been in doubt from the very
day of the Armistice as to whether Germany could pay colossal sums
in reparations. In his book, The Truth About the Peace Treaties, he
refuted the idea that in his public utterances he deliberately misled
the people into believing that Germany could be made to pay pheno
menal amounts in reparations. He quoted from a speech he made at
Bristol during an election campaign, in which he said that Treasury
officials were doubtful whether "we could expect every penny" of
the cost of the war to be paid by Germany.

But this statement was only part of a speech which, taken in its en
tirety, conveyed a very different impression. In fact he mentioned the
Treasury view that the Central Powers could pay 1,200,000,000 a year
as interest on the total cost of the war to the Allies (24,000,000,000)
only to cast doubt on its soundness and to imply that he would go one
better. He informed his audience that he proposed "to demand the
whole cost of the war from Germany at once".

Then there was the demand that the Kaiser must be hanged. In
later life Lloyd George repeatedly denied that he used the phrase
"hang the Kaiser", but there is plenty of evidence that he did. In an
aside, in answer to a question from a crowded meeting at Bristol, he
actually said: "I am in favour of hanging the Kaiser." On two
occasions in North Wales he declared: "The Kaiser must be brought
to the White Tower of the Tower of London and I have little doubt
that justice will see that he is hanged there." In an article entitled
Le Diable aux Teux Bleus, by S. Lauzanne, it was noted by a French
observer that he referred to "hanging the Kaiser" in twenty public
speeches. Sir Winston Churchill himself has declared: "Mr. Lloyd
George, himself an actor although a man of action, would, if he had had
his way ... in order to gratify the passions of victorious crowds . . .
have redraped this melancholy exile (the Kaiser) in the sombre robes
of more than mortal guilt and of human responsibility and led him
forth to a scaffold of vicarious expiation."

A few days after the Armistice the Cabinet decided to apply to
Holland for the extradition of the Kaiser. F. E. Smith (Lord Birken-
head) had just appointed Professor J. H. Morgan, K.C., as vice-
chairman of the British Committee of Inquiry into German Breaches

158 THE MASK OF MERLIN

of the Laws of War* Smith told Morgan that the Kaiser should be
charged with "high crimes and misdemeanours". "I think," he said,
"that banishment will be a sufficient punishment. We don t want to
make him a martyr, but Lloyd George wants to hang him."

President Wilson was disgusted and angered by this indecorous
fandango and made his views known to Lloyd George in no uncertain
terms. Then, in a moment of extreme intoxication with his own power,
the Prime Minister talked to the French of "trying the Kaiser in
London". That outraged even the bitterest enemies of Germany in
France. Briand, after the election, asked Lloyd George with biting
sarcasm: "When are you going to try the Kaiser in London?"

"Oh, that," replied LI. G. airily, "that was purely an election
stunt."

While it had been expected that the Coalition Government would
be returned to power, few expected such a landslide as indeed occurred.
Five hundred and twenty-six Coalitionists were elected and the Inde
pendent Liberals were reduced to twenty-six, Asquith himself being
defeated at East Fife. Demagogy had triumphed over fair play.

Thus did Lloyd George deal the death blow to the one British
political party which had been in the vanguard of progress and reform
for more than seventy years. Into second place stepped the Labour
Party with sixty-three members. The Tories never intended to lose
their identity in any centre Party, except perhaps for one or two of
their leaders. They were determined that if anyone was to lose his
identity, it must be Lloyd George.

It may seem an interesting comparison in assessing the two war
time leaders of Britain in this century that Lloyd George swept the
country in the "Coupon Election" of 1918, while Churchill was
heavily defeated when he staged his victory election in 1945. It may
well be that the older members of the electorate in 1945 had learned a
lesson from 1918. Certain it is that the younger electorate in 1945 was
tired and disgusted of a "Rump" Parliament and they registered a
protest vote against a discredited Tory Party who had for so long
neglected urgent reforms. In 1918 the name of Lloyd George alone
was sufficient to have ensured victory for any combination at which he
stood at the head. Such was his hold on the majority of his countrymen
at that time.

THE "TICKET-HOLDERS"
GOVERNMENT

"England does not love Coalitions."
Benjamin Disraeli

"Hard-faced men who looked as though they had done well out of
the war," was how Stanley Baldwin described the newcomers to West
minster on the Coalition side.

They were a motley assortment of war-time officers, business men
and opportunists far more concerned with their own vested interests
than with the traditions of a British Parliament. To glance at a list
of those M.P.s today is to run through a catalogue of names long
since forgotten, of men who entered politics merely by the purchase
of a Lloyd George "ticket". They were faceless men in every sense of
that modern idiom, lacking political principles and beliefs, groping for
a career as drowning men might clutch at a floating log. To them
might well be applied that satirical speech of Churchill s when attacking
the Balfour Government on the fiscal issue :

". . . Their patriotic duty compels them to remain, although they
have no opinions to offer, holding their opinions undecided and un
flinching, like George II at the Battle of Dettingen, sans pewr ei sans
avis."

There never has been a Parliament before or since in modern times
in which charlatans and adventurers have formed so large a number
on the back benches. Asquith s biographers state that "to the end of
his life" Asquith "continued to say it was the worst House of Commons
he had ever known".

All the former Coalition Cabinet had held their seats, but in the
rout of the Independent Liberals out had gone Simon, Samuel, Mc-
Kenna and Runciman. Forty-two Coalition Unionists and twenty-
seven Coalition Liberals had been returned unopposed, A typical
slogan of one of the Coalition Unionists had been, "Vote for Hall and
hang the Kaiser. *

The Government was predominantly Tory in the worst sense of that
word; it reflected not the conservatism of Lansdowne and Walter Long,
or the inbred statecraft of the Cecils, but the uncouth, gangster tactics
and sharp practice of the self-made business man. The "Ticket-

159

l6o THE MASK OF MERLIN

Holders" as those who had bribed, flattered, blackmailed or even
bought their way into getting the Lloyd George coupon were known
were a bunch of feckless intriguers of extremely limited intellectual
ability whose knowledge of political problems was in many instances
almost non-existent. Collective responsibility was a myth.

Lord Northcliffe realised too late that he had backed Lloyd George
too long. After the election he wrote to Dawson, editor of The Times:
"Never again will I allow myself to be over-ruled in a matter like that.
I am very willing to be led in matters that I do not understand, but I
do understand character. The Welsh are illusive, cunning and ingrate."

This was government by a mixture of coercion and capitulation in
its approach to the problems of the day. Its performance was as vague
and erratic as had been LI. G. s pre-election speeches. It was never
even clear whether this was a Free Trade or a Protectionist adminis
tration, and the Prime Minister on more than one occasion toyed with
the idea of Imperial Preference. He certainly showed the Tories far
greater consideration than he did his much smaller band of pseudo-
Liberals. He was seldom in the House, for the simple reason that where
as in wartime he could ride roughshod over Parliament and threaten
the Opposition that if they attacked him he would regard them "as
traitors, throwing up their hands and shouting Kamerad", in peace
time it was difficult to avoid direct answers to awkward questions and
there was no Defence of the Realm Act to fall back on.

"History has yet to reveal perhaps it will never fully reveal the
measure of corruption which Lloyd George permitted to enter politics
during his six years as Prime Minister," wrote Robert Blake in The
Baldwin Agt. 4 There was an obverse side to that brilliant sparkle."

In the war years that corruption was mainly confined to the
chicaneries of the Prime Minister, but in the "Ticket-Holders"
Government it infected Parliament as a whole and extended its ten
tacles deep into Whitehall, into the hitherto incorruptible Civil Service
to which LL G. recruited his own chosen agents. The story of this
Government from now on is a series of chapters which show only too
clearly how power corrupts, how money bought candidatures and
honours and, above all, how Lloyd George himself undermined the
moral structure of British public life and touched off the moral degenera
tion which is the greatest political problem of the present day. How
long this rot, or rather the effects of the rot, have lasted is not easily
apparent. Baldwin did his best to eliminate the worst excesses of those
days and to some extent to cleanse the Tory stables, but the moral rot
has been visible from time to time in both the Labour and Liberal
Parties. In 1945 many opportunists jumped aboard the Labour band
wagon and weakened the Socialists with their misdemeanours; for
tunately Attlee, unlike Lloyd George, openly purged his ranks. Only
in the ninetcen-sixties have the small band of Liberals succeeded in

THE "TICKET-HOLDERS" GOVERNMENT 161

putting their own house in order and creating a new image for them
selves. But the curse which Lloyd George put on British Party politics
was the curse of me-tooism, the pretence of each major Party that it
had the virtues of the others. In this way Conservatism has become
more and more indeterminate and incomprehensible, while Socialism
has frequently shown its weakness for facing both ways, thus losing its
radical appeal and trying to look respectable, while more often appear
ing anti-British and the Party of class hatred.

Those ministers who answered for Lloyd George in the Commons
rarely knew what the Prime Minister really thought on any subject,
as his mind changed so rapidly, so they were evasive and incoherent
in their replies.

The Peace Conference was a subject on which the Prime Minister
was most quixotic in his policy. From the first he was determined to
try to dominate that conference and to brook no interference from any
member of the Cabinet. Lord Beaverbrook has written : "Lloyd George
was now the most powerful man in Europe. . . . When Lloyd George
arrived in Paris for the Peace Conference he at once took control. He
really dominated the French Prime Minister. He had immense
authority with President Wilson. He was the arbiter of all Europe." 1

This is exactly what a Daily Express leader writer might have said in
1919. But the portrait is, to say the least, overdrawn. Lloyd George
disliked the idea of holding the Peace Conference in Paris, arguing
that it was unwise to meet in the " excited atmosphere of a belligerent
nation". The truth was, however, that the Prime Minister had become
violently anti-French now that his honeymoon with the French generals
was over, and he preferred Geneva as the venue for the conference in
order to push France into the background. Whether tempers would
have cooled more easily in Geneva than in Paris is a matter for con
jecture, but Glemenceau over-ruled Lloyd George. "The Tiger"
insisted that as France had suffered most from the war she had a right
to see peace made on her own soil.

President Wilson s Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, said in his
book, The Peace Negotiations, that Lloyd George was e vague as to general
principles", his judgment was "fluid", but that he considered certain
election pledges binding. "Of these," added Lansing, "Germany s
payment of the cost of the war and the public trial of the Kaiser
attracted the most attention. He was very insistent . . . although he
must have known that the first was impossible and the second unwise
as well as in defiance of all legal precepts."

What perplexed the other Allied leaders was the slow realisation as
expressed by Poincare that " Britain now has two Foreign Offices, Lord

1 Me* and Power: 1917-18.

l62 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Curzon s and the one in which Lloyd George from his Downing Street
offices plans to confound Curzon and trick France". It became clear
that Lloyd George was determined that Curzon should be Foreign
Minister in little more than name, a fatal tendency in a Prime Minister
which repeated itself disastrously under Chamberlain, unhappily under
Eden and, to a lesser extent, though with more reason, during the first
Macmillan Ministry.

Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, studying the Documents on British Foreign Policy
1919-39, says that all that keeps these records "alive is the personality
of Lloyd George. They present a wonderful picture of Lloyd George
in action, the statesman of infinite resource . . . but himself always
unmoved. In 1920 Lloyd George was at the height of his power. He
ran foreign policy almost alone. Curzon, the Foreign Secretary,
trailing after him like a humble Foreign Office clerk. . . . He strove at
one international gathering after another to produce reconciliation
from his conjurer s hat."

Curzon was angered at the manner in which his authority was under
mined, but there was little he could do about it except resign, and
Curzon, with his eye firmly fixed on the Premiership which one day
he felt would surely be his, had no intention of committing political
suicide by resignation. Curzon discovered that Lloyd George had
nominated one of his own men to the Foreign Office for the sole
purpose of spying on Curzon and sending confidential reports to
Downing Street. Meanwhile, the key people in LI. G. s own " Shadow
Foreign Office" were Philip Kerr, who had marked prejudices against
France, Eric Drummond, Lionel Curtis, William Sutherland and J. T.
Davies, a strange combination of starry-eyed Imperialists, wire-pullers
and unorthodox civil servants.

During the Peace Conference in Paris the French had Lloyd George s
telephone wires to London tapped by intelligence agents. To defeat
this move LL G. used to speak in Welsh to his secretaries, Tom Jones,
J. T. Davies and Ernie Evans. The French were seriously concerned
that the British Premier was consistently sabotaging the work of his
own Foreign Minister.

In a letter to his wife in 1921 Curzon gave vent to his frustration in
these pathetic words: " Girlie I am getting very tired of working with
that man. He wants his Forn. Sec. to be a valet, almost a drudge." x

The atmosphere at the Peace Conference was anything but pacific.
Stephen Bonsai told a story in Unfinished Business of an occasion when
President Wilson intervened to prevent Lloyd George from "doubling
his fists and squaring off against Clemenceau. Mr. Wilson was com
pelled to intervene to prevent fisticuffs. As he returned to his corner
the little Welshman said: Well, I shall expect an apology for this out
rageous conduct.*

1 The Decline and FaU of Lloyd George (Lord Beavcrbrook),

THE " TICKET-HOLDERS" GOVERNMENT 163

" You shall wait for it as long as you wait for the pacification of
Ireland/ was the hot reply."

Clemenceau s recorded comment on the incident was: "There was
little George doubling up his fists and squaring off. If Wilson hadn t
intervened, I would have given him a clip on the chin with a savatte
stroke."

So this was the Peace Conference ! Further evidence of the antagonism
between the two Premiers was provided in Mr. Wickham Steed s
book, Through Thirty Tears. He wrote that M. Clemenceau "accused
Lloyd George so flatly of repeated inaccuracies of statement that Lloyd
George seized him by the collar and demanded an apology and that
after President Wilson had separated them Glemenceau offered Lloyd
George reparation with pistols or swords."

Madame Gauthier, a relative of Clemenceau, commenting on these
reports, said: "Both stories are substantially correct. Mr. Bonsai was
a member of the American delegation and was present at the time.
M. Clemenceau was infuriated when he found that Lloyd George had
been consistently tricking him. When challenged, Mr. Lloyd George
was very insulting to my great-uncle and called him an old fool .
Though he was a very old man then, M. Clemenceau was never afraid.
He challenged Lloyd George to a duel, knowing that he was a physical
coward who would never dare accept the challenge."

It is said that LI. G. sought the intervention of Sir Basil Zaharoff
to placate Clemenceau on this occasion. There is this to be said in
LI. G. s favour: he was never scared of standing up to Clemenceau
verbally in the conference chamber, a virtue which few of the other
war leaders possessed. Indomitable and inspiring in a war crisis,
Clemenceau was too old, his prejudices too deeply engrained to give
him the elasticity of outlook so necessary for a conference on the
future of Europe and the world. From him stemmed that inflexibility
which successive French leaders adopted in subsequent conferences,
though, as time showed, the fear behind that inflexibility was justified
in the long run. Germany was caged, but not cured of her lust for
aggression.

It was his swift change of mood, his switch from one attitude to
another, the apparent lack of fixed principles in his dealings with states
men that fanned the fires of suspicion of LI, G, He, of course, would
excuse himself by explaining that rigidity was the thing to avoid at all
costs, that flexibility and conciliation were more useful in settling the
future of Europe. But one can understand why he insisted on a careful
recording being taken at all these meetings. Otherwise he would
never have remembered what he had said from one day to the
next.

Sir Harold Nicolson, who served under Curzon at the, Foreign
Office in this period, has described Lloyd George as being the most

164 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"interesting fantastically interesting man" he had ever known in
politics. "He really was a wizard. His power was his charm. His
physical manner was engaging. When you entered a room he would
come bounding up to you, lead you in, throw his arms about as he
spoke, give a great impression of friendliness, exuberance and sim
plicity. The other method of charming you was by flattery. He was a
great one for paying compliments. Particularly to junior people. As
well as charm he had the great politician s gift for knowing what was
going on in people s minds. . . . When the effects of the flattery had
worn off and one s eyes had opened ... he was dishonest and un
scrupulous; you couldn t trust him. You could never be sure if what
he was telling you was the truth."

In his dealings with foreign statesmen LI. G. would alternate between
flattery and banter, a peculiarly Welsh form of banter, which had an
unpleasant edge to it. Frequently he would employ these bantering
tactics as a cloak for his own ignorance of their problems. He made
two fatal blunders at the outset of the Versailles Conference: he
alienated Clemenceau and at the same time failed to give full support
to Wilson, with the result that at no time was he able to reconcile
France and U.S.A. The Middle East was his chief preoccupation after
the war. The crooked, turbulent intrigues, the atmosphere of mystery
and adventure, the turgid imbroglios at cosmopolitan dinner parties
. . . these were the political ingredients he loved, and he entered whole
heartedly and gaily into the game of power politics. He had a
genius for the snap decision on an occasion when a lesser man would
have wanted time to think, but, not surprisingly, those decisions were
not often right. Quick, makeshift agreements, gaining a point here
and giving a point there, by-passing the Foreign Office, dealing direct
through Venizelos or Zaharoff, or some secret agent, keeping an ear
open for rumours, never hesitating to accept a bright idea from some
unimportant intermediary who appealed to him: these were the
Lloyd George methods of tackling Middle East problems. His own
Cabinet were kept in the dark as to many of his manoeuvres, and
Middle East ambassadors had an impossible task keeping up with the
changes of front.

It was on Middle East policy that he first fell out with Clemenceau.
Almost his every act had the effect of poisoning Anglo-French relations
and spoiling the carefully built-up Entente. He hated to play second
string to anyone, and he deliberately set out to clip the wings of the
dominant power in Europe in 1919 France. The obvious way to do
this was to check French influence in the Middle East; this became a
permanent objective of his foreign policy. It was a policy which was
joyfully welcomed in Berlin, where already they saw the ultimate
chance of separating Britain and France, a chance they seized eagerly
in 1940. There was a distinct link between 1919 and 1940, for Lloyd

THE "TICKET-HOLDERS" GOVERNMENT 165

George s tactics in 1919 created a wave of Anglophobia in France, the
first consequences of which were the anti-British tirades of Maurras,
the advent of Fascist and neo-Royalist parties, and the final results of
this could be seen in the emergence in 1940 of the old guard in France,
the men whose dislike of Britain dated back to those days.

To thwart France, Lloyd George made it his aim to win back the
oil market for Britain and to control Mosul oil. When Clemenceau
was driving through London with LI. G. after the war before the
two men had quarrelled "The Tiger" turned to Lloyd George and
asked: "What do you specially want from the French?"

It was one of the rare occasions when Clemenceau made a tactical
error in negotiating with a foreign statesman.

LI. G. promptly seized the initiative. Smiling, he replied: "I want
Mosul attached to Iraq and Palestine from Dan to Beersheba under
British control."

This was Clemenceau s own version of the incident. French official
sources confirm that he put this query to LI. G., but suggest that the
British Premier s reply was not quite so brutally phrased as Clemen
ceau implied and that he had been vague on the subject of Mosul.
In Paris, when Clemenceau returned, M. Poincare rightly commented
that "the stink of oil makes an unpleasant background to discussion
of the problems of peace ". There were grave doubts as to just what had
resulted from the informal talks between Lloyd George and Clemen
ceau. Herr Hoffman, of the School of Politics in Berlin, a skilled
observer of the European political scene, later claimed: "According
to the secret minutes of the Big Four , Lloyd George had as early as
December, 1918, got Clemenceau to consent to the handing over of
Palestine to Britain and to the political renunciation of Mosul. In
compensation France was to get a share of the oil plunder and a free
hand in Germany."

It seems incredible that "The Tiger" could have been tricked in
this way, for at no time did Lloyd George intend to allow France a
free hand in Germany. But in December, 1918, with a General
Election pending, with the clamour for "getting tough with Germany",
he may have found it suited his purpose to appear to support France
on this issue. No one can be quite sure what passed between the two
men in private and their bargaining remained as secret as the pro
longed fight for Mosul. One reason for Clemenceau s duel challenge
to LI. G. was the latter s denial of ever having promised to back France
in using tough measures against Germany, even to the extent of
threatening Clemenceau that "in certain circumstances I should have
no hesitation in making Germany a close ally of Britain, especially if
I thought France wanted to dominate Europe".

All this, however unpleasant in its double-talk to an old ally, might
have made some sense if Lloyd George had intended to give full support

1 66 THE MASK OF MERLIN

to the League of Nations project. But LI. G. ignored Wilson s appeal
to humanity and liberalism throughout the world, and even when he
wrote his book on the Peace Treaties summarily dismissed Wilson with
the comment: "He did not make the same appeal to the combative
instincts of the British as did Clemenceau and Foch."

Such inconsistency of thought must have left his contemporaries
frequently gasping with astonishment. But, as Dr. Thomas Jones
pointed out, "there are other than combative instincts even in the
British", and the fact that Wilson made a very great appeal to the
British people is amply borne out by the tremendous influence which
the League of Nations Union had in Britain right up to 1935.

So the Versailles Conference lacked a guiding mind and a truly
international figure who could bridge the gap between Wilson s
idealism and Europe s need for security, one who could set the problems
of peace in the objective perspective of the historian. Ludendorif,
who in many ways was the forerunner of Adolf Hitler, saw this clearly
and declared: "Versailles has shown that there is no unity among the
Allies. In ten years Germany will have risen again and, providing
she keeps the Allied camp split and wins over one or two nations to
her side, she can win back all she has lost." How right he was.

Wilson, admittedly, showed poor strategy in standing out against
the French plan for annexing the Rhineland and the Saar Valley.
Had he concentrated on the League of Nations plan and compromised
on other points, the gap between him and Clemenceau might have
been bridged. Clemenceau was always doubtful about the League,
but was prepared to support a plan which would "give the League
teeth". France and Britain could have provided these teeth. In
private Clemenceau urged Lloyd George to agree to a plan for limited
conscription in all countries which were members of the League so
that it should have the force to back up its decisions. LI. G., with one
ear cocked to his chances of survival at home, demurred. "The
League," he told the French Premier, "would make conscription un
necessary in any country. Disarmament is the way to peace."

"You will rue that decision," "The Tiger" bluntly told him.

In his Fontainebleau Memorandum the British Premier pleaded for
"a peace based on justice" for Germany. "We cannot cripple her
and expect her to pay." It was a very different tune from that played
by the Welsh Piper at Bristol and his "demand the whole cost of the
war from Germany" talk during the election campaign. The French
reply to this memorandum struck the right balance between the old
and the new: "Mr. Lloyd George s note lays stress and the French
Government is in agreement with it on the necessity of making peace

which will appear to Germany to be a just peace In view of German

mentality, it is not certain that the Germans have the same conception
of justice as have the Allies."

THE * e TICKET-HOLDERS " GOVERNMENT 167

Some of the wilder men in the new Coalition Government were
enraged that Lloyd George should now coo like a dove about Germany
whereas before he had roared like a lion for retribution. They pro
tested verbally and in writing. LI. G. could hardly complain, for he had
set the pace for such wild talk.

From being the most virulent of the "squeeze the Germans" pro
tagonists he swung over to the other extreme. LL G. wanted the Peace
Treaty signed quickly, he wanted all the ends tied up in a neat package
so that he could bask in the triumph of being personally responsible
for a settlement.

Yet all these twists of policy, all these evasions and fondness for
speedy action should not obscure the fact that Lloyd George worked
with tremendous energy and skill to force diametrically opposed forces
to come to terms. History cannot and will not easily reveal these gifts
of his, gifts which, had they been allied to higher principles and more
humility, might have brought richer harvests in the political field.
Only those who saw him in action can conjure up for us the picture
of so remarkable a negotiator. When faced with intransigence he could
be the apostle of sweet reason, if in the mood, as he showed on the
subject of how far Poland should be encouraged to refuse peace. At
the Spa Conference he exuded sympathy for French grievances and
demands, while telling the Germans behind the backs of the French
how unreasonable he really thought the latter were. He played the
one against the other, flattering the French and scaring the Germans
that he agreed with an occupation of the Ruhr. Then, with France
and Germany each despairing of any agreement, he used his histrionic
talents in a dramatic last-moment bid. With forefinger dramatically
poised in the air, with eyes cast down on his watch, he stressed that
there was little time to be lost. "You have no further suggestions,
gentlemen; you have talked all day and made no progress. Let me
show you what can be done, despite all our difficulties. "

In the end he was spontaneously dictating an agreement, which both
sides accepted silently, each wondering which of them had been cheated.
It was magnificent political play-making, but it was not statesmanship.

Lloyd George was even prepared to welcome Germany into the
League of Nations within a few months. "Have you forgotten who
started the war?" asked Clemenceau with a fierce sarcasm. "It is
not for us to ask pardon for our victory."

Britain s first and greatest error was her refusal to guarantee France s
security in a concise, unequivocal and adequate form in 1919. After
the attempted assassination of Clemenceau by an anarchist the British
Premier recognised his mistake and clumsily tried to correct it at the
Cannes Conference, a meeting which he largely arranged himself to
deal with some of the European problems which the Peace Conference
had failed to settle.

l68 THE MASK OF MERLIN

The Great Post- War Myth, fathered by Maynard Keynes and twisted
and transformed by every pontificating anti-Bolshevik, do-gooder and
Francophobe, was that the policy of Nazi Germany was forced upon
that country as a result of a long series of betrayals by the Allied
Powers.

There is, of course, some excuse for Keynes, whose Economic Conse
quences of the Peace became the economic Bible of the enlightened but
incredibly muddled thinkers of the post-war generation. Economically
the Versailles Treaty was certainly unsound. But though Germany at
the end of the war may have been in a state of moral disintegration
and financial chaos, she was not so conscious of the fact that she had
been defeated. The war had not been carried deep into the heart of
Germany; Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and Dusseldorf had not been
hammered into submission. The people felt cheated by their own
rulers, but not beaten by the Allies.

It has been said that the French at this time could not "think
straight because of fears amounting to paromania"; in fact, the cooler-
headed of the French Briand and Poincar6 among them took an
extremely realistic view of the European situation. Germany s domina
tion of Europe was ended after fifty years of nightmare for France, and
this in the French view offered a chance for building up, if not a
United Europe, at least a Pax Callus.

"We may be victorious," Poincare, then Foreign Secretary, told
Lloyd George, "but we must stay that way. And how can we stay
that way unless the Allies establish a permanent front against Germany
and unless we have order and not chaos in Russia? Russia used to be
France s ally. Now we have in that country the Bolshevik vacuum,
and who shall say that either Germany or the New Russia will not
exploit that situation one day?"

Prophetic words, however diehard they may have sounded in 1919.
Poincare was perhaps one of the least charming of Frenchmen, but
he had a singularly clear mind and a passion for detail; he never
arrived at conclusions without making a detailed analysis of every
aspect of the world situation. Yet this was the man whom Lloyd
George talked of as "a greedy, grasping, suspicious Frenchman" and
to whom he once likened a sour orange "full of pips, like Poincare."

44 The Peace Conference," said Lloyd George in a rashly confident
mood, "will settle the destiny of nations and the course of human life
for God knows how many ages."

Yet his approach to European problems was often astonishingly
flippant for one who pretended such settlements could last for infinity.
In urging the creation of small new states, he practically ensured the
eventual break-up of Europe into rival power blocs. A "United States

THE " TICKET-HOLDERS * GOVERNMENT 169

of Europe ", which was BriancTs ideal, made no appeal to him, nor
did a federal system guaranteed by the League of Nations.

To use the word flippant of Lloyd George s approach to these
problems may seem hyperbolical, but if ever there was an example of
such flippancy carried to the point of zaniness, it was in his scheme for
the future of Albania. It was typified by that half-joking cynicism in
which he was accustomed, when all else failed, to set about employing
the tactics of an estate agent to rebuild the New Europe. For years
Albania had been the problem child of the Balkans. Two warring
tribes based their hatred of one another on a family feud which had
developed into two power blocs, with the Slavs supporting one side
and the Italians the other.

The Albanian throne had been vacant ever since Prince William of
Wied, who as reigning monarch held the title of the Mpret, found his
position untenable and fled to Germany in 1914.

After World War I, the Albanians felt the time had come to restore
the monarchy. There was even a suggestion that the tide of Mpret
should be offered to a wealthy American, Harry Sinclair, the oil
magnate and owner of Zee. Meanwhile the Albanian police had been
trained by a British officer, Brigadier Charrington, and the activities
of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company gave Britain a stake in the
country.

Lloyd George discussed Albania with Venizelos who, having appre
ciated that the British Premier was susceptible to comparisons between
foreign countries and areas of the British Isles, casually remarked that
"Northern Albania could become the Wales of Serbia, but Southern
Albania could become the Cornwall of Greece."

This was just the sort of simple analogy which appealed to LL G.
and he seized on it with alacrity. Very few people, even in the British
Foreign Office, knew much about Albania, but an ex-officer, J. S.
Barnes, by spending long hours in the British Museum and elsewhere
searching for information on that country, had persuaded the Foreign
Office to give him a job in its South-Eastern European Section. Barnes
advised Lloyd George on the subject, impressing on him that the two
rival groups in Albania were based on a system of society which closely
resembled the clan system in Scotland.

"This is a Balkanised version of Scotland," Lloyd George told
Curzon. "We must make the country work on a clan basis. What
they want is a king and what could be better than a king who has a
personal knowledge of the Scottish clan system, I know the very man
Atholl."

"Personally," replied Curzon, "I should rather be the Duke of
Atholl than King of Albania."

"The comparison between the two countries is too marked not to
take advantage of the fact," retorted LL G. "The tribes are just like

I7O THE MASK OF MERLIN

clans, and those distinguishing patterns of their white wool jackets are
on the same principle as tartans."

The Duke of Atholl, who had commanded the Scottish Horse during
the war, at first seemed amenable to the idea, but he did not want to
be the Mpret, but merely to accept an interim Regency, provided he was
granted an adequate civil list. Lloyd George seemed anxious to carve
up this territory into spheres of influence as suggested by Venizelos,
though there was never a real case for Greece annexing Southern
Albania where there were no Greek Christians. The people in the
plains were mostly Moslems and the majority of the mountain dwellers
were Roman Catholics. But the British Premier hankered after the
idea of a British-sponsored "king" and even suggested advertising the
post. Whether he was optimistic enough to think there was any prospect
of swelling his political funds by the sale of this "kingship" one cannot
tell, but it is significant that, through Sir William Sutherland, he called
in Maundy Gregory, that bizarre figure who lurked in the shadows
of the Coalition Government, and asked him to look for suitable can
didates. More than seventy applications for the throne were received,
mostly from London and the suburbs.

Maundy Gregory s true place belongs to another chapter and it is
unnecessary to digress on him at this stage, but the story of this quest
for a "king" is such a fantasy that, if only as an aside on Lloyd
George s re-planning of Europe, it deserves the tolerance of a mention.
One of the applicants from Streatham stated :

"I am not a country gentleman myself, but I come from country
gentleman s stock on my mother s side. I stand six feet two inches in
my socks and measure forty-four inches round the chest. I take the
greatest interest in the welfare of the working classes, I accordingly
believe I would do very well by you."

In the possession of a peer who is still living is a letter from Gregory,

dated April 6, 1919. It states: "Dear , I am requested to submit

to you a proposal of a highly confidential nature. As you are doubtless
aware, the future of Albania has for some time been a problem which
has occupied a great deal of the Prime Minister s time. He is both
anxious that this country should have a monarch and that the links
which have been established between Albania and the United Kingdom
should be maintained. I am therefore authorised to ask you whether
you would kindly consider accepting the dignity of kingship for Albania.

"You will appreciate that it is not possible to go into full details in
a letter as this matter is extremely delicate and must remain strictly
secret. I should greatly appreciate a chance of meeting you in London
during the next week to discuss things.

"I am well known to , with whom it is safe to mention this

project."

How many people Gregory approached on this subject is not known,

THE e TICKET-HOLDERS" GOVERNMENT 171

but the peer in question emphatically turned down the proposal when
he met Gregory. For the price Gregory asked for the kingship of
Albania was 250,000!

The first Lord Inchcape was also asked whether he would consider
"accepting the dignity of kingship of Albania". There is no indication
as to who approached him on the matter, but he wrote to the agent,
saying:

"My dear , I duly received your letter of the 2gth ult. and am

sorry I have been so long replying. It is a great compliment to be
offered the Crown of Albania, but it is not in my line. Yours sincerely,
Inchcape."

Later some Albanians took the initiative in seeking a monarch; this
particular group wanted both "an English nobleman and a Moslem".
Sir Charles Watkin Hamilton and Lord Headley were approached.
Both were of the Moslem faith and Lord Headley was President of the
British Moslem Society and had made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Each
declined the offer.

Ultimately Zog, who was backed by the Italians, became king. In
the spring of 1939, the Italians treacherously turned on him, forced
him off the throne and occupied Albania. It is perhaps hardly sur
prising that at the end of World War II a country which was so
cynically treated by Britain, Italy and Greece should accept with
apparent zest a Communist regime an ultra-Communist regime at
that.

*****

J. S Barnes, the Foreign Office official who later became an Italian
citizen, gives an illuminating account of the cynicism of the "Big Four"
during the peace talks in his book, Haifa Life Left.

Describing a meeting in Lloyd George s apartment between the
British Premier, Clemenceau and Orlando "lying on their tummies
over a large map of Albania " he wrote : " Lloyd George, with his face
in his hands, gave a summary of the plan (for dividing Turkey between
the Powers). It was a very bad one. Nicolson (Sir Harold) blinked
when he was asked for his advice.

" * Well, sir, he said at length, e l don t like it. It is indefensible on
the grounds of morality/

"At these words Lloyd George, then Clemenceau, then Orlando
rolled off their tummies on to their backs. There they allowed them
selves to be convulsed with laughter, kicking their legs as I have seen
babies do.

" Come, come, Nicolson/ said Lloyd George. Can t you give us
a better reason than that? "

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA

"That the sunshine of England is pale,
And the breezes of England are stale,
An* there s something gone small with the lot."

Rudyard Kipling

When the flan vital which war creates dissolves in the junketings of
peace, there is a natural tendency to seek security above all else.

Thus it was at the end of 1918; war weariness brought with it little
inclination to make the building of peace an adventure, and the mood
of the country was aptly summed up by Kipling s "English Irregular
Discharged* .

There was a demand for swift demobilisation that resulted in various
petty but ugly mutinies. Horatio Bottomley was sent to Dover to
placate the troops when protests were made at the rest camps. At
Kinmel Camp in North Wales troops awaiting demobilisation mutinied
and five men were killed and twenty-one men and two officers injured
in the rioting that ensued. American soldiers fought the police in the
Aldwych and outgoing drafts sang the "Red Flag".

Workers councils talked of "direct action" and opposed the sending
of troops to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks. Electrical engineers threat
ened to plunge the City of London into darkness unless their demands
were met. The Police Union balloted in favour of a strike.

"February, 1919," wrote Sir Basil Thomson, "was the high-water
mark of revolutionary danger in Great Britain. Everything was in
favour of the revolutionaries. Many of the soldiers were impatient at
the delay in demobilisation. Russia had shown how apparently easy
it was for a determined minority, with a body of discontented soldiers
behind them, to seize the reins of power," There were attempts to
form the Soldiers and Workers Councils on the Soviet model in
Britain. Revolutionary leaflets were distributed in the Army, and the
Sailors , Soldiers and Airmen s Union was set up as a revolutionary
body in close touch with workers committees. At the same time
Edward Soerrnus, a Russian violinist, toured the country, attracting
to his concerts large numbers of working men and women, most of
whom came to hear his revolutionary speeches rather than his music.

A feverish political malaise had infected a vast section of the people;

172

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA 173

the symptoms were not those of healthy and normal political curiosity
about new ideas, but of intoxication with the ideas. The real meaning
of Marxist-Leninist philosophy was lost on the masses, but they were
excited at the idea that the underdog could seize power. In many
industrial centres riots broke out; an attempt was made to seize
Glasgow City Hall.

This was the sudden death of Liberal England, and it resulted in a
security-searching flight to the left or the right in politics, according
to whether people believed there was safety with the Tories, or Utopia
with the Socialists. Some Cabinet Ministers were largely responsible for
exaggerating the situation and alleging a Bolshevist purpose in this
talk of " direct action". The workers, the unemployed and the de
mobilised Servicemen were conscious of the ostentatious display of
wealth around them; in the House of Commons of this period it is said
that more champagne was drunk than at any time in its history. The
people were disillusioned by the unfulfilled promises of the Coalition
Government. As a contemporary book, Just the Other Day, summed it
up: "Strikes expressed the vanity of the skilled workmen swollen by
the flattery of Lloyd George in his wartime appeals for increased
production."

Sir Basil Thomson, in his capacity as anti-saboteur chief at Scotland
Yard, had to tackle the problem of Bolshevism in Britain and advise
the Cabinet on it. Thomson and Lloyd George did not always see eye
to eye on how to tackle this menace. Thomson, who by now was one
of the most powerful men in Britain, favoured tough measures and
demanded wider powers. Lloyd George was anxious to avoid provoking
trouble through giving the impression of being " tough" towards the
workers.

Early in 1919 the Special Police Branch was formed into a separate
organisation under Thomson s control to deal with Bolshevik attempts
to spread their doctrines in Britain. Lloyd George, in the early days
at least, took singularly little interest in the Bolshevik problem either
in Russia or Britain. " Don t worry, Thomson, the drought will end
soon and once it rains and drives the people indoors there will be less
opportunity for the agitators. Besides, the last thing we want is to let
Churchill know that there are Bolshevists in the Police Force. He s
already got Reds on the brain and wants to crusade against them all
the way from Glasgow to Archangel."

Thomson, like Admiral Hall, brought to this problem of Communist
agitation the mentality of the intelligence officer. This was the begin
ning of a long period in the doldrums for all the British intelligence
services. From 1918 onwards the Secret Service tended to become so
obsessed with Communism that it grew more pro-German and more
anti-Russian, and the whole system was geared to an anti-Bolshevik
machine. Thus it tended to collect information that proved Russian

174 THE MASK OF MERUN

intrigues, but to ignore a great deal that pointed to Germany s deter
mination to recover what she had lost.

Yet at the same time it is probably true to say that neither before
nor since not even during the height of Soviet popularity in Britain
during the latter part of World War II was the United Kingdom
nearer to becoming indoctrinated with Communism than in 1919.

The Council of the Third International was so confident of the
success of its organisation in Britain that it forecast "a revolution in
the United Kingdom within six months". In France and Italy the
extreme left was expected to seize power even sooner, while it was
confidently assumed when the Comintern was founded in March, 1919,
that a Communist dictatorship would be set up in Germany. A sar
donic note of defiance was struck in Glasgow, where Mr. John MacLean
grimly announced that Lenin had appointed him as the first President
of the Soviet Republic of Great Britain. Such hollow and unrealistic
gestures as these did not help the Communist cause, but it was as
much luck as judgment that averted serious trouble, and Basil Thomson
maintained to the end of his days that Lloyd George took an appalling
risk in hiding from the Cabinet the true facts about Communist in
filtration in Britain.

There were, of course, two separate problems that of Bolshevism
in Britain and what Britain s attitude should be to the new Soviet
Government. The first problem required greater vigilance than Lloyd
George thought necessary, but less prejudice than the Secret Service
agencies brought to bear on it. Much of the trouble could have been
alleviated if the Government had done something to discourage the
flaunting of wealth by the large number of war profiteers.

The second problem was more difficult in that, though quite a
distinct issue from the first, the method of tackling it inevitably had
repercussions on the influence of Communism in Britain. Lloyd George
was at first indifferent to Russia, whether White or Red. Curzon, as
Foreign Secretary, was frankly hostile to any idea of a deal with the
Bolsheviks; Bonar Law was, as usual, ultra-cautious, disliking any new
foreign commitments and inclined to be anti-interventionist, while
Churchill was almost tearing at the leash to launch an attack on the
Soviet. The language used about the new Russian leaders by the rank
and file of the Coalition Government was Blimpish in the extreme. It
provoked almost equally extravagant words by their opponents. At
the 1918 election Lieut. -Colonel Cecil L Estrange Malone was elected
Liberal Coalition member for East Leyton. He quickly became dis
illusioned with the conduct of his fellow Coalitionists and in 1920
caused a sensation by supporting the Russian Revolution at a meeting
at the Albert Hall. He hoped it would "soon be followed by a British
revolution. What are a few Ghurchills and Gurzons on the lamp
posts compared to the massacre of thousands of human beings?"

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA 175

Sentenced to six months imprisonment on a charge of sedition, Malone
later joined the Labour Party and sat as M.P. for Northampton from
1928-31. An honest, patriotic, if on the isolated occasion referred to,
an indiscreet man, he was sufficiently highly thought of for his services
to be accepted in the Royal Navy from 1943-45.

In one sense Lieut.-Golonel Malone was absolutely right; a campaign
against Bolshevism involving the loss of thousands of British lives to
put back the old Czarist regime would have been an act of madness.
Whatever doubts the Russian masses may have had about their new
masters, there was no question at all that they detested the old regime
and all it stood for. But Lloyd George vacillated between two extremes
in his attitude to Russia, tactics, admittedly, largely dictated by the
differences of opinion within the Cabinet on how to handle the situa
tion. Thus he increased the mistrust among the Communists as to
Britain s real intentions, while leaving her allies, the White Russians,
at the mercy of the Bolshevik butchers. LI. G. had in the early days
of the revolution sent a message to the head of the Provisional Govern
ment in Petrograd, expressing the " sentiments of profound satisfaction"
with which the peoples of Great Britain and the British dominions had
" welcomed the adoption by Russia of responsible government", and
he went on to describe the revolution as "the greatest service that the
Russian people have yet made to the cause for which the Allies are
fighting". This in itself was a most ambiguous message, open to a
variety of interpretations: Its enthusiasm can only be forgiven by
appreciating that then nobody knew that Lenin would shortly take
over from Kerensky s liberal-minded government.

Certainly the Kerensky revolution was hailed with such approval
in Britain that in Russia there was a disposition to believe that the
whole affair had been engineered by British diplomacy. This belief
hardened in Czarist circles when it was learned that there was no desire
to give the Czar and his family asylum in Britain. It was from the
Provisional Government that the first request came that the Imperial
Russian family should be removed to Britain. The tale that followed
was a sad and not particularly creditable one. At first the British
Government issued a formal invitation for the Russian royal family
to come to Britain; this invitation was not immediately accepted on
the grounds that one of the Czar s children was ill. Then left-wing
prejudice against the Czar and his family was whipped up in Britain
and, finally, the British Government completely refused to receive the
Czar on the grounds that, according to Sir Harold Nicolson, "The
presence of the Imperial family in Britain would be exploited to our
detriment by the extremists as well as by the German agents in Russia."
Shortly afterwards the Czar and his family were murdered by the
Bolsheviks in a cellar at Ekaterinburg.

All this was sadly against the best traditions of British sympathy for

THE MASK OF MERLIN

foreigners desiring asylum. For more than fifty years Britain alone
had given sanctuary to scores of revolutionaries from Russia when they
were barred in the rest of Europe. Now that same sanctuary was not
even to be extended to the head of an Allied country.

It was indeed the moral duty of the Allies to stand by their comrades
in arms in Russia, those valiant men who had scorned the Bolshevik
surrender to Germany and carried on the fight. It was morally as
indefensible to leave these men to their fate as it would have been to
force unwilling Free Polish soldiers back to Communist Poland after
1945. Yet, while allowing for this moral duty on the part of the Allies,
the majority view of most historians of the period is that the tide of
Communism could not then have been held back, that on military and
economic grounds aid to the White Russians was never a practical
proposition.

One can accept this majority view, but with reservations. Seemingly
more impossible tasks have been attempted successfully, and on the
grounds of international morality there was a case for Britain doing
more than she attempted. At the same time it must be conceded that
in the first seven months of 1919 more than 100 million was spent
by Britain in aid to the White Russians and that, in making Churchill
his War Minister, Lloyd George in the early part of that year came
down more positively on the side of the interventionists than against
them. It was Churchill who coined the phrase, "the foul baboonery
of Bolshevism"; it was Churchill who believed that resolute action by
all the Allied powers could defeat the Communist menace.

Czarism had ended; there was never any question of aiding the
White Russians to restore the old regime. All that Admiral Kolchak
wanted was to destroy the Bolsheviks, to restore Russia to the Western
Entente and to give his country a democratic form of government. A
stalwart champion in his early forties, Kolchak had, on the outbreak
of the revolution, been advised by the Provisional Government to seek
refuge in Japan. He was, wrote Churchill, "honest, loyal and incor
ruptible. His outlook and temperament were autocratic, but he tried
hard to be liberal and progressive". It was a fair judgment.

But the White Russians should not be judged on Kolchak alone.
Nor on Kornilov, nor Denikin. If there is any doubt as to the new
spirit which actuated this "Free Russia", one has only to study the
character of Boris Savinkov, who became its accredited head. Savin
kov, the life-long revolutionary, the implacable opponent of Czarism.
"I am astonished to be working with him," said the Czar s former
Foreign Minister, M. de Sazonov, "but he is a man most competent,
full of resource and resolution. No one is so good."

Savinkov was in the Nihilist tradition. His whole life had been spent
as a revolutionary, plotting against Czarism, using violence and
sabotage. He was devoted with impressive single-mindedness to one

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA 177

ideal: the freedom of the Russian people and the creation of a demo
cratic system of government. When Lenin replaced the Czar as the
symbol of Russian tyranny, he uncompromisingly and loyally stood by
the White Russians and made his terms with them.

To which side, then, could the Allies look for reasonableness and
fair-dealing, for co-operation in rebuilding Europe and upholding a
genuine League of Nations? From the German-sponsored Soviet
Government with its trappings of mass assassinations and police rule,
or from the strange combination of ex-Czarist generals and admiral?,
liberals and revolutionaries, banded together through fate and hard
ship against the new dictatorship? On moral grounds there is no
doubt what the answer ought to have been, but Lloyd George s instinct
was to establish relations with the forces of Communism, to gain the
ear of their leaders while still playing along with the White Russians.
He cared nothing about the moral issue, but saw such relations as a
bargaining counter in the game of power politics. Perhaps from the
strict standpoint of expediency he was right, for Communism could
never have then been overthrown unless all the Allied powers had
thrown their weight into the cause and it became increasingly evident
that some of them were dragging their feet. There was certainly no
hope of a quick victory, and a prolonged war could have created
industrial unrest at home. While Lloyd George believed that Basil
Thomson exaggerated the Communist threat inside Britain, he never
doubted that an unpopular and ineffective war against the Soviet
could bring organised labour into a formidable front against him. On
the Russian question he was to a marked degree the prisoner of the
Tories, and to that extent he had to appear to favour intervention
against the Bolsheviks. He may, at times, have shared Churchill s
view that intervention could succeed, but his speeches and memoranda
show that he was never happy about the outcome of the Russian
campaign and he constantly warned Churchill of the terrible cost of
aid to White Russia and the danger of believing other Allies would
give sufficient additional aid to make intervention worth while: the
French, he averred, were biased by the enormous number of small
investors who put their money into Russian loans and would like "to
see us pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them". It was an accurate
assessment in that the French politicians never backed their own
military commanders in the Russian campaign when it came to finding
more cash and it was amply borne out when LI. G. asked Clemenceau
what aid he was proposing to make to the White Russians and back
came the answer "None!"

In his speeches on the Bolshevik regime LL G. constantly changed
his tune. "It is impossible to make peace with the Bolsheviks because
we are committed to Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin," he said
at a time when 18,400 British troops were in North Russia.

178 THE MASK OF MERLIN

" Bolshevism is rapidly on the wane," he declared on another
occasion. "We cannot interfere and impose any form of government
on another people however bad -we may consider their present govern
ment to be," he stated later on. No one had suggested we should
"impose" any government; once order had been restored the White
Russians could have handled the situation. Before the Cannes Con
ference, which he convened largely to straighten out the unsolved
problems of Versailles, LL G. told Briand: "It would be a very good
thing if we could meet the heads of the Russian Government. It might
be possible even for Lenin to attend. I am prepared to go anywhere
for such a conference."

This was the worst possible manner in which to arrive at any satis
factory solution with any kind of Russian government. The evasions,
the switches of policy and the half-heartedness of British strategy in
dealing with this situation paved the way to that mistrust of Britain
which has lasted more than forty years. Such expediency might
possibly be excused by the fact that the French were often equally
indeterminate in their policy-making, but there is little doubt that
more resolution by Britain would have produced better results in
Paris.

Churchill alone had the historic sense to seize on the crux of the
whole complicated problem. The new Russia of the Soviets was not
a natural upsurge among the people for a liberal regime; it was not
the child of Savinkov and other liberal revolutionaries; it was a gro
tesque, barbaric, hybrid export from Germany. And Churchill saw
clearly the danger of Germany and Russia coming together as a new
menace to Europe, as they did in 1939. & k wrong to portray the
Churchill of this period as an impracticable reactionary; he had
intense sympathy with the sufferings of the Russian people and no
desire to restore Gzarist despotism. Yet his counsels were ignored just
as they were in 1934-39.

The mistake of the Secret Service and all its branches, of the Con
servative Party and of such politicians as Lothian, Chamberlain and
Halifax was that they sought to build up Germany as an ally against
Soviet Russia. The mistake of the extreme left-wing was that they saw
Soviet Russia as a reliable bulwark against Fascism, dictatorship and
extreme Conservatism and an ally of liberal democracy. Had all the
Allies wholeheartedly backed the White Russians, these alternative
and extreme viewpoints need never have been posed. In the circum
stances it was perhaps fortunate that Lloyd George was the prisoner
of the Tories in his policy-making towards Russia, for the pro-Soviet
line to which he originally leaned would have split Britain and France
and Germany and Russia might have drawn closer together, with the
ironic result that a German-Soviet Pact might have come about much
sooner.

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA 179

Bolshevik Russia was an ally of militaristic Germany and a political
alliance between these two nations was even then her fixed policy. A
document found in the files of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
now in the custody of the British authorities, reveals the relations be
tween the Imperial German Government and the Russian Bolshevik
Party. The message, dated December 3, 1917, was addressed by the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron R. von Kiihlmann, to an official
who was to communicate its contents to the Kaiser. It states:

"The disruption of the Entente and the subsequent creation of
political combinations agreeable to us constitute the most important
war aim of our diplomacy. Russia appeared to be the weakest link
in the enemy s chain. The task was gradually to loosen it and, when
possible, remove it.

"This was the purpose of the subversive activity we caused to be
carried out in Russia behind the front in the first place promotion
of separatist tendencies and support of the Bolsheviki. It was not until
the Bolsheviki had received from us a steady flow of funds through
various channels and under varying labels that they were in a position
to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic
propaganda. . . .

"The Bolsheviki have now come into power ... it is entirely in our
interest that we should exploit the period while they are in power,
in order to attain, firstly an armistice and then, if possible, peace.
. . . Once cast off by her former Allies and abandoned financially,
Russia will be forced to seek our support.

"We shall be able to provide help for Russia in various ways; firstly
in the rehabilitation of the railways; I have in mind a German-
Russian Railways Commission under our control which would under
take the rational and co-ordinated exploitation of the railway lines so
as to ensure speedy resumption of freight movement, then the pro
vision of a substantial loan. . . . Austria-Hungary will regard the
rapprochement with distrust and not without apprehension."

Here is proof that at no time did the Bolshevik Party adhere strictly
to the principles of revolutionary ethics which they professed in common
with other Russian revolutionaries. B. V. Nikitine, a counter-espionage
agent in the Provisional Government in Petrograd, stated that legal
proceedings were started against the Bolshevik leaders on the grounds
that Lenin and others were German agents. Later, at the request of
the Bolsheviks, the Central Committee of the Soviets set up its own
commission for the investigation of the case of Lenin and others. It
was only while this commission was leisurely pursuing its inquiries
that the view gained ground that the suspicions against Lenin were
the basis of a counter-revolutionary plot.

Lloyd George complained afterwards that "Mr. Churchill very
adroitly seized the opportunity created by the absence of President

l8o THE MASK OF MERLIN

Wilson and myself to go over to Paris and urge his plans (armed inter
vention against the Bolsheviks) with regard to Russia upon the con
sideration of the French ". LL G. told Lord Riddell that this would
"cause a revolution in Britain".

From Churchill alone did the French military experts who wanted
to carry out a punitive war against the Soviets get any real backing
inside the British Government. To Churchill went a telegram from
LI. G. saying: "Am very alarmed at your second telegram about
planning war against the Bolsheviks. The Cabinet have never author
ised such a proposal.* 9

Churchill s retort was that Lloyd George had himself admitted
Britain was at war with the Bolsheviks. Bonar Law and Balfour were
frightened of intervention on anything like a big scale. These two men,
like a majority of the Tories after the cost of the war had dawned on
them, were far more afraid of the bogy of Bolshevism inside Britain
than in Russia. Lloyd George swiftly realised that the Tory mood
was changing and decided to remain personally uncommitted as far
as possible: he neither killed the plan to help Admiral Kolchak, put
forward in January, 1919, nor gave it any worth-while support. He
procrastinated, doubtless waiting to see how Kolchak got on.

From this point onwards it is difficult to criticise the Prime Minister s
handling of a situation in which he had little room to manoeuvre. If
he had been the prisoner of the Tories when they were baying for
Bolshevik blood, he was equally now hampered by the canniness of
Bonar Law and the reluctance of Balfour, not to mention the failure
of the French effectively to implement their military experts proposals.
Intervention had been too slow, too small and too ambiguously offered
to give the White Russians any real chance.

In March, 1919, Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister, saying:
"The four months which have passed since the Armistice was signed
have been disastrous almost without relief for the anti-Bolshevik forces.
This is not due to any great increase in the Bolshevik strength, though
there has been a certain augmentation. It is due to the lack of any
policy on the part of our Allies, or of any genuine or effective support
put into the operations which are going on against the Bolsheviks at
different points of Russia/

Whether the French, with their frequently changing Governments,
were as willing to provide the policy Churchill wanted is open to some
doubt, but the fact remains that they mistrusted Lloyd George and
suspected him of being anti-interventionist at heart.

By June, 1919, some further aid to Kolchak in the form of munitions,
supplies and food was promised. "If this far-reaching and openly
proclaimed decision (he was referring to the Allied promise to help
Kolchak and his forces establish themselves as the Government of
Russia) was wise in June, would it not have been wiser in January?"

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA l8l

wrote Churchill in his World Crisis. "No arguments existed in June
not obvious in January, and half the power available in January was
gone by June. Six months of degeneration and uncertainty had chilled
the Siberian armies and wasted the slender authority of the Omsk
Government. . . . The moment chosen by the Supreme Council for
their declaration was almost exactly the moment when that declaration
was certainly too late."

This delay settled matters; by July, Kolchak was in full retreat.
The Bolsheviks pressed remorselessly on, setting up their dictatorships
in each village, pillaging, killing and replacing the Cheka by the
O.G.P.U.

Churchill did not, as has often been suggested, consort with the
reactionary forces of Czarism; in Paris he met Savinkov, the former
anarchist, knowing that, whatever the stormy past of this revolutionary,
he had always been loyal to the Allied cause and an inveterate enemy
of German militarism. Savinkov had fought valiantly, he had pro
duced armies on Polish soil without equipment or funds. When
resistance inside Russia seemed doomed, he organised guerrillas all
over Soviet territory.

Shortly before the collapse of the White Russians, Churchill brought
Savinkov to Chequers to meet Lloyd George. It was a last effort, a
desperate bid to make the Premier see the perils ahead. In Great Con
temporaries, Churchill described what took place at Chequers. "... We
had our talk. I recall only one of its episodes. The Prime Minister
argued that revolutions like disease run a regular course, that the
worst was already over in Russia, that the Bolshevik leaders, con
fronted with the responsibilities of actual government, would quit their
Communistic theories or that they would quarrel among themselves
and fall like Robespierre and St. Just, that others weaker or more
moderate would succeed them and that by successive convulsions a
more tolerable regime would be established.

" Mr. Prime Minister/ said Savinkov in his formal way* You will
permit me the honour of observing that after the fall of the Roman
Empire there ensued the Dark Ages. "

At Cannes Lloyd George sought to placate the bloodthirsty tyrants
of the Bolshevik Revolution. Aristide Briand was now the French
Premier; he and LI. G. had much in common, and for a very brief
period it seemed that Lloyd George might get along better with the
French. This, however, soon proved to be an illusion, as it became
apparent at Cannes that Lloyd George s aim was to keep Briand
away from the conference atmosphere as much as possible and to
prevent him from being influenced by anyone else. To carry this out
LI. G. conceived the idea of inviting Briand, Bonomi, the Italian,

1 82 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Riddell, Bonar Law and Edward Grigg to play golf with him and to
continue the talks on the links. But neither Briand nor Bonomi knew
anything about the game which developed into sheer buffoonery.
Lloyd George had tipped off a photographer to take a picture of a
British Prime Minister teaching golf to the French and Italians, It
has been said that when the French Press published these pictures it
meant the end of Briand s premiership. The truth was that the French
military intelligence reported back to Paris that LI. G. was plotting
to appease the Bolsheviks at the expense of France. The report was
highly coloured, exaggerated and inaccurate in many details, but it
was sufficient to cause the defeat of Briand in the National Assembly
and the accession of Poincare to the premiership,

In 1919 world revolution had seemed a matter of months and early
in 1920 a question of weeks. But the triumphant progress of the Com
munists was halted in August, 1920, when the Red Army collapsed
before Warsaw, and subsequently the invaders were driven back on
to Russian soil and Poland, thanks to aid from France, compelled the
Russians to sign a peace treaty of advantageous terms to the Poles.
"Now," said Trotsky, "world revolution is perhaps a question of
years."

Meanwhile, the trade union movement in Britain was angered by
the renaissance of what they, not inaccurately, regarded as a military
junta in Poland. All sections of the trade union movement combined
to form a Council of Action to watch developments in this sphere of
operation and on August 10, 1920, a deputation of seventeen leaders
went to see Lloyd George.

Mr. Trevor Evans writes in his biography of Ernest Bevin that
"Bevin bluntly told Lloyd George that the resolution of the conference
which had sent them there was not merely one in opposition to direct
military action the use of soldiers and sailors in actual fighting but
it was a declaration in opposition to an indirect war, either by blockade,
or by the supplying of munitions, or by assisting the forces that were
now at war against Russia. The resolution, Bevin added, expressed
the feeling of the overwhelming majority of six million trade unionists
in the country. "

Lloyd George asked whether this meant that, if the independence
of Poland was really menaced, and if Bolshevist Russia did for Poland
what their Czarist predecessors did a century and a half before, that
"we cannot send a single pair of boots there, otherwise Labour will
strike",

It was a strong point, but Bevin insisted that the independence of
Poland was not at stake.

By this time organised labour was bent on sabotaging any aid to
Poland, and when dockers refused to load the Jolly Roger in London
docks, a general strike seemed a possibility. The Government appeared

LLOYD GEORGE AND RUSSIA 183

to condone this threat: no real effort was made to appeal to the public
against what was undoubtedly an act of sabotage against the state.
Gradually the Russians, though defeated by the Poles, stabilised their
relations with Britain. Lloyd George was determined not to have
industrial trouble on his hands, and an important trade agreement
was reached between the Soviets and the British Government, carrying
with it de facto recognition and diplomatic relations. Meanwhile LI. G.
spent his time preaching to the French that the "Bolsheviks are not so
bad. They are learning to be good Europeans". Another attempt at
reconciliation at the Genoa Conference was ruined by the news that
Dr. Rathenau of Germany and the Russian delegate, M. Chicherin,
had signed a separate and secret agreement, by which they accorded
each other de jure recognition and renounced reparations. Thus the
Germans gave full warning of their future intentions: the ill-fated
Weimar Republic, no less than Hitler and von Paulus afterwards, was
prepared to make a deal with the Devil, if it would further Germany s
own interests.

Yet the next moment Lloyd George would be off at a tangent again,
talking of the "menace of Bolshevism" and the need to save Germany
from it. He openly insulted M. Klotz, the French Minister of Finance,
by mocking at his Jewish looks and calling him, "Shylock with the
money bags, who won t send food or gold to Germany to save them
from starving." This was a sudden change of front, for LL G. had
deliberately ignored warnings from his own generals in Germany that
food must be sent to avert public disorder.

A few months after the trade agreement was signed between Britain
and the Soviets it was reported that the Russians were directing policy
in Britain through the Daily Herald and supporting it by subsidies. On
September 10, 1920, the Herald asked its readers: " Shall we take
75,000 of Russian money? " then, a few days later, decided not to
accept the offer.

Lloyd George said Lev Kamenev, the visiting Russian trade com
missar, had broken an undertaking not to engage in propaganda while
in Britain. Kamenev, he said, had "taken steps to subsidise a news
paper sowing strife between classes. ... I have no hesitation in saying
that this is a gross breach of faith ... the Soviet Government . . . have
sent an emissary here under an obligation not to interfere in our
internal affairs and they have instructed that agent to break his word.
It is quite impossible to have dealings with a Government until at
any rate it can conform to the ordinary obligations of honour which
are applicable to dealings between nations and individuals. If Mr.
Kamenev had not been leaving tomorrow, it would have been our
business to ask him to leave."

Bolshevik Communism was a Teutonic product, patented by Marx
and Engels and brought to fruition by Lenin as a German agent. The

184 THE MASK OF MERLIN

aim of the New Russia was to make Germany and Russia into one vast
Soviet Empire. Indeed it is worth recording for the benefit of those
dishonest intellectuals of the left-wing who are only interested in facts
when they fit their theories, that Moscow was only intended by the
Comintern as a temporary headquarters of the revolution. When
suspicious delegates from Asia and Central Europe talked of shifting
the centre from Moscow, they were told by a Soviet delegation: "We
are only waiting to move into Soviet Berlin."

It will, perhaps, always remain an enigma as to what would have
been the best course for the Allies to have adopted towards Russia in
1919. The possibility, which to the fainthearts was always a prob
ability, was that armed intervention on a large scale would have failed
and paved the way to further revolutions, yet surely what happened
in Poland, when there was resolute action, is to some extent the answer
to such a theory. On the other hand a massive victory for the White
Russians might have led ultimately to a less progressive regime than
Churchill believed possible. Even that, however, might have been
better than the first thirty-five years of Communist tyranny. But it
must be admitted that, in face of the conflicting interests of the time
and the fluctuations in the ebb and flow of Communism, Lloyd George
had a difficult path to tread. Where Churchill would have courageously,
if rashly, secured a mandate for firm action against the Soviets, Lloyd
George, by instinct, chose a more devious route. Britain lost her role
as a leader of world opinion by this cautious expediency. Churchill s
backing of full intervention, however powerful morally, was not enough
to thwart the lethargy of Law and Balfour. Law was always insular
in his outlook, and a restraining influence on all foreign adventures
into which Britain might be tempted. Teeth for the League of Nations
could have killed the Bolshevik despotism and created a genuine inter
national army to keep the peace. That was the one way out, the only
method of intervention which might have overcome the prejudices of
trade unionists and Socialists. Instead the Bolsheviks were allowed to
consolidate and turn the whole of Russia into a vacuum of sealed-off
and spiritually starved humanity, utterly isolated from any European
influences.

14
COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET

"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."

David Lloyd George

Not the least of Lloyd George s feats of political acrobatics was his
somersault on the Irish question between 1910 and 1919. The young
man who had backed Home Rule for Ireland because he hoped to win
Irish support for a similar measure for Wales swiftly, ruthlessly and
pitilessly turned on the Irish nation with a savagery and venom un
paralleled since the days of that other dictator of Welsh descent, Oliver
Cromwell.

But to those who knew him well, it was no surprise, especially, as
we have seen, in that he regarded Irish Home Rule as being largely
the prerogative of the Catholics. Lloyd George could speak lovingly
of "God s chosen little nations " whenit suited him, but, as any intelligent
Belgian must have known, it all depended upon the circumstances of
the hour. As Dr. Thomas Jones has said, he "Never was, as Gladstone
was, a crusader for Home Rule".

The American Ambassador in London, Dr. Walter Page, warned
the Prime Minister that if the Government did not find a solution for
the Irish problem, it would have serious repercussions in America,
where Irish- American opinion was extremely vocal. "If you fail in
Ireland, then the American people will regard the League of Nations
as an instrument of hypocrisy and power politics," said Page.

In April, 1918, in a moment of panic after the German push into
France, Lloyd George had extended conscription to Ireland: "One
of the most foolish experiments ever attempted in that country,"
declared Lord Middleton. King George V, with far more foresight
than his ministers, pleaded with LI. G. that, whatever the generals or
politicians might say, "Conscription in Ireland was bound to have the
direst consequences in the near future. It could mean the end of
Ireland as part of the British Empire."

Until this moment the Coalition Government had had loyal backing
in the prosecution of the war from the Irish Nationalists, except for a
handful of extremists. When, quite naturally, they opposed con-

1 86 THE MASK OF MERLIN

scription, Lloyd George quarrelled with them. No Coalition "coupon"
was given to any Nationalist candidate in the 1918 election and the
Sinn Feiners captured 73 seats, ousting the Nationalists from con
stituencies which had long been theirs traditionally. The Sinn Feiners
were for an absolute and sovereign Irish Republic and refused to take
their seats at Westminster.

Conscription in Ireland was a dismal failure, as the King had
prophesied. After two months the experiment had to be abandoned.
This confession of blundering by the Government encouraged the
Sinn Feiners to organise a conspiracy against law and order. They
knew that if the Nationalists, by constitutional methods and co
operation in the war effort, could not influence the Government to
grant Home Rule, only open revolt would obtain results.

So, as peace came in Europe, civil war and bloodshed spread across
Ireland. There was open guerrilla warfare between the Irish Re
publican Army, organised by Sinn Fein, and the police, or Royal
Irish Constabulary. Arthur Griffith, dour and taciturn and a student
of the tactics of European nationalist movements, saw Sinn Fein as a
means of establishing an alternative government.

So he set up a judicature, a "police force" and a system of Parlia
mentary revenue. In its origins Sinn Fein ("For ourselves alone")
was devoted to the principles of passive resistance, but when Lloyd
George proscribed the Dail these methods were discarded in favour of
violence.

Neither the R.I.C. nor the troops poured in from Britain proved to
have a satisfactory answer to this revolt. A wag painted on a wall in
Dublin, "Join the R.I.C. and see the next world." The constant fear
of seeing that other world by the agency of a stray bullet caused many
members of the R.I.C. to resign. They preferred to lose their pensions,
not their lives.

Frank Ryan, one of the I.R.A. leaders who later broke away from
the terrorists, told the author in 1936, shortly after De Valera had
proscribed the I.R.A., that "we had an agent in Ian Macpherson s 1
office who secured for us a verbatim account of what Macpherson
told Basil Thomson about Lloyd George s desire for a new drive against
the I.R.A. It was because of this report that the Sinn Fein launched
the terrorist campaign before the Black-and-Tans got going."

This report cannot be regarded as conclusive evidence with which
to indict the British Government, but as it supports the view that the
excesses of the Black-and-Tans were sponsored by that Government,
it may usefully be quoted. Ryan claimed that LI. G. had told Mac
pherson: "We have got to meet terrorism with terrorism. The military
are far too mealy-mouthed and soft for this sort of job. There must
be immediate recruitment in London of a new police force that is
1 Minister responsible for Irish afiairs.

COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET 187

tough and not squeamish, and it would be a good plan if we intro
duced into its numbers some ex-officers who have a reputation for
toughness. We do not want ex-Regulars, but men who can be relied
upon to apply unorthodox tactics. Doubtless Basil Thomson can re
commend some of his men who can wage war without looking too
closely at the rule book."

Ian Macpherson resigned in April, 1920, and was succeeded by the
tough and ruthless Sir Hamar Greenwood. In 1936 Greenwood (then
Lord Greenwood) declined to make any comment on Ryan s statement,
but Sir Basil Thomson and General Crozier both concurred that it
represented the general idea of Lloyd George s instructions. Sir Basil
even claimed to know who was the agent of the LR.A. in Macpherson s
office. "The whole affair got out of hand," he added. "I was pre
vented from having any real control over the recruitment in the way
I wished. It would have saved many lives, if, instead of a force of
thugs, a disciplined counter-espionage unit had been organised and
moved to Dublin. That was what Macpherson wanted and one reason
why he was forced to resign,"

Nicknamed the Black-and-Tans because of their black tunics and
caps and khaki trousers, the auxiliary force were paid i a day (good
money in 1919). The majority of them were not police, but the scum
of the Army, ex-officers with bad reputations who had been punished
for brutality and lack of discipline, men with convictions for assault,
loot and rape, even men awaiting trial were freed from jail to join the
new force.

If such a state of affairs sounds incredible under a modern British
Government, here is confirmation from a source that is undeniably
sober and unlikely to be coloured by emotion or prejudice. The late
Lord Simon (then Sir John Simon) wrote in his memoirs: "The con
tinuing failure of the Government to put down insurrection had led
them to form and arm an auxiliary force which was so imperfectly
disciplined that its members were carrying on, by way of reprisal,
nothing less than a competition with the Sinn Feiners. Time and
again these auxiliaries matched some specific outrage by indiscriminate
vengeance, setting fire to a whole village, or to a row of buildings
without any ground for thinking that the victims had anything to do
with the guilty parties. They indulged not infrequently in shootings
which had no object but to terrorise the countryside. ... It became
clear that shocking things were being done by Crown servants in a
desperate attempt to force the Irish into subjection, and that, to say
the least of it, they were winked at by their superiors."

Asquith, who won a by-election at Paisley in 1920, boldly declared
that the solution of the Irish problem must be found in complete
"Dominion Home Rule". What was the reply of the former Home
Ruler, Lloyd George, to this statesmanlike proposal? It was, in effect,

1 88 THE MASK OF MERLIN

contained in one word: "lunacy". "The idea of complete Home Rule
for Ireland was ridiculous," replied Lloyd George. "If they decided
to have conscription there, why, you would have to have it here. And
what about submarines? And mines? Our ports in Ireland were the
sea gateway of Great Britain. Complete Home Rule? Was there ever
such lunacy proposed by anybody!"

In a speech at Caernarvon the Prime Minister jeered that Asquith
had given "a bone to the dog that bit him in the leg and chased him
out of Downing Street ", an oblique reference to the fact that Asquith
had written a letter on the subject to Lord NorthclifFe s The Times.
LI. G. defended the policy of reprisals as "the necessary way of dealing
with Irish murder".

For once the mild-mannered Asquith hit back with a speech that
must go on record as one of his most forthright and angriest utterances.
"On the tone and taste of the Prime Minister s latest speech I don t
think it worth while to dwell, but all its flippancies and vulgarities
have not diverted, and cannot divert, attention from the outstanding
fact that it is a naked confession of political bankruptcy. Mr. Lloyd
George says that you cannot have a one-sided war. The vast majority
of the cases are in no sense acts of self-defence. They are acts of blind
and indiscriminate vengeance. In not a few instances these so-called
reprisals were deliberately aimed at the destruction of local industries,
The policy of the Government can only fitly be described as a policy
of despair."

With Edward Carson, the cosh-boy of the Tory Party on his side,
Lloyd George felt he could win over the right-wing from the intrigues
of the party s "cabin-boy", as Lord Birkenhead later designated Sir
George Younger. But he must have been uneasy at the shock to public
opinion which the activities of the Black-and-Tans caused. A "Peace
with Ireland Council " was formed and Dr. Garbett (later Archbishop
of York) and G. K. Chesterton spoke at a protest meeting against the
conduct of the auxiliaries.

Not even the Germans in Belgium perpetrated such outrages on a
civilian population as the Black-and-Tans in this darkest and starkest
chapter of British imperialism. Armed with revolvers, they entered
private houses, stripped the women and raped them. It was claimed
that the Irish women were in the habit of hiding their menfolk s guns
inside their dresses, but how this excused rape is less easy to under
stand. The auxiliaries were a shameless, befuddled and lawless band
who smashed up shops, looted and in some cases destroyed whole
hamlets. In a Dublin suburb they stripped all the women in one
street and paraded them in their nakedness to a communal wash-
house, where they were locked up and left for some hours before their
clothes were returned to them.

Near Bandon, County Cork, auxiliaries murdered a priest and a

COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET 1 89

boy who was walking with him, A British officer, a Captain Prender-
gast, who had praised the behaviour of Irish soldiers during the war,
was manhandled by Black-and-Tans, frogmarched to the River Black-
water, thrown in and drowned. Nobody was punished. Arson and
looting were systematic tactics: in one session at Clare County Court
the judge (a Crown official, be it noted) awarded compensation
amounting to 187,046 IQS. 6d. for damage to property committed
by British forces. But, to add insult to injury, this sum was only re
covered by making it a charge on the rates.

Naturally the Irish rebels hit back and ambushed British soldiers
and police. Atrocity was matched by atrocity. Martial law was pro
claimed and in Dublin there was a curfew. When the I.R.A. shot a
policeman outside Cork, auxiliaries with masked faces and disguised
as Sinn Feiners broke into the house of the Lord Mayor, Thomas
McCurtain, and shot him dead simply and solely as a reprisal. He
had nothing whatever to do with the shooting of the policeman.

Brigadier-General Frank Crozier, in recalling his experiences of the
Auxiliary Royal Irish Constabulary, of which he was commandant,
stated in a book he wrote afterwards (Ireland For Ever) : "In 1920 and
1921 the whole Cabinet should have been marched to the Tower in
company with the Chief of Imperial General Staff (Sir Henry Wilson)
and there shot, on account of what they permitted to be done in the
King s name and by the authority of his uniform in Ireland."

But the signal for ferocity which would match that of the Black-
and-Tans came when Michael Collins was tipped off by one of his
agents that Field-Marshal Wilson had instituted a policy of "shooting
by roster" in Ireland. Collins, the most fascinating and romantic
figure in the I.R.A. movement, was Director of Intelligence for the
Sinn Feiners. With a price of 10,000 on his head, this cheerful,
disarmingly charming character, without any attempt at disguise,
bicycled all over Dublin to keep his appointments with fellow agents,
often calling in at public houses to have a drink right under the noses
of the police. Behind his mask of nonchalance he hid an implacable
purpose. When he received this tip he called a meeting at a secret
hide-out in the Dublin suburb of Clontarf. But what finally convinced
Collins that terror must be met by even bloodier terror was that in
September, 1920, when a Black-and-Tan had been shot dead in a
tavern argument at Balbriggan, lorry-loads of auxiliaries were rushed
to the small town to "beat it up". The Black-and-Tans fired through
the windows of houses as they drove through the town. They placed
lorries, armed with machine-guns, at strategic points around Balbriggan
and set about destroying the place. Furniture was burnt or flung into
the streets, shops were looted and fired, men, women and children
were dragged from their beds, thrown into the street and in some
instances bayoneted. Families, left homeless, who escaped the cordon

1 90 THE MASK OF MERLIN

of lorries, fled into the open country to sleep in woods and
ditches.

This incident led directly to "Bloody Sunday" on November 21,
1920. On Collins s instructions immediate reprisals on British officers
were ordered to be carried out. Fourteen officers were murdered in
their billets that Sunday morning, some in the presence of their wives
and children. It was an outrage that shocked both nations. That after
noon British troops and Black-and-Tans drove up to Croke Park,
Dublin, where a football match was taking place, ostensibly to search
for arms among the crowd. A saner precaution would have been to
cancel the match rather than risk the inevitable disorder which this
clumsy search was bound to entail. But authority seemed bent on being
provocative, and the Black-and-Tans mounted the fences round the
ground, opened fire on the vast crowd, killing twelve, wounding nearly
a hundred people, while hundreds more were badly injured in the riot
that followed.

General Grozier later accused Sir Henry Wilson of organising a
murder gang in Dublin and asserted that the British officers who were
killed in their billets were "commissioned assassins" with a bad record
of arson and murder. Three distinct bodies were operating on behalf
of the British Government in Ireland at that time the Army, the
Black-and-Tans and a Secret Service force which was reputedly in
dependent of Dublin Castle H.Q., and responsible to someone in
London. Bowen, a former officer with a distinguished war record,
who was one of these Secret Service agents, had become disgusted with
the tactics of his colleagues. According to General Grozier, he "foolishly
told his superior he would cross to England and tell David Davies, the
influential Welshman, about the irregular way the Service was being
run. . . . He was threatened he would be put away."

Sometime later a dead body was pulled out of the Liffey; it was
identified as that of Bowen.

Early in 1921 Brigadier-General Crozier resigned from his post as
Commandant of the Auxiliary Division of the R J.C. as a result of
a disagreement with General Tudor, Chief of Police, over the dismissal
of twenty-six cadets.

General Tudor sent a long telegram to Sir Hamar Greenwood on
this subject which was read in the House of Commons as "a satisfactory
explanation of the whole affair ". Crozier suggested that the telegram
had been written in order "to produce a false impression". General
Tudor claimed in the telegram that on receipt of a complaint that a
party of the Auxiliary Division had been guilty of looting, he had
directed that the Commandant should make an immediate inquiry.
Crozier said this was untrue: "I received no directions and acted
entirely off my own bat."

The telegram said that on arrival in England the cadets protested

COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET IQI

to the Chief of Police at the Irish Office that they had been dismissed
without trial. But they were not "dismissed without trial" for looting
or any other offence. Their services were dispensed with "for failing
to answer questions and give evidence as policemen". On his return
to Dublin, General Tudor directed that the dismissed cadets be re
called without prejudice to any future disciplinary action if found
guilty. This was the purest humbug, because there was no question
of the cadets being tried.

But Brigadier-General Crozier had in his possession a letter from
General Tudor which completely contradicted all the implications of
the telegram read in the House of Commons. This stated :

"Dear Crozier, I think it will be best for you to keep these T/C.s
suspended until I come back. I want to discuss it with the Chief
Secretary. He gets all the bother. My main point is that it is an un
fortunate time to do anything that looks panicky. I think also these
T/C.s will have a distinct grievance if the platoon commanders and
section leaders are acquitted. Tell them that they are suspended,
pending my return, or, if you prefer it, keep them back by not com
pleting their accounts till I come back."

This letter is surely unequalled in the annals of modern military and
police administration. The men were in effect to be detained by with
holding their pay. This affair can be summed up as follows : General
Tudor had urged General Grozier on the telephone to reconsider his
decision about the cadets; Crozier refused and Tudor s letter to Crozier
followed by the Irish mail-boat twenty-four hours later. What caused
General Tudor to reverse his decision? The letter would seem to imply
that the order came from high up. Crozier believed that it was on the
joint instructions of Lloyd George and Hamar Greenwood: it was for
this reason that he resigned his post in disgust.

By the summer of 1921 it was clear that the Government must either
end the policy of reprisals and seek a negotiated peace with Ireland,
or send more troops and subdue the country by force. In The World
Crisis Winston Churchill gave the lie to any suggestion that LI. G.
was the prisoner of the Tories in his Irish policy by stating that the
Prime Minister was "markedly disposed to fight it out at all costs".
For days the Premier toyed with the idea of sending a vast force to
Ireland to "crush murder for all time". He thought an additional
60,000 troops would "do the trick", as though the Irish question was
a game of cards and not a serious problem in human relationships.
Appealing to the military for their view of how many men would be
required, he was told, "At least 100,000, and the task will take at least
two years."

It was an appalling thought. After the "war to end wars" were
100,000 British citizens to be poured into a conflict which was directed
not at the British people, but at the politicians who by neglect,

1 92 THr, MASK OF MERLIN

treachery, betrayal and incompetence had made a civil war inevitable?
Lloyd George told Hamar Greenwood that he was "prepared to take
the risk". Greenwood agreed to send secret instructions to unofficial
agents in Ireland to organise the seizure of I.R.A. sectional leaders in
Dublin, Cork and other centres.

Then, suddenly, when the die seemed to have been cast for increased
bloodshed, Lloyd George changed his mind again. Negotiations with
the Irish began, secretly at first and then by an open proposal by the
Premier for a conference with the rebel leaders. Thus Asquith s plan
for "Dominion Home Rule for Ireland", which Lloyd George had
condemned as "lunacy", was in the end adopted as the one possible
way out of the dilemma.

What brought about the change of front? In August, 1921, the
British people read the following sensational headlines quoted from
the New York Times .

"IRISH PEACE OFFER ORDERED BY KING

Told Premier, Editor says, * I cannot have my people killed
in this manner. "

Mr. Wickham Steed, then editor of The Times, had gone to New
York with Lord Northcliffe and, while there, had agreed to make a
"personal statement" on the critical Irish situation to the New York
Times. Having received authority from Lord Northcliffe, he was
alleged to have dictated a statement giving an account of differences
between King George and Lloyd George.

"Are you going to shoot all the people in Ireland?" the King was
said to have asked.

"No," replied the Prime Minister.

"Then you must come to some agreement with them. I cannot
have my people killed in this manner."

The statement was given as coming from Northcliffe. It was pub
lished in the New York Times and reached the office of the London
Times for publication under Lord Northcliffe s name. In spite of this
it was suppressed, but the Irish edition of the Daily Mail published the
story as an interview with Lord Northcliffe and not with Steed.

According to Steed, "In what must have been a moment of mental
aberration, Northcliffe had told Bullock s assistant in New York to
cable to London, as having been said by him, everything published in
his name or in mine." On learning what a sensation it made in London,
Northcliffe disowned the story in a cable to the King. But both he and
Steed were belated in denying the interview. How was it that neither
of them took any steps to make a correction between the Monday,
when the interview was published, and the Friday, when it was
denounced in the House of Commons? By that time the story had

COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET 1 93

worked effectively against Lloyd George and the tardy denial mattered
little one way or another.

But the main questions are : were such statements made by the King
to Lloyd George and, if so, were they passed on to the New York Times
by Wickham Steed? Steed admitted that "I chatted informally with
the reporter as I might have chatted with any honourable journalist.
I said nothing of a conversation between King George V and the
Prime Minister for the simple reason that I had never heard of it."

That seems categorical enough. But the " rectification" Steed s
own word which the New York Times gave told a different story. It
stated: "The interview with Mr. Wickham Steed published in The
Times was written by a trustworthy reporter who believes he reported
accurately what Steed said. Steed has since told The Times it contained
matter that should not have been published. Steed did not have an
opportunity to revise the interview. As re-printed in England it appears
the interview was incorrectly attributed to Lord Northcliffe himself.
Northcliffe has not given, nor has The Times reported him as giving,
any statement of a purported conversation between the King and
Lloyd George."

There is no denial that Steed told this story. Therefore was the
interview " bogus" as The History of the Times suggests? Steed claimed
that neither he nor Northcliffe heard anything of the sequel to the
"interview" until "the following Friday in Washington". This seems
hard to believe, for Northcliffe kept in the closest possible touch by
telephone, radio and cable with his London staffs: it is impossible to
accept the suggestion that so keen a newspaperman as Northcliffe
would fail to realise that this story would create a first-class political
sensation.

Steed s last words on this affair, published in a letter to the Evening
Standard of London on June 20, 1952, are as follows: "It transpires
that a telegram from Paris to an American news agency mentioned
an acrimonious conversation between the King and Lloyd George
shortly before I reached New York, and the reporter saddled me with
this story, though his paper had not published the telegram."

The King was displeased with Lloyd George s Irish policy and held
strong views on the subject. The previous month Lord Stamfordham,
the King s Secretary, had written to Hamar Greenwood: "The King
does ask himself, and he asks you, if this policy of reprisals is to be
continued and, if so, where it will lead Ireland and us all? It seems
to His Majesty that in punishing the guilty we are inflicting punish
ment no less severe upon the innocent."

Did someone in Buckingham Palace deliberately leak the informa
tion that the King had spoken on these lines to Lloyd George? If so,
was this done with the King s authority? Mr. A. M. Murray, at this
time correspondent for the New York World in Paris, assured the author

194 THE MASK OF MERLIN

that "the information about the King s argument with Lloyd George
was passed through top-secret diplomatic channels from London and
released in Paris so that it should not seem to have come from London."

The publication of the story in the New Tork Times not only worried
Lloyd George, but had had an effect on those leaders of the Tory
Party who were diehards on the Irish question. There was an uneasy
feeling in their minds that the King might have said something of the
sort to LI. G. It was even whispered that Lord Stamfordham and
Curzon had plotted this between them and that Curzon had revelled
in the change of revenging himself of LI. G. for the latter s interference
at the Foreign Office.

Terrorism on the Irish side had been stepped up. Cathal Brugha,
Sinn Fein Defence Minister, had ordered reprisals in England. Ware
houses were destroyed in Liverpool, and Field-Marshal Wilson was
assassinated in London. In desperation Lloyd George used his Secret
Service agents to seek out I.R.A. leaders for a basis for negotiation.
Sir Alfred Cope, Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland, was the Prime
Minister s secret intermediary with the Sinn Feiners. LI. G. exchanged
letters and telegrams with De Valera. Meanwhile the King had shown
great personal courage in insisting on going to Belfast to open the first
Parliament of Northern Ireland. "The eyes of the whole Empire are
on Ireland today," said the King. "I speak from a full heart when I
pray that my coming to Ireland today may prove to be the first step
towards the end of strife amongst my people. ... I appeal to all Irish
men to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation,
to forgive and forget, and to join in making for the land they love a new
era of peace, contentment and goodwill."

From that moment the Prime Minister speeded up his negotiations
with De Valera. Even so, he handled this difficult man with incredibly
bad judgment, trying first to charm, then to bully. It was not until the
end of September that De Valera at last agreed to send delegates to
London "to explore every possibility of settlement". Still not trusting
the British Government, De Valera, who had escaped once from Lin
coln Prison, did not intend to risk capture again. He remained in
Dublin. The Irish delegation included such contrasting types as the
gloomy Arthur Griffith, the volatile and voluable Michael Collins and
Erskine Childers, an ex-public schoolboy and former British officer.

The talks dragged on and failure seemed inevitable until on Decem
ber 5, 1921, according to Dr. Thomas Jones, "Lloyd George awoke at
five and in less than twenty-four hours he had completely transformed
the situation and had shaken hands with the Irish delegates over a
signed peace treaty which Griffith later declared should end the con
flict of centuries."

In fact much of the credit for this agreement must go to Dr. Jones
himself. He it was who saw and coaxed Michael Collins, who only the

COERCION FROM DOWNING STREET 195

previous day had declined to go to Downing Street. It was Dr. Jones
who gave Collins new assurances about the Boundary Commission
which would meet the point of view of the Southern Irish. But it was
touch and go right up to the moment when the pens were put to paper.
Thomas Jones s proposal to delimit the frontier line between North
and South Ireland in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants
certainly swayed the delegates : it meant the gain of the best part of
two and a great deal of three other counties to the South. On the other
hand Collins maintained that Lloyd George s threat to resign if agree
ment were not arrived at decided the issue. At two o clock the follow
ing morning the Irish Treaty was signed in the Cabinet Room.

For Lloyd George the Treaty meant a brief triumph. For the Irish
men it was, as Collins had said, "signing our own death warrant".
Griffith died at St. Vincent s Hospital, Dublin, from a cerebral
haemorrhage, Erskine Childers and Collins were shot. Duffy alone
escaped by fleeing to Rome. To the fanatics of the LR.A. the
signing of the Treaty was an act of betrayal. De Valera, who had
wisely kept out of the talks, immediately denounced the Treaty as
such, even though a small majority of the Dail accepted it.

The break-up of the British Empire, as the King had anticipated,
dated from the era of repression: the signing of the Irish Treaty merely
confirmed the trend. But after this orgy of coercion and terrorism
Britain could hardly fail to suffer a serious loss in moral prestige within
the Empire and Commonwealth. The Tories in 1921 were as blind to
realities as they had been in opposition when they did their utmost
to obstruct Liberal proposals for Home Rule which would have left
Ireland an indisputable part of the Empire. They still believed that
the settlement of 1921 would keep Eire within the Empire. Lloyd
George cunningly concealed from them the full implications of the
Irish Treaty. This laid down that the Irish Free State "shall have the
same constitution and status in the Commonwealth of Nations and

Empire as the dominion of Canada " But, when challenged, Lloyd

George refrained from answering the question, "What does dominion
status mean? " He preferred, he said, to speak of the dangers of
definition and rigidity in these matters.

This was, of course, mere evasion of a vital issue. A different and
more statesmanlike view was taken by General Smuts, who urged the
Governments of the Commonwealth that: " Unless dominion status
was quickly solved in a way that would satisfy the aspirations of these
young nations, separatist movements were to be expected in the
Commonwealth. . . . The only way to meet such movements is ...
to anticipate them and make them impossible by the most generous
concessions of the dominion s nationhood and existence as a state."
Just as Lloyd George was too slow in conceding that, in the case of

196 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Eire at least, a more precise definition of dominion status was needed,
so in his dealings with the Irish he was too impatient. "Was Mr.
Lloyd George, however prolonged the Treaty negotiations, however
slow the Irish delegation to reach firm conclusions, wise in the end to
impose a settlement by a threat of war? " asked Dr. Nicholas Mansergh
in his Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs. "It is a fact that the threat,
however veiled or diluted, was a stigma from which the dominion
settlement of 1921 never escaped." 1

A definition of dominion status in 1921 and a promise to re-examine
the Ulster question after a period of five years might have meant the
retention of Eire as a permanent partner in the Commonwealth, but
it was left to a Tory administration to introduce the legal instrument
which finally took Eire out of the Empire. Lloyd George had en
couraged the dominion Premiers to believe that Britain could concede
more rights to them. The Statute of Westminster of 1931 authorised
a dominion to change its constitution even though this involved re
pudiation of a treaty. This was the second step towards the break-up
of the Empire and it is worth noting that each step was taken during
predominantly Tory administration. Thus the door to the full aspira
tions of the Southern Irish was left open and, by the Ireland Act of
1949, the Republic of Eire was eventually recognised, free from any
allegiances to the Crown.

1 It must have been a very veiled threat, as LI. G. could hardly have threatened his own
resignation and renewed warfare at the same time. He may have implied that following
his resignation renewed warfare was a possibility.

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS

"The world is governed by go-betweens. These go-betweens
influence the persons with whom they carry on intercourse by
stating their sense to each of them as the sense of the other; and thus
they reciprocally master both sides."

Edmund Burke

The pages of British history are littered with confusing examples of
disreputable, squalid characters who have acquired power and in
fluence over their rulers out of all proportion to their positions in the
community. The ante-rooms, boudoirs and kitchens of the royal
palaces have been happy hunting grounds for historians steeped in the
Whig and Puritan tradition.

Yet while this type of historian conscientiously rummages among
the faded love letters of royal mistresses, or ponders on the idiosyn
crasies of a Highland ghillie, there has been a singularly marked reluct
ance on his part to reveal the equally shadowy figures who have sur
rounded mere politicians. One learns authoritatively who were the
homosexual paramours of James I; every schoolboy realises he was
the "wisest fool in Christendom", yet is barely cognisant of the debt
he owes this monarch for the heritage of a new and enriched Bible.

Some psychological quirk among historians causes them to treat
British Prime Ministers with greater respect and far more inhibitions
than a Sovereign. Frequently the historian seeks deliberately to pin
point the aberrations, frailties and defects of a Sovereign, to describe
in detail the lesser personages around him; it is part of the Whig
philosophy of denying the divine, hereditary right of kings and, with
out -doubt, it is a wise, if sometimes overdeveloped technique. Yet,
with Prime Ministers, there is a tendency to disregard the "go-
betweens" in the shadows, to whom Burke so aptly referred. In
analysing and sifting the facts of Lloyd George s premiership it is
impossible even to grasp the complexities of his career, and indeed of
the whole political life of the nation, without taking a close look at
those aides, go-betweens and advisers who gathered in the shadows
of No. 10, Downing Street, and in that secret rendezvous nicknamed
the "Garden Suburb".

No Prime Minister has ever before or since assembled around him

197

ig8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

quite such an incongruous, almost bizarre and even sinister band of
figures, some of whom might have stepped from the pages of a spy-
thriller story. Often the lesser characters provide more clues
to the mystery of Lloyd George s mental make-up than the more
sedate of his civil servants, and even with the latter LL G. preferred
unorthodoxy.

Most of these evil genii of the Magician from Llanystumdwy have
long since been forgotten; they are names which evoke an occasional
question mark, a hint of some faded scandal and nothing more. Yet
their influence on events in this period was far greater than that of
some of his Cabinet colleagues.

Lloyd George was the first modern Premier to set up what is now
loosely called a brains trust. It was something much more informal
than the teams of specialists set up by Franklin Roosevelt and President
Kennedy. Fortunately for the country there were in his secretariat
and entourage some men of high moral character and outstanding
ability. In the background was the figure of Maurice Hankey, head
of the Cabinet secretariat, who has been described as a "powerful and
catalytic agent in reducing to order the multitude of meetings and
consultations ". In the secretariat during the war were Dr. Thomas
Jones, Professor W. G. S. Adams, Waldorf Astor, David Davies,
Philip Kerr and J. T. Davies.

To Dr. Jones, LL G. owed an immense debt for much wise advice
on relations with labour and his ability, as we have already seen in the
Irish conference, in skilful negotiations behind the scenes. Starting
life as a timekeeper and wages clerk in a Monmouthshire ironworks
at the age of fourteen, Thomas Jones eventually became a university
professor and deputy-secretary to the Cabinet. It was a most remark
able achievement. "Perpetual Motion" Jones they called him in
Whitehall; later when he rose to second-in-command in the War
Cabinet secretariat there were jealous murmurings among some of his
colleagues about the "little Bolshevik" who had acquired such success
and influence.

It was a grossly inaccurate description. Thomas Jones was a man
with no personal ambitions; he might best be described as slightly to
the left of Liberalism, with a keen appreciation of the lessons of
Fabianism and the need for closer and better relations between Govern
ment and organised labour.

Lloyd George did not always heed this advice. David Davies was
the man who filled the role of Cassius to LL G. s Brutus. He was
forever the whisperer at the elbow, the slightly sanctimonious tale
teller who was ominously hinting in profusive letters and memoranda
at the weaknesses and misdoings of others. In short, he was the chief
spy of the actions and conduct of the other members of the LL G,
team. Edward Grigg, as private secretary had a genius for

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 1 99

composing evasive replies to awkward letters, and the Prime Minister
relied heavily on his talent for taking avoiding action.

Of the other members of the brains trust two men were particularly
influential with the Premier Philip Kerr and Lionel Curtis. Kerr and
Curtis were the mainspring of whatever inspiration Lloyd George had
for the Empire and Commonwealth, and the former was regarded as
a valued adviser on foreign policy. But both Kerr and Curtis were
imperialist mystics whose approach to the problems of Empire was
almost metaphysical. Kerr s odd background of a Roman Catholic
upbringing combined with a passion for Christian Science made a
dangerous basis for imperial re-thinking. He and Curtis had founded
a grave and austere magazine named The Round Table to express their
views, and it was natural that Edward Grigg, another Round Tabler
and a former assistant editor of the magazine, should link up with them.

These three men made incongruous associates for Lloyd George the
empiricist. Mentally they were much closer to Lord Milner, but their
skill at drafting agreements attracted them to a Prime Minister who
liked to have his own ideas etched in detail by someone else s hand.
The main theme of the Round Tablers was to change the Empire
gradually into a Commonwealth not a body of peoples dominated by
one group, but an association of free peoples. Indian reform, the
independence of Egypt and the creation of the Irish Free State were
all Round Table conceptions and, though never men of action, Kerr
and Curtis managed to carry out a revolution in political thinking
almost without the Prime Minister being aware of it. They saved
him from the worst aberrations of his Irish policy and produced a new
blueprint for the Commonwealth.

Kerr and Curtis, both great admirers of the United States, pretended
that Europe could do in a few years what the various states of America
have achieved in less than a century. They insisted that France and
Germany could live together in amity and concord. Such talk from
two rather pretentious intellectuals was to the French just another
example of British humbug; what seemed to Kerr and Curtis as a mere
exercise in Christian science was to the French a betrayal of their
cause. Thus Kerr, especially, and Curtis, to a lesser extent, helped,
however unwittingly, to make Anglo-French accord difficult. In their
ideas about the Empire the Round Tablers were undoubtedly right,
if not always practicable, but their conception of Europe, with its
bland assumption of the mystical power of a superior morality peculiar
to Anglo-Saxons, was disastrous.

Of a totally different character was J. T. Davies, 1 another of the
Welshmen at No. 10, who claimed most of the Prime Minister s time
and nearly always got it. Davies s shifts and shuffles in policy and im
patience with academic thought endeared him to a Prime Minister

1 Later Sir J. T. Davies; private secretary to LI. G. 1912-22.

2OO THE MASK OF MERLIN

who preferred quick thinkers to " professors", as he somewhat
contemptuously called intellectuals. When J. T. Davies was appointed
a director of the Suez Canal Company by Lloyd George, Lord Curzon
said: "It is the greatest piece of nepotism since Caligula appointed
his horse to be a Consul."

Lloyd George used intellectuals as drafters and, in the last resort,
as a subtle check on any hastily improvised policy of his own which
went wrong. If he did not acknowledge a mistake, he was quick to see
it was rectified. Thus, when he realised the hopeless impasse into
which his Irish policy had precipitated the Government, he turned to
Kerr and Curtis. But he was never a man to rely on a few advisers
of proved ability and integrity. Diversity of advice and novelty of
ideas were what he thrived on and he preferred brilliant rogues to
honest plodders who too often provided a douche of caution, or a
reminder that moral principles were more important than expediency.

No Prime Minister made himself so accessible to people who had
new ideas to offer. During his Premiership there was a steady flow of
callers to No. 10 Downing Street, not only through the front door but
by the back door and to the discreetly sheltered hut which he ordered
to be built in the garden, the "Garden Suburb". Some of the callers
found themselves made civil servants at a moment s notice.

Lloyd George had a flair for talent-spotting which amounted to real
genius. Though many of the leading figures behind the scenes at No.
10 were charlatans, all had vigour, drive and immense capacity for
tilting against the windmills their master put up for them. But there
was frequently a lack of co-ordination. A reshuffle in one ministry
might improve it beyond recognition, but it often led to chaos in its
relations with other ministries. The picture presented by some bio
graphers of a presiding genius over a brilliant staff is not borne out
by the men who were closest to him.

Mr. A. J. Sylvester, a member of the secretariat, had this to say
about his chief: "The plain unvarnished truth is that, left alone, Lloyd
George was a most unholy muddler . . . left to himself he could not
even dress himself without upsetting everything in the room and losing
half his clothing. His staff were always in arrears with work because
of his slipshod methods. The fact that he was causing people incon
venience didn t worry him in the slightest. . . . Temperamental and im
pulsive, he often would give an order and cancel it a few minutes later/*
Others among LI. G. s staff have testified to his wild rages and
unhappy trait of bullying those under him. To avoid making a decision
he would upset a telephone on the floor, or throw files across the
room and leave his staff to work things out. If their decision did not
prove to be right in the circumstances, he would have no hesitation
in blaming them.

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 201

There is not a single reference to Sir Basil Zaharoff in Lloyd George s
War Memoirs and LI. G. s biographers completely ignore him. Yet the
two men were closely associated throughout World War I and during
the whole period of the 1918-22 Coalition Government. It is curious
that objective biographers should have ignored this enigmatic figure
who, as much as anyone, was responsible for the events which caused
Lloyd George s fall from power.

" Chief Munitions Agent for the Allied Powers" is how Zaharoff
has been described, but he was not merely a munitions agent, but a
deliberate fomenter of wars. Not content to harvest his gains, he re
invested them in newspapers which urged the need for rearmament,
in carefully calculated bribes and payments to unscrupulous agents
who would spread confusion, doubt and lies across three continents.
Like Lloyd George himself, he had a fondness for destroying incriminat
ing evidence so that even his origins are still obscure. In 1873 he testi
fied in court that he was born in the Tatavla quarter of Constantinople
and was twenty-two years of age. In 1892 he produced a birth certifi
cate which told a different story that "Zacharie Vasiliou Zacharoffor
Zacharoff Basile was born in Mouchliou on October 6, 1849, the
legitimate son of Vassiliou and Helene Zacharoff". So closely did he
keep his secrets that neither his closest friends nor his biographers,
who spent years collecting information about him, had any idea that
he married an Englishwoman. Up to the age of 74, when he married
the Duchess de ViUafranca de los Caballeros, the world believed him
to be a confirmed bachelor. But the document proving his marriage
is in the register of a London church, showing that on October 14,
1872, he married Emily Ann Burrows at the Church of All Saints,
Knightsbridge, under the assumed name of Prince Basilius Gortzacoff.

Two months later, again under the assumed name, he was charged
at the Mansion House Police Court with having stolen merchandise
and securities worth in all about 8,000. Later at the Old Bailey he
was found guilty, bound over and eventually set free.

Through his influence with Skuludis, the Greek Premier, he joined
the Anglo-Swedish arms firm of Nordenfelt. Summing up those early
days of his career, Zaharoff told Rosita Forbes: "I made my first
hundreds out of gun-running for savages. I made wars so that I could
sell arms to both sides. As a very young man I realise there is always
a woman behind the public personage. I got introduced to her, sent
her flowers or jewels, courted her and eventually sold whatever I
wanted to her husband or lover."

When Nordenfelt produced a submarine he sold one to Greece, then
told the Turks and immediately persuaded them to buy two. He
negotiated a merger between Nordenfelt and Maxim and, in 1897,
brought off the biggest coup of all, a deal between Vickers, the British
armaments combine, and the Maxim-Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition

202 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Company. Thus he became Vickers s chief agent with a roving
commission to go where he liked and sell arms wherever he could on a
percentage commission basis. He was one of the principal fomenters
of the armaments scare which, by exaggerating the extent of German
naval construction, sought to force Britain into a dreadnought building
race.

Lloyd George had been one of the most caustic critics of the people
who stirred up this armaments scare, and his opposition to increased
naval building was partly based on this. Shortly afterwards Zaharoff
made the acquaintance of Lloyd George, whom he had long regarded
as a potentially dangerous enemy with too close an interest in his
machinations. He took steps to find out all about Lloyd George, his
weaknesses and secrets, and the man he employed to do this was none
other than Arthur Maundy Gregory, the honours tout. Gregory had
long been closely associated with Sir Basil Thomson on counter
espionage work and, according to Thomson, Gregory informed him
that he had discovered that sometime during the early nineties Lloyd
George had had a brief liaison with Zaharoff s English wife. To what
extent Zaharoff used this uncorroborated information to gain influence
with LI. G. is not clear, but he seems to have decided that, while Lloyd
George could be a dangerous enemy, it would be preferable to come
to terms with him. He may even have lured Lloyd George into erron
eously believing that he had left-wing sympathies, for Zaharoff had
as many friends on the left as on the right in politics. In this con
nection Sir Basil once made a highly significant remark to Sir Robert
(now Lord) Boothby: "Begin on the left in politics," he advised, "and
then, if necessary, work over to the right. Remember it is sometimes
necessary to kick off the ladder those who have helped you to climb
it." 1

Zaharoff could make such outrageous statements and get away with
them. He spoke with the assurance and autocratic authority of a
Hapsburg, looking more like a king than most monarchs. By sheer
force of personality and will he had obliterated the mannerisms
and foibles of the brothel tout he once was just as he had removed
police dossiers and secret reports from half the Chancelleries of
Europe.

When World War I broke out Zaharoff was at the height of his
power and his plans were well laid. In France he had his headquarters,
in Britain his agents, while he was on the closest terms with the Russian
Imperial family. His fortune at one time totalled more than 40
million. His relations with Lloyd George at the Ministry of Munitions
have already been mentioned. "As a representative of Vickers, Zaha
roff was the confidant of Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions, and
this personal relationship continued when the latter became Prime

1 / Fight to Lwe, by Sir Robot Boothby.

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 20$

Minister/ wrote Richard Lewinsohn. " In England his best friend was
Lloyd George," claimed Guilles Davenport.

When the name of Zaharoff loomed large and scandalously in the
hearings of the Senate Munitions Investigation Commission in Washing
ton in 1934, Mr. Alkin E. Johnson expounded on the theme in the
French review La Lumiere: "Someone belonging to Lloyd George s
more intimate circle" told him that "we use Sir Basil Zaharoff as a
kind of super-spy in high society and influential circles. At the same
time we have him watched by two or three of our best police agents."

It would be interesting to know who this intimate of Lloyd George s
was. But, though this is hearsay, it fits into the picture of this scheming
arms merchant and his various missions for LI. G. That he was of
paramount importance to the Allies there is little doubt, though it is
equally clear that, in the first year of the war, he was still fulfilling
arms orders for the enemy. The Turkish guns served by German
artillerymen at the Dardanelles were delivered by Zaharoff.

Because Lloyd George was an " Easterner" in strategy he appealed
strongly to Zaharoff. Here was the chance the munitions agent was
looking for a Western statesman who could be persuaded to extend
the war in the East and give to Greece the future which Zaharoff in
his rare sentimental moments saw for her, that of a modern empire
in every way the twentieth-century counterpart of that of Alexander.
Zaharoff provided large sums of money for Allied propaganda in
Greece and led the drive against the activities of Baron von Schenck,
the German agent.

During his wartime premiership Lloyd George always kept open the
door for any peace envoy from whatever quarter of the enemy s camp
he might come. His publicly declared policy was one of "war to the
bitter end ", but his private intrigues all too frequently implied peace
at somebody else s price. Both military and naval intelligence organi
sations were kept in the dark about the Prime Minister s circuitous
methods of probing peace possibilities. Zaharoff not only kept him
closely informed on the Balkans, but, at LI. G. s request, carried out
many unofficial missions for him in Central Europe. The relationship
of these two men was of particular significance in March, 1917, when
Zaharoff tipped off the Premier about a secret letter written by the
Emperor of Austria to his brother-in-law, Prince Sixte de Bourbon, an
officer in the Belgian Army. This letter was intended for the French,
but Zaharoff was determined that LI. G. should hear of it first. Lloyd
George had several interviews with Prince Sixte in London and Paris.
It was suggested that Austria should agree not to send large forces
against the Allies on the Western front in return for support by Britain
for the reactionary Austro-Hungarian regime. ZaharofFs plan was
not to bring the war to an end that would not have suited his pur
poses as an armaments merchant but to take advantage of any lull

204 THE MASK OF MERLIN

on the Western front to stir up trouble in the Middle East and the
Balkans, thus finding new customers for armaments and bringing
Greece into the war. Such a plan obviously fitted in perfectly with the
strategy of Lloyd George, who persisted in advocating the project even
after it was opposed by France and Italy.

M. Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador in London, warned
Prince Sixte about the British Premier: "He is a Welshman, not an
Englishman. An Englishman never goes back on what he has once
said: Lloyd George is apt to perform evolutions, his words have not
always the same weight as BalfourV

Naturally the financial world took a keen interest in these talks, and
Zaharoff was consulted by a group of Allied bankers in Paris. Lord
Bertie, the British Ambassador in the French capital, reported: " Basil
Zaharoff is all for continuing the wa.Tjusqu au bout."

During the war Zaharoff was sent on various secret missions by Lloyd
George, and these activities certainly substantiate the claim made by
Mr. ALkm Johnson. Once the passenger steamer in which he was
travelling had been tracked down by the German naval authorities
who had even obtained the number of his cabin. A German sub
marine halted the ship on the high seas and demanded the handing
over of "Herr Zaharoff from Cabin 24". But Zaharoff was prepared
for this eventuality. Indeed, it is said that he knew about the Germans
plans to capture him and that he had deliberately travelled with a
"double" who could impersonate him. The German sailors went to
Cabin 24 and arrested a man whom they took aboard the submarine.
It was not until they arrived back in Germany that the man was found
to be not Basil Zaharoff but his secretary.

Zaharoff *s home in Paris during the war was more like that of a
monarch than a private individual. The "Big Three" Wilson, Lloyd
George and Clemenceau met there once or twice to discuss some major
peace problem, and during the last two years of the war Zaharoff was
frequently consulted on policy-making. T. P. O Connor once stated,
"Allied statesmen and leaders were obliged to consult him before
planning any great attack/ That may merely have been ZaharofFs
own version of his influence, but he certainly received deferential
treatment from all the Allied leaders.

On one occasion Zaharoff went to Germany, on Lloyd George s
personal instructions, disguised in the uniform of a Bulgarian Army
doctor. He was not a man to risk his skin unnecessarily and it says
much for Lloyd George s powers of persuasion that he could entice
the most powerful man in Europe to play the role of a common spy.
The story of this mission, though not its details, is confirmed by the
Quai d Orsay, though French authorities declare it was carried
out without their prior knowledge. According to Glemenceau,
"the information which Zaharoff secured in Germany for Lloyd

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 205

George was the most important piece of intelligence of the whole war".

A lengthy search of available records has produced no reliable
answer as to what that information was, but French sources are inclined
to believe that Zaharoff reported German fears of a Bolshevik uprising
in Eastern Germany and Hungary. A Soviet diplomatic dispatch to
the Russian representative in Athens in the midsummer of 1918 stated
categorically: "M. ZaharofF, the agent of the British firm of Vickers
and the man who financed the Putiloff works, has urged the Allies to
make peace before the end of the year as he fears that if the war con
tinues it will upset his plans for provoking war between Greece and
Turkey and that by early next year the Bolshevik Revolution will have
completed its second phase and extended the Socialist Republics to
the banks of the Rhine."

Insisting that not a word that he uttered was to be published until
after his death, ZaharofFin 1933 gave an interview to Rosita Forbes,
the author, which included his own version of this incident. This
account stated that Zaharoff "during the war . . . went to Germany
to discover certain things that Lloyd George wanted to know, in the
uniform of a Bulgarian doctor". He described how he was met by
Clemenceau on his arrival back in Paris and told by the French Premier
to report to Lloyd George at once. "I went to London by the next
train to be greeted by Mr. Lloyd George with the G.C.B. in his pocket.
They say that the information I brought ended the war."

This is probably a typical example of Zaharoffian exaggeration.
The decoration could not have been the Grand Gross of the Order of
the Bath, which was not conferred on him until 1921. This is a detail
which Zaharoff, with his multifarious awards, may pardonably have
overlooked. He was, however, awarded the G.B.E. in 1918, which
was the year in which the events described took place.

But one mission which Zaharoff undertook for Lloyd George and of
which the details are known casts a new light on the extent to which
the politicians were often outwitted by the international armaments
wire-pullers in World War L At the end of 1916, shortly after he
became Premier, Lloyd George asked Zaharoff what were the chances
of obtaining unofficially from the enemy a token withdrawal of troops
on both sides in selected areas of the Western front on New Year s Day.
This approach was made at a time when the Allied conference at
Chantilly had recommended an intensified drive against the enemy,
but while LI. G, was secretly considering German peace feelers.

Zaharoff, however, had other ideas. He was seriously perturbed
because at this very time M. Albert Thomas, French Minister of
Munitions, was demanding the bombardment of Briey, close to the
German frontier where, before the war, a system of blast furnaces had
been created by the French Comitf dts Forges. 1 - In August, 1914, no

1 Zaharoff had close associations with this company.

2O6 THE MASK OF MERLIN

attempt had been made to defend Briey and French forces were
immediately withdrawn to a distance of twenty-two kilometres behind
the frontier, leaving this valuable industrial plant intact in German
hands. Throughout the war no offensive action was taken by the
Allies against either Briey or nearby Thionville, a German industrial
area which was vital to the German army for mineral supplies.

The proposed bombardment of an arms plant in which he had an
interest naturally disturbed Zaharoff who immediately sought to
distort Lloyd George s plea into a plan for a mutual agreement between
the Allies and the Central Powers to desist from attacking each other s
arms factories. He consulted armament agents on both sides, as a
result of which orders to bombard Briey were cancelled.

Years afterwards M. Thomas declared: "The Minister of War
repeatedly said that he had given orders for the bombardment of
Briey, but that these orders were not in fact carried out. . . . The
reasons given were the inadequacy of the number and power of the
aircraft, to which we replied that if there were enough aeroplanes for
the open towns, there were enough for Briey as well."

More enlightening was the testimony of M. Barthe in the French
Parliament on January 24, 1919: " I declare that, either owing to the
international solidarity of heavy industry, or in order to safeguard
private interests, orders were given to our military commanders not
to bombard the factories of the basin of Briey exploited by the enemy
during the war."

M. Barthe compiled a dossier on this sordid episode of the war. It
was suppressed by the French authorities. This dossier revealed the
story of negotiations between Zaharoff and Lloyd George, commenting:
"Lloyd George finally concurred with Zaharoff J s viewpoints and agreed
it would be senseless to destroy industrial plant and to end up the war
with derelict factories and mass unemployment. Lloyd George was
in favour of anything that would slow down the tempo of the war on
the Western front, and it was better to have the means of supplying
arms to the theatre of war which really mattered to him vital salients
of the Mqyen Orient"

On October 10, 1917, the German newspaper Ldpzige Neuestc
Nachrichttn stated: "If, in the first days of the war, the French had
penetrated to the depth of a dozen kilometres in Lorraine, the war
would have ended in six months by the defeat of Germany."

Zaharoff himself put this even more bluntly in a letter to M. Veni-
zelos: "You can sum up our war position to the fainthearts in Athens
as follows : the Western Powers must win this war. They alone have
the war potential to carry them through, Only incredible stupidity
could give the Central Powers victory. Germany was far more vulner
able in 1914 than she or the West realised. I could have shown the
Allies three points at which, had they struck, the enemy s armament

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 2O7

potential could have been utterly destroyed. But that would have
ruined the business built up over more than a century and nothing
would have been settled. The world would have been ripe for revolu
tion. Our policy is to contain the Central Powers, then to achieve
victory without permitting industrial chaos in Europe."

In other words, victory for the armament firms. When a French
pilot, M. Bossoutrot, lost his way in a storm and found himself over
Briey, he dropped his bombs on installations there. But there was no
decoration for him; instead he was punished on orders of the General

Staff.

* * * * *

Investigation of the extent of Soviet activities in Britain after the
war were conducted by Sir Basil Thomson, chief of the Special Branch
of Scotland Yard. Thomson, son of an Archbishop of York, had, after
an education at Eton and Oxford, entered the Colonial Service. His
remarkable career had embraced such diverse activities as Prime
Minister of Tonga, authorship of novels and plays, prison governor
and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But it was as
a brilliant, if ruthless, intelligence officer that he proved his real genius.
Due to his foresight a clean sweep of German agents in Britain was
made in August, 1914.

To maintain the necessary executive power vested in the police by
law, the Government decided that Thomson should continue in his
office as Assistant Commissioner, but be responsible only to the Home
Secretary. For more than a year this organisation, anomalous though
it may have been in certain respects, worked admirably, and Thomson
came to be regarded as an adviser to the Cabinet over a wide field of
subjects. But Lloyd George, who looked upon Thomson almost as a
personal adviser on intelligence matters; was apt to use the police
chiefs information for himself alone.

At this time the police forces were seething with discontent and rife
with corruption. Matters came to a head when the Police Union
balloted in favour of a strike. The real trouble was that many of the
police leaders at this time were themselves inefficient and corrupt.
Blackmail, graft and bribery existed at all levels in the London police
and were not wiped out until the arrival of Lord Trenchard years
later.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was General Horwood,
an unfortunate choice, for he was either unwilling or unable to stamp
out corruption. Thomson, who was a violent and outspoken critic of
Horwood and barely on speaking terms with his chief, insisted on
raising the whole question of police control with Lloyd George. He
pointed out that the Police Union was riddled with Bolshevik agents,
that its immediate aim was to approach members of the Triple Alliance
unions in the hope of forcing joint strike action for the reinstatement

208 THE MASK OF MERLIN

of a police constable who had been dismissed for circulating strike
propaganda among his comrades. Lloyd George urged Thomson not
to worry about " these trivial things".

Without warning, in November, 1921, the Home Secretary, Mr.
Shortt, sent for Thomson and told him that if he did not retire volun
tarily, he would receive a less generous pension and be summarily dis
missed. When he demanded a reason for such peremptory action and
asked to see the Prime Minister, he was told that no useful purpose
could be served by granting either request.

The manner of Thomson s dismissal angered his old intelligence
colleagues and in a debate in the House of Commons a storm raged
around the Home Secretary. Mr. Shortt was as uncommunicative as
possible. He refused to answer questions as to whether the resignation
had been preceded by consideration of the subject by the whole Cabinet,
nor would he say whether he had himself received instructions from
the Prime Minister to call for the resignation. The suggestion was
made in the House that Sir Basil Thomson had been sacrificed to
placate Labour opinion.

Thomson himself in his book, The Scene Changes, told how four young
Irishmen chalked up on the summer-house of Chequers, while LI. G.
was in residence, the words "Up Sinn Fein". They were arrested and
brought before Thomson, who, satisfied that this was nothing more
than a skylark, ticked them off and let them go. But Horwood, who
was responsible for the Prime Minister s safety, objected to this leniency
and reported the matter to LI. G. This, he thought, provided the
excuse that Lloyd George wanted for getting rid of Thomson. It is
true that the Premier regarded Thomson s weekly reports on the sub
versive activities of certain Labour leaders as exaggerated and he was
anxious to placate the Labour benches. But the real reason for wanting
Thomson out of the way was that, as Thomson himself afterwards
asserted, he knew too much.

Sir Basil in the course of his probes into Bolshevik activities had
discovered documents which incriminated servants of the Crown as
secret agents of Sir Basil Zaharoff with the knowledge of Lloyd George.
Thomson had certain suspects followed, and then learned that Zaha
roff, the man who had lavished presents on the Czar and his family,
had established links with the Bolsheviks, It was purely a temporary
arrangement by which Zaharoff sought to divert munitions supplies
intended for the White Russians so that they could be delivered to
Greece and certain Balkan countries for ultimate use against the
Turks. Zaharoff had by devious means done his utmost both in
London and Paris to call off the campaign against the Bolsheviks.
Not, of course, that he was pro-Communist, but simply that he wanted
the arms to carve an empire for Greece in the Balkans. Zaharoff knew
that if the White Russians won, they might agitate for Constantinople,

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS

as promised to them in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He wanted Con
stantinople for Greece and he had received an assurance from the
Bolsheviks that they would make no claim for this city.

During his sojourn at the Board of Trade, Lloyd George discovered
a promising young civil servant whose combination of bluntness and
subtlety appealed to him. His name was William Sutherland, a Scot
with a big voice, uncouth manners and a passion for outsize cigars and
good living.

Eyebrows were raised when LI. G. took Sutherland with him as
secretary to the Cabinet Committee on Supplies and Munitions in
1915. To the staider Liberals, Sutherland s name was anathema, but
Lloyd George insisted on his protege s outstanding ability and, as his
private secretary in 1917, Sutherland was made responsible for the
Prime Minister s relations with the Press and for political propaganda
on the domestic front.

"Bronco Bill", as Sutherland was known at Westminster, had no
scruples about putting out the most scurrilous rumours about Lloyd
George s enemies, these being disseminated not through the Press, but
by word of mouth through private agents in West End clubs. The
disgraceful stories about Asquith, Haig and Sir William Robertson
were largely engineered and invented by Sutherland.

As a manipulator of the Press he was the first of his kind and ex
tremely successful. One of his innovations was the broadsheet Future,
which was issued from the Press Bureau at No. 10. In the Daily Mail
at a time when the Northcliffe-Lloyd George honeymoon had ended
in 1919, a correspondent described in satirical vein how Sutherland
worked. "Each year he seeks to improve his methods of leg-pulling
the Press. This is rendered necessary by the fact that the business of
advertising the Premier becomes ever more difficult.

"Sir William s (by then Sutherland was a knight) modus Vivendi is
simplicity itself, which partly accounts for his success. He receives all
Press callers . . . these divide themselves into three categories: repre
sentatives of the sycophantic and willingly gullible Press; the friendly
Press and the critical Press.

"In regard to the third lot he adopts the role of candid friend. At
the same time he appealingly points out the tremendous difficulties
with which the Premier is meeting and endeavours to draw for the
editors the picture of a good and guileless man struggling bravely with
adversity.

"Such is the insidious influence of this well-trained propagandist s
conversation that members of the third category have constantly to
be on their guard lest they fall an easy prey. Even the toughest-
skinned journalist has been known to have his leg pulled by Sutherland."

210 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Whenever LL G. was in difficulties he always sent for Sutherland.
Once he urgently required his presence in Paris during the Peace
Conference, and the Prime Minister s Press agent had to sort out the
bad impression which Lloyd George had made on American and
French newspapermen.

Often there was complete confusion among correspondents as to
which was the predominant mind in some of the extraordinary stories
that came from Downing Street, The hand behind them might be
that of Lloyd George, but the nuances and phrasing were undoubtedly
those of Sutherland. As LL G. changed his mind several times a day
Sutherland often had to do some furious somersaulting. He would
put out a rumour in the morning and blandly be the first to deny it
when it was published that evening. Yet, "At a fair computation,"
said the Daily Mail, "Sir William Sutherland is worth 10,000 a year
to his master" which, at this time, would have been double the
Premier s own salary.

Sutherland was the master-mind of all the Prime Minister s "go-
betweens", the chief channel of information from all quarters. He had
informants inside the Metropolitan Police and had a great deal to do
with the building up of the notorious Lloyd George Personal Fund.
Sutherland, as will be shown later, was the direct intermediary between
Lloyd George and Maundy Gregory in connection with the latter s
role as pedlar of honours.

In 1919 Sutherland was created a K.C.B. and also a Commander
of the Order of Leopold, the latter being a sign of Gregory s inter
vention in the honours field: it was a decoration which he unfailingly
obtained for his friends. At the "Coupon Election" Sutherland was
given a candidature for Argyllshire, a seat which he held as Coalition
Liberal M.P. until October, 1924. From 1920 to 1922 he was a Privy
Councillor and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. At Westminster,
where for a time he was Coalition Whip, he used his influence in the
field of honours with remarkable effect for the Lloyd George Fund.

Another "go-between", but one who never accepted a Coalition
"coupon", was Horatio Bottomley, M.P. Bottomley was in many
ways symbolical of the Lloyd Georgian era; all the attributes and
defects of this period were exemplified in this podgy, paunchy man
with his mixture of demagogy and crooked finance, of bombastic,
hollow patriotism and cynical disregard for the decencies of democratic
government.

Lloyd George had, wrote Thomas Jones, "an insatiable curiosity for
charlatans like Jabez Balfour and Horatio Bottomley", and Bottom-
ley s biographer, Julian Symons, tells us: "Lloyd George respected his
(Bottomley s) quick wit and liked his impudence." If Lloyd George

GO-BETWEENS IN THE SHADOWS 211

wanted a particularly obnoxious story about the defects of some
Liberal minister published and nobody else would print it, it was to
Bottomley he turned.

When there was trouble at a munitions factory Lloyd George would
always say: "Send for Bottomley. He ll talk them out of trouble/
The relationship of these two men, though not close and conducted
by go-betweens, dated back to about 1910 when Bottomley was M.P.
for South Hackney. Even as early as 1912 Bottomley asserted in his
magazine, John Bull, that Asquith would go to the House of Lords
and that Lloyd George would become Premier. Each man saw in the
other a glimpse of his own devious character.

Lloyd George regarded Bottomley as a dangerous enemy but a useful
ally. When mutiny occurred in sections of the Army in 1919, Bottomley
was the only man to whom the troops would listen. But his big chance
was missed early in 1918 when he was invited to Downing Street to
meet Lloyd George and Carson. Bottomley had a new plan for beating
the Germans, a propaganda gambit with some merits. But he over
played his hand : he demanded that LI. G. should make him Director
of War Propaganda. That was an error of judgment which made
LI. G. pause. He had been about to offer Bottomley an Under-
Secretaryship, but he changed his mind in the face of the latter s
demand.

After the war Bottomley conceived the idea of forming a club so
that the "little man and the little woman" could share in the Victory
Bonds scheme by subscribing smaller sums than the bond value of
4. y. and with the accumulated amount Bottomley would buy Victory
Bonds. The outcome for the "little man and woman" was disastrous,
and in 1922 Bottomley was convicted of the fraudulent conversion of
more than 250,000 of moneys received by him from the public for
investment in the Government Victory Loan.

"FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GREECE

A TEAR"

" Tis something in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fetter d race,
To feel at least a patriot s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush for Greece a tear."

Lord Byron

Byron, who had sufficient detachment to turn the waxen-hot material
of romantic love into cool, classic columns of marble verse, became a
stuttering, love-sick swain where Greece was concerned. He sym
bolised that uncritical passion for Hellenic ideals which spasmodically
during the past 150 years has coloured and permeated the British
political outlook towards Greece.

Yeats once said that the Irish problem could "be solved tomorrow,
if only the English would believe in fairies". Yet the Celtic pixies
were rejected as a sign of Irish immaturity, while the Hellenic fairies
were raised to the status of goddesses. The classicists of England have
not been content to inspire a deep sense of gratitude for Hellenism, but
have sought to mislead us into viewing an unstable nation of merchant
adventurers and political buccaneers as the arbiters and defenders of
liberal democracy. When Liberalism followed the pipes of Pan, and
Gladstone s love of Homer made him the greatest Hellenist of them all,
that hard-headed school of Mancunian Liberals began to realise there
was sound commercial sense in pursuing a pro-Greek policy. This,
coming from the greatest power of the nineteenth century, not un
naturally flattered Greece into believing she had an imperialist future
as well as a past.

So the aesthetes and classicists joined forces with the cotton and
corn exporters. Thanks to this and to the wars between the great
powers between 1776 and 1815 the Greeks had become the chief
merchandise carriers of the Mediterranean and even monopolised the
Black Sea trade. Achieving financial dominance out of all proportion
to her status as a nation, Greece nevertheless kept her people on the
lowest standard of living in the whole of Europe. She became a prime

"FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GREECE A TEAR" 213

example of how private economic adventuring cannot provide national
prosperity.

The tentacles of the Greek merchants and bankers extended to
Britain, France, Italy, Austria, Turkey and Russia. Italian shipping
was largely in Greek hands, Athens had a virtual monopoly of the
grain trade in the Black Sea. Cobden s pro-Hellenism can be traced
to his interest in the exchange of calico for corn; the mid-nineteenth
century Liberals backed Greek nationalism largely in the interests of
the Baltic Corn Exchange. There was a commercial alliance of the
Gladstones of Liverpool, the Rallis of Chios, the Benachis and Rodo-
canachis of the Nile Valley cotton fields.

It can be argued that British policy towards Greece brought great
practical results between 1900 and 1914. The Greeks played a useful
part in bringing about the Entente Cordiale. But the Entente s only
lasting monument was the Franco-British alliance, and in 1919-22
this was seriously impaired by the pro-Greek policy of the Lloyd George
Government.

Greece, or rather the group of merchant adventurers who repre
sented her, was clearly working for a form of economic imperialism a
hundred years ago. As long as Greece remained a vassal to Western
European capitalism, Greek nationalism was not mentioned as such,
but the domination of the Balkans was the ultimate aim. The position
at the beginning of the First World War was that Greece, despite the
prosperity of her merchant-bankers, was short of funds. She had been
exhausted by a series of wars, even though Zaharoff was said to have
subsidised the Greek Government to the extent of 20,000 a month
when he was equipping the Balkan armies for their onslaught against
the Ottoman Empire. But neither Venizelos, the architect of Greek
nationalism, nor his ally, Zaharoff, lost sight of the chance that World
War I offered them eventually a chance to recoup their losses and win
even greater domination.

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
WTiere Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set."

The sun might have set, but Greece from 1910-22 remained the
enfant terrible of the Near East, the beguiler of the West and the
bedeviller of international politics.

The British Foreign Office never trusted Venizelos, whom they
regarded as sly, crafty and self-seeking, whereas Lloyd George de-

214 THE MASK OF MERLIN

veloped a real affection for the Cretan. In the beginning Lloyd
George s feelings about Greece were purely sentimental and based on
the prospect of a small and mountainous country wishing to be united
with its brethren across the borders. He had an affinity for mountain
races like the Greeks and Albanians. But more personal influences
were to carry greater weight in his policy towards Greece. His interest
in that country had been stimulated by Zaharoff and by Domini, Lady
Crosfield, the Greek wife of Sir Arthur Crosfield, Liberal M.P. for
Warrington. He admired the business acumen of the cotton merchants
whom he regarded as Britain s best allies in Egypt, and his high
opinion of Venizelos may be judged by the fact that he once described
that statesman as the " Lloyd George of Greece".

At the end of the war Venizelos and Zaharoff were united in one
aim the spread of Greek influence in Europe and Asia and the
creation of a Greek empire in the Near East. In gaharoff: the Armaments
King, Robert Neumann wrote: "Through Lloyd George, Zaharoff had
the same influence with the British Government as he used to have
with the French." This was a theme constantly echoed in the French
Press in the early twenties: "France once again has become the shield
of Islam. And if England has reckoned up the price which it will have
to pay from India to Egypt for a policy of Zaharoff, it will no doubt
realise that it must again conclude peace with Islam. Then it can
count on our good services." 1

At a secret meeting in his Paris house during the Peace Conference,
Zaharoff told Lloyd George he had made preliminary arrangements
for valuable concessions in the Middle East to British firms. The first
of these was for industrial development in Rumania, which Sir Basil,
as representative of Vickers and a close friend of Queen Marie, had
obtained. The second was a concession granted to the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company to exploit petroleum wells in Greek Macedonia.

Well might M. Poincare have talked about "the stink of oil". Lloyd
George was delighted with the news Zaharoff gave him and extracted
a further promise that British firms should receive preferential treat
ment from King Constantine s Government in and around the "free"
town of Smyrna. By this means Zaharoff won from Lloyd George a
promise of full backing for any claims Greece might wish to make:
it amounted to a blank cheque for the armaments agent.

Once he was embroiled with Zaharoff, Lloyd George was auto
matically in trouble with the French, with whom the arms magnate
was now on the worst possible terms largely through his own double-
dealing. One of the British Premier s first aims was to sabotage the
Sykes-Picot plan, to which Zaharoff, as we have seen, strongly objected,
by provoking a rupture with France. This secret agreement of May,

1 Senator Henri de Jouvenel in Lt Mabin.

"FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GRACE A TEAR" 215

1916, shared out the territories of the then unconquered Turks among
the powers of the Entente. Russia was to have the Dardanelles, Con
stantinople and a large area around Erzerum and Trebizond. Britain
was to have the vilayets of Basra and Baghdad; France was to have
Cicilia, a large part of Upper Mesopotamia and the coastal regions
of Syria, including Alexandretta, down to a point near Acre, with
Mosul included. Italy and not Greece was to have Smyrna and
some of Southern Anatolia. Palestine was to be a condominium of
Britain, France and Russia. The concessions to the Italians were
added later because the original agreement had been concluded with
out their knowledge which, not unnaturally, drew from them angry
protests. Nothing was promised to Belgium, Montenegro or Serbia.

It was the Bolsheviks who upset this secret "package" agreement by
publishing details of it after they had discovered a copy of the terms
in the archives of the Czarist Government. The Sykes-Picot Agreement
has been severely criticised as an example of the trouble caused for
posterity by secret diplomacy. It is easy to find fault with what was
a wartime expedient, but at least it had the merits of aiming chiefly
to preserve intact the facade of the Triple Alliance, while the proposal
for condominium over Palestine showed more foresight than any
similar plan advocated after the war.

Lord Gurzon, Foreign Secretary in the Coalition Government of
1918-22, described the Sykes-Picot Agreement as "A sort of fancy
sketch to suit a situation that had not arisen and which it was thought
extremely unlikely would ever arise." Those who knew the language
Curzon normally used could hardly doubt that the Foreign Secretary
was hastily improvising an alibi for his Prime Minister. For Lloyd
George s purpose, which his Foreign Secretary s statement was meant
to obscure, was to put the blame on the Liberal Foreign Secretary,
Grey, who authorised the agreement, and to seek some means of
avoiding condominium in Palestine. In other words, LI. G. wanted to
keep Palestine for Britain. Sweet words for Jewry were merely meant
to disguise this intention, or, to put the best construction on them, to
win Jewish approval. Yet J. T. Davies insisted on hailing LI. G. as a
"twentieth-century Good Samaritan championing the Zionist
cause".

Asquith, in his Memories and Reflections, summed up the position by say
ing that Lloyd George, "who did not care a damn for the Jews, or their
past or their future, felt it would be an outrage to let the Holy Places
pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic
France". LI. G., though he had several Jewish friends, had often been
known to express anti-Semitic views and had no real interest in a
National Home for Jewry. Indeed the Prime Minister s Jewish friends
were mainly those who were anti-Zionist, like Sir Charles Henry and
Mr. Lionel de Rothschild. Lord Beaverbrook records that Sir Charles

2l6 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Henry " reported that in an interview the Prime Minister had given
his assent to the anti-Zionist view," that is, those opposed to the idea
of a National Home for the Jews.

It was Sir Herbert Samuel who, first of all, argued the case for
Britain taking over Palestine as a protectorate* But Samuel was not
a fanatical Zionist and he did not intend his idea to be developed in
quite the manner that Balfour, a converted pro-Zionist, conceived in
his famous Declaration of 1917. Condominium for Palestine might
well have been the best temporary solution for that territory if Russia
had still been a member of the Entente. In any event, there was a
strong argument for setting up an interim Anglo-French condominium.
But Lloyd George, intent on preventing any risk of such a move, had
urged Allenby to advance on Damascus and Aleppo, militarily a rash
idea before the Hejaz railway forces had been put down.

So from the autumn of 1918, through the various stages of the
Peace Conference, and later at Genoa, Lloyd George s Middle and
Near East policy developed piecemeal. First, to thwart the French
and keep them out of Palestine; second, to gain control of Middle
East oil; third, to support Greek merchant adventurers; and fourth,
to create new dominions for Britain in the Arab territories.

The Arabian adventure was complementary to the Greek adventure ;
indeed, Lloyd George believed that the latter would indirectly assist
the furtherance of the former. Just as Zaharoff was the all-important
figure in the Greek policy, so T. E. Lawrence, the leader of the Arab
revolt against the Turks, was the pawn in his schemes for aggrandise
ment in Arabia. The relations between LI. G. and Lawrence are of
special interest in that they serve as an example of the insincerity and
vanity of both men. Each possessed the devious propensities of a certain
type of Welsh mind ; each had in his make-up an element of humbug.
Lloyd George saw the defects of Lawrence much more quickly than
the easily flattered Lawrence realised those of the Premier. What LI. G.
appreciated was the possibility of exploiting the romantic legend which
had been built up around Lawrence s name, largely, of course, by
Lawrence. He was anxious for the Government to gain some kudos
from this legend and to project this self-appointed crusader as an
instrument of policy in the Arab territories. So each man fawned on
the other, LL G. praising Lawrence s "clear gifts of exposition",
while Lawrence was shrewd enough to flatter the Premier by telling
him exactly what he thought he wanted to know.

Nobody could be a bigger liar than Lawrence when it suited his
purpose. He knew that Lloyd George was a Francophobe, and he
played on this by discrediting the French, and assured the Prime
Minister that France was plotting to destroy British influence in the
Middle East. This was a little too much even for Lloyd George to
swallow; he told Lawrence that he very much doubted if France would

"FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GRACE A TEAR" 217

dare to do this, but encouraged him to back Feisal in his claim to
Syria "just to throw a spanner in the French works".

Lawrence vacillated between vague plans for imperialist expansion
and equally obscure proposals for bettering the life of the Arabs. The
Prime Minister was anxious to take advantage of any ideas that offered
Britain scope for expansion. He seized on a phrase of Lawrence s as a
news editor will whip a sentence out of a message and make it a head
line "Britain s first brown dominions." Here was an imaginative
proposal, thought the Premier, to show the British public that the
Coalition Government was really boosting British prestige in the
Middle East. Here was the chance to add to the Empire, to build a
British bloc in the vital oil areas and keep down French influence.
By cunningly implying that some of these areas would have dominion
status he could throw a sop to those who talked about the self-deter
mination of native peoples.

No time was to be lost. First, the minor intelligence agent must be
built up into a national myth. "Give Lawrence the maximum of
publicity,* he told Sutherland. Lawrence s massacres of sleeping Turks
by his gangs of Bedouin killers must be represented as gallant epics of
war. Lawrence needed little bidding to play the part. As a virulent
Turkophobe he fitted in perfectly with LI. G. s plans for supporting
the Greeks; as a pro-Arabist and anti-French agitator he was exactly
the man the Prime Minister required. Lloyd George gave enthusiastic
support to Lowell Thomas s lectures on Lawrence and the Arab revolt.

Statesmen do not take infinite pains over so pathetic a crank as
Lawrence unless there are good reasons to fear him. When Lawrence,
always masochistically-minded, secretly enlisted in the ranks of the
R.A.F. under another name, he was protected by all manner of in
structions from on high. His machinations against the French during
Lloyd George s regime did immense harm to Anglo-French relations,
and for years he was able to exercise a degree of influence in high circles
in Britain out of all proportion to his status, even threatening authority
with impunity. Somewhere a corpse was buried and Lawrence knew what
it was: the fbll story of the anti-French intrigues and double-dealings
with the Arabs.

With the utmost cynicism Lloyd George agreed to set up a com
mission of inquiry into the questions of Palestine, Iraq and Syria. The
Commission was packed with the type of person who could hardly fail
to give the British Premier the answers he wanted: it included two
anti-French British missionaries and was accompanied by Allenby s
military secretary. The mission did not even visit Baghdad and Mosul;
it confined itself to finding excuses for not granting a French mandate
for Syria. Many of the findings of the Commission were irrelevant,
but the irrelevancies were intended to show up the French in the
worst possible light. "French education," stated their report, was

2l8 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"superficial" and "inferior in character-building to the Anglo-
Saxon". French education led to knowledge of "that kind of French
literature which is irreligious and immoral".

Mrs. Grundy might well have written this report which reeked of
hypocrisy and puritanism. It is obvious that the Moslem witnesses
were asked leading questions with the object of getting them to make
replies unfavourable to the French. Thus one learns that when Moslem
women receive a French education, "they tend to become uncon
trollable" whether that meant sexually, or from the viewpoint of
their lords and masters, was not made clear.

Lloyd George threw the blame for failure to deal promptly with the
Syrian question on Milner, whom, he said, was "in a state of nervous
lassitude". When Milner went to Paris to discuss Syria he was mys
teriously recalled to London "on urgent colonial business" before the
talks started. Did LI. G. recall Milner on some flimsy pretext merely
to keep him out of the way, knowing that Milner did not see eye to eye
with him in his dealings with the French? Milner may have had his
faults; he was not a bold executive, but he was a thoroughly capable
administrator. As to the allegations of "nervous lassitude", he later
dealt in a most competent fashion with a revolt against the British in

Egypt-
it is illuminating to see what Milner himself wrote on March 8, 1919.
"Although I am aware that I have almost every other Government
authority, military or diplomatic, against me, I am totally opposed
to the idea of trying to diddle the French out of Syria." Lloyd George
coolly quoted this damning comment in The Truth About the Peace
Treaties^ and brushed it airily aside. He merely argued that there was
no intrigue against the French in Syria.

Many Tories were becoming acutely distressed at the growing
estrangement between Britain and France. They noted that whereas
Lloyd George had produced no coherent economic policy and had
allowed a boom year in 1919 to turn into a slump and mass unemploy
ment, in France, under the orthodox but brilliant financial leadership
of M. Poincare, stability was returning.

Lloyd George, who had become so impressed by Venizelos, failed
to notice the outstanding leadership of Mustapha Kemal Pasha over
the Turkish Nationalists. Had he sought Kemal Pasha as an ally,
British influence not only in the Middle East but throughout the
Moslem world might have been greater. The pro-Greek policy in no
way helped to forge the bonds of Empire to which he paid lip service.

The British Premier was, in fact, "going it alone". Alone with
Zaharoff and Venizelos. Curzon had the gravest doubts about his
chiefs policy and at times was actually aiming at coming to a settlement

FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GRACE A TEAR 2IQ

with the Turks. Even Sir Henry Wilson, some little time before
he was assassinated, warned his old ally of the war days: "Mr. Lloyd
George has put his money on the wrong horse. We shall never get
peace in Palestine or Mesopotamia, or Egypt or India, until we make
love to the Turks. It may be very immoral, or it may not. It is a fact.
Can anyone tell me why Mr. Lloyd George backed the Greeks? I
know it was not upon the advice of Curzon, or the British Ambassador
in Constantinople, or Lord Reading. I was at the Quai d Orsay when
Lloyd George gave Smyrna to the Greeks and I had to arrange for
troops to go there. Why did Lloyd George back them? Was it to please
Zaharoff, or was it because Venizelos told him that the Greeks were so
prolific that they would rebuild the Near East in two or three years?*

Meanwhile Zaharoff recklessly pursued his ideal of a Greek Empire.
He backed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, with which, in the Middle
East, he worked in close conjunction, and disputed American claims
to the market in this area. The road was wide open for a free-for-all
scramble by British capitalist enterprises. The British Trade Cor
poration took over the National Bank of Turkey and set up the Levant
Company to develop trade in the area. The Federation of British
Industries, a body which in the thirties was to show marked favouritism
to Hitler Germany, spread its tentacles far and wide, nominating its
first trade commissioner to Athens. It is not surprising that after 1945
U.S. oil interests determined to get their own back and thwart the
British in the Middle East.

The worst features of Britain s failure to make peace with Turkey
was that it exacerbated Moslem feelings throughout the Empire. In
India it produced something that could scarcely have happened before
an alliance of Hindus and Moslems in a civil disobedience campaign.

"Almost the only support on the side of the victors that Turkey
could muster was Indian," wrote the late Aga Khan in his Memoirs.
"The greater part of Muslim interest in India in the fate of Turkey
was natural and spontaneous and there was a considerable element of
sincere non- Muslim agitation, the object of which, apart from the
natural revolt of any organised Asiatic body against the idea of Euro
pean imperialism, was further to consolidate and strengthen Indian
nationalism in its struggle against the British."

Gandhi, wily politician that he was beneath his mask of piety,
immediately capitalised this feeling and made Lloyd George s anti-
Turkish policy an excuse for a campaign of agitation that swept across
the whole of India. Edwin Montagu, then Secretary of State for India,
saw the danger signals and made an emphatic protest against the plans
for partitioning Turkey. It is interesting to note that Arthur Balfour,
the fastidious Gentile aristocrat, was devoted to Zionism and violently
anti-Turk, while Edwin Montagu, a Jew, was warmly sympathetic to
the Islamic cause. Of such incongruities is history made.

22O THE MASK OF MERLIN

Indeed Montagu felt so strongly on this question that, without
Cabinet authority, he published a telegram from the Viceroy, Lord
Reading, recommending the evacuation of Constantinople, and, in
effect, a pro-Turkish policy. Montagu was immediately sacked and
censured by the Prime Minister for ignoring the doctrine of Cabinet
responsibility.

"Cabinet responsibility is a joke," said Montagu. "Having con
nived at its disappearance, the Prime Minister now brings it out at a
convenient moment and makes me its victim,"

The Aga Khan went as member of an Indian delegation to see
Lloyd George. "But we realised our mission was doomed to failure,"
he wrote, "for meanwhile the Turkish Treaty was being prepared,
with strangely little regard for the realities which, within a few years,
were to shape the Near East anew. The unfortunate Sultan was under
rigorous supervision, a solitary and helpless prisoner in Constantinople.
Turkish, Arab and Greek deputations were hurrying backwards and
forwards between the Mediterranean and London. Sometimes their
arguments were listened to; often they were not. The Treaty of Sevres
was to be an imposed not a negotiated treaty."

By this time Lloyd George was one hundred per cent committed to
Zaharoff s reckless plans. At one moment he promised Constantinople
to the Greeks; then he retracted. But Zaharoff would not let him re
treat too far; he had bargained for Britain and won favours for British
capitalists and he was determined to demand something in return from
Britain. He told Lloyd George:

"I want a free hand to direct matters in the Middle East, The
crisis is near. I want you to support every Greek move against the
Turks from now on."

Then one day Lloyd George came to see him. "They tell me it is
your birthday today," said LL G. casually. "I should like to give you
a present that will make you really happy. So go along and tell your
friend Venizelos that I make you a present of Asia Minor."

It was probably one of the happiest days of Zaharoff *s life, but it
was a birthday present that was to cost Greece a hundred thousand
lives and Zaharoff himself a loss of some millions of pounds.

Even at this juncture ZaharofF was not entirely satisfied. He re
minded LI. G. that despite the fact that Greece had rejected the offer
of Cyprus by Britain early in World War I, Greek aspirations still
extended to this island. Zaharoff had pressed Lloyd George for some
few years on this subject, but so far all he had obtained from him was
a guarded statement by the British Premier in a letter to the Arch
bishop of Cyprus in November, 1919, that "the wishes of the inhabitants
of Cyprus for union with Greece will be taken into a most careful and
sympathetic consideration by the Government when they consider its
future". Without consulting his colleagues, LL G. agreed to cede

"FOR GREEKS A BLUSH, FOR GRACE A TEAR** 221

Cyprus "as soon as the Turkish business was settled and at the same
time that Italy ceded Rhodes to Greece",

This fatal promise marked the beginning of the long and bitter
Enosis campaign for the cession of Cyprus and which, on the basis of
Lloyd George s promise, was vigorously renewed in 1947 when Greece
and Italy made peace with the cession of Rhodes as part of the bargain.
The Prime Minister s colleagues vigorously disagreed with the assurance
he had made of his own accord, and the next Government took ad
vantage of Turkey s cession of all rights to the island by making it a
Crown colony.

The gift of Asia Minor to Greece made Italy the potential enemy of
Britain for the first time in modern history. In May, 1919, the Greeks
occupied Smyrna with the tacit approval of the "Big Four". For once
Lloyd George bulldozed through French, American and Italian
opposition, ruthlessly forcing his own decisions without a thought for
the diplomatic consequences, and, against the advice of British and
French military experts, drew up a treaty which put Smyrna and
Eastern Thrace under Greek control and internationalised Constan
tinople and the Straits.

"You will live to regret this crazy blunder," Poincare warned LL G.
"When you incorporated this plan in the Treaty of Sevres you made
certain that you had built something as fragile as Sevres porcelain.
Within a few years it will be smashed to little pieces/

17
THE END OF THE COALITION

"The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds/*

J. Shirk?

The European situation changed swiftly when Poincare" became
Premier of France after the fall of Briand. Poincare* was a naturally
suspicious man; it was perhaps his major defect and due to an in
sularity of outlook which, while not preventing him from being remark
ably far-sighted in his summing-up of foreign problems, impeded
seriously his dealings with the statesmen of other nations. Poincare
was insistent that the Treaty of Versailles must be enforced to the last
full stop and against any concessions to Germany or Russia, appre
ciating more than Lloyd George the dangers of a remilitarized Germany
unless the Allies stood firmly together.

Two men more different in temperament and mental processes than
Lloyd George and Poincare would have been hard to find in political
circles. Each was so much the antithesis of the other that a mutual
antagonism and irritation was inevitable. LI. G. had charm, whereas
Poincare was to many people so lacking in that quality that he appeared
repulsive. By now the British Prime Minister realised that he could
not continue to carry on diplomacy by a mixture of charm and bullying.
Charm alone carried no weight at all with Poincare: if anything it
repelled him, Nevertheless, realising the seriousness of the rift with
France, LL G. went to Paris to try to win over the French Premier,
making him an offer of full naval and military support to France in
the event of any future aggression by Germany. "You make this
suggestion rather late in the day, * snapped Poincare\ "Why could it
not have been made eighteen months ago? I am not convinced that
this proposal is made in good faith. Have you discussed it with your
Cabinet colleagues?"

The atmosphere of the talks was stormy from the outset. Poincari
was foolishly hostile and unyielding and he made no secret of his
mistrust of Lloyd George personally. LI. G., on the other hand, seems
to have made a real effort at last to dispel the tension between the
two countries. He tried to suggest to Poincarc that this offer had been
"agreed in principle a year before", but that there had been so much
other work to occupy his mind in the meantime.

THE END OF THE COALITION 223

"More important work than Anglo-French solidarity?" asked the
Frenchman. "My information is that you have not discussed it with
your Cabinet. How can I take you seriously on so serious a matter
as this when you do not trust your judgment to submit it to your
colleagues?

The talks continued in this acrimonious vein. The offer of a pact,
argued the French Premier, must be clear and detailed. Where were
the details? He insisted that there must be a Military Convention
with specific undertakings about the number of troops, divisions and
equipment which Britain would furnish in such an emergency. Britain
had not even got conscription; how could she underwrite such flimsy
proposals?

LL G. had made a verbal offer of a security pact with France,
guaranteeing that Britain would come to her aid, during Briand s
premiership, but Briand had been defeated shortly afterwards. Now
he repeated this offer, but Poincare demanded it should be "in writing,
in detail and with complete sets of figures ". But LL G. was not pre
pared to agree to a Military Convention with precise details: how
could he when, on the evidence of Dr. Thomas Jones, he was acting
in advance of Cabinet approval already, evidence which justified
Poincare s taunt.

Poincare s caution amounted to an exasperating aberration to
foreigners when subjects concerning the security of France were under
discussion. His orderly mind irritated Lloyd George. It was the battle
of the unbriefed, fiery advocate, prepared to compromise, against the
lawyer who disliked oratory and stuck rigidly to his brief. If Poincare
lacked the wit and sparkle of the Welshman, he made up for it by
devastating repartee and a grasp of facts and figures that were the
product of a mind resembling a filing cabinet.

Somewhat pompously, Mr. Malcolm Thomson, Lloyd George s
official biographer, commented on these discussions: "The British do
not measure out their military contributions by the pennyworth when
their word is pledged, or their honour and national interests are in
volved in a struggle. The offer of a guarantee lapsed."

But the offer should never have been allowed to lapse. Poincar^
certainly exacerbated the situation by his intransigence, but he was
acting in the true, if rather narrow, interests of his country. A vaguely
worded guarantee to France would have been the worst possible
result for both nations. In any event why did not Lloyd George agree
to consult his Cabinet colleagues and put forward a new and more
detailed plan? Was the answer that some of his colleagues particu
larly the provincially insular Bonar Law, with a phobia about any
kind of commitment and a dislike of making up his own mind would
not have agreed to anything so precise? Wickham Steed wrote at the
time that Lloyd George had informed M. Barthou, the French Foreign

224 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Minister, that "British opinion was hostile to France and his advisers,
especially Lord Birkenhead, had been constantly advising him to break
with France". This statement was repudiated by the Prime Minister
and by Sir Austen Chamberlain, and Mr. Frank Owen explains that
Wickharn Steed s "informants had mixed up two interviews, one
between Lloyd George and Barthou and another between him and
Philippe Millet, a French journalist . . . though the general sense of
what Lloyd George said was perhaps not so very far different from
Steed s version". Here, at least, appears powerful confirmation of the
irresponsibility of Lloyd George in his interview to foreign Press men
and that anti-French attitude which continually ruined relations with
Paris and made him so deeply mistrusted there.

After World War II, Britain very nearly made the same mistake
again until, in the face of far worse difficulties in France than in
1919-22, Sir Anthony Eden made his famous categorical pledge to
maintain British troops on the Continent for fifty years at the Con
ference of London in 1954.

The Treaty of Versailles was, perhaps, the best compromise that
could be reached in so short a time after the war. But it need not and
should not have been rushed through so quickly. Had it been carried
out to the letter, as the French wanted, had Britain given something
more than lip service to the League of Nations, it might have formed the
basis for a more comprehensive treaty later on. Lloyd George was right
in his belated demand that Russia and Germany should not be treated
as outsiders, but France was also right in insisting that they should
not be admitted into the counsels of nations until adequate guarantees
had been worked out. The divergence of views among the Allies when
the Treaty of Versailles was signed must inevitably have forced it to
be replaced by something more durable unless chaos was to intervene.
After World War I the French insisted that the placating of American
opinion was relatively unimportant as they were convinced that the
Americans would discard Wilson and repudiate the League. The view
was realistic as it happened, but the attitude was short-sighted. What
was more serious was the rift between France and Britain caused by a
remorseless logic and a deep mistrust on the part of France, and a
fickle policy on the part of her neighbour across the Channel for trying
to be all things to all nations. Thus was the good work of Lansdowne
and Grey ruined, enabling later on such poisoners of Anglo-French
relations as Laval, Darlan and Beat to rise to power.

Maynard Keynes, witty, skittish, donnish and quixotic, became the
symbol of that power without responsibility which has been the curse
of modern economists. Already headlong in pursuit of his dream to
make inflation respectable and to cure unemployment by an orgy of
spending, he drew a grossly exaggerated picture of the economic con
sequences of the peace. His criticisms of the Treaty s financial aspects

The Irish rebellion:
a street barricade
in Dublin.

Topix Picture Service

Michael Collins
addressing a
meeting.

Radio Tim.es Hnltom
Picture Library

Keystone

A typical oratorical pose.

THE END OF THE COALITION 225

right as far as they went were extended into a general attack on the
whole settlement. His arguments were used by the banker-industrialists
to pump funds into German industry and so bring about a new arma
ments race, while the pacifist-economists and politicians distorted them
into a plea for excusing German rearmament by blaming it on
Versailles.

Versailles provided a glimmer of hope, it showed far away a torch
of reason and justice, but none grasped the chance to reach it because
in truth the statesmen knew, even though they did not admit it, that
World War I was never finished off. For Germany it was a war that
need never have been lost and therefore one to be started again as
soon as possible; for France there was the deep and abiding fear of
yet another holocaust, a belief that Europe would continue in a state
of war unless she put a ring of satellite states around Germany; in
Italy there was disillusionment and a feeling that she had lost as a
victor where the neutrals had gained much; in Russia there was an
unmistakable desire to seize every opportunity to weaken the hated
capitalist nations of the West. At Versailles, Cannes and Genoa enough
was said and done by cynical statesmen to ensure that war would
flare up again. No single statesman, except Wilson, gave a lead in
mobilising the widespread pacifist sentiment into a tremendous moral
force which, through the League, could have spoken "nation unto
nation" far more effectively than the self-appointed doyens of the
clenched fist.

Only politically immature Soviet Russia seems to have shown any
real foresight or diplomatic skill during this period. Russia, by Marxist
tactics in her foreign policy, achieved an accord with the Germans
to the anger of the Allies. Czarist Russia, with unconcealed expan
sionist aims, had claimed Constantinople as her prize when victory
came. Soviet Russia, having withdrawn from the war, could not, of
course, possibly make any such claim. So she did better: she wisely
and categorically renounced it. It is sometimes assumed that Turkey
and Russia are natural enemies and must always be so, yet on three
occasions in the nineteenth century events forced them into alliance
in 1800, against Napoleon, in 1833, against Mohamed Ali, and in
1849, w ken the two countries jointly occupied the Danubian prin
cipalities.

In 1921 France realised what Lloyd George ignored the intrin
sically Western character of Turkish civilisation. As results showed,
the Europeanisation of Turkey by Kemal was really the culmination
of a long-cherished national aspiration. So the French decided to
answer British chicanery with an even more ruthless chicanery of their
own. It was understandable. Double-crossed for the past three years,

226 THE MASK OF MERLIN

thwarted in almost every move she made, threatened with the prospect
of a new war in the Middle and Near East, France had little alter
native but to fight Lloyd George in the only manner which he seemed
to understand. France had powerful interests, commercial and
financial, in Turkey, which she was determined not to lose. Turkey,
argued France, must stay strong and stable, so secretly she came to
an agreement which led to her selling arms to the Turks and confirming
that Constantinople should be left in Turkish hands. This French secret
intervention on the Turkish side coincided with the handing over to
Greece of most of Turkey-in-Europe except Constantinople and
Western Asia Minor. But the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified.
Poincare s prophecy came true.

Kemal Ataturk proved himself a statesman as well as a general of
no ordinary calibre. He had set up a provisional capital at Angora
(now Ankara) and reformed and re-equipped the Turkish army, while
a secret understanding with Russia enabled him confidently to face
the future without a threat from that direction.

Venizelos s hour of triumph was brief. He was defeated in his
country s General Election in November, 1920. Back into power came
King Constantine who continued the campaign in Anatolia with Lloyd
George s secret encouragement. When the Greeks were defeated at
the Battle of Sakbaria, the ultimate issue was not in doubt. On August
26, 1922, Mustapha Kemal attacked and destroyed their columns.
The Greek army dissolved into rebellious mobs with the Turkish
cavalry hard at their heels. By September 9, Mustapha Kemal
occupied Smyrna and drove the Greeks across the Straits into Europe.
The town was enveloped in flames.

There have been many accounts of these actions, many of which
have portrayed the raping, looting Turks pursuing the Greeks in a
frenzy of blood lust. It is therefore worth noting that a close associate
of Lloyd George, Viscount St, Davids, delivered a striking indictment
of Greek conduct at this time. Speaking at the half-yearly meeting of
the Ottoman Railway Company, which ran from Smyrna to Aidin,
he said that the Greeks "burned every Turkish village they saw.
They robbed individual Turks, and when these resisted they killed
them, and they did all this nowhere near the front and without military
necessity. They did it out of sheer malice. Our reports are that it was
done systematically by regular troops under orders.

"The Greeks took from Smyrna a number of leading Turks and
deported them to Athens. I do not know whether it was done to
squeeze money out of them, or to hold them as hostages. King Con-
stantine s servants are very bad at fighting, but they are first class at
robbery, arson and murder."

Unlucky King Constantine, so badly served by his advisers, was
hounded out of Greece with insult and mockery. In Athens there was

THE END OF THE COALITION 227

a great upheaval and six ministers, condemned for high treason, were
dealt with by a firing squad.

Three months later Constantine died in exile at Palermo.

The machinations of Zaharoff and his relations with Lloyd George
not only aroused the deepest suspicions of pacifists in the Labour
ranks, to whom the arms magnate was a black-hearted, bloody villain,
but disturbed many orthodox Conservatives. Labour regarded Zaha
roff as a malevolent figure who pulled the strings of international
finance and stirred up strife with the object of selling more armaments.
For Lloyd George, the erstwhile pacifist, to associate with such a man
was to them the basest treachery. The Conservatives were concerned
because they saw that Britain s Greek policy was not only drawing
the country into a new and disastrous war, but alienating Moslem
opinion in the Empire. 1

In the House of Commons on July 17, 1922, Lieut.-Golonel the Hon.
Aubrey Herbert said: "I do not want to mention names, but there
is one name I shall mention, and that is the name of a very great
financier, who is reputed to be the richest man in the world Sir
Basil Zaharoff it is said that his very great wealth is derived from
this source : that he has owned munition factories in many countries.

"He has been one of the strong supporters of the Greek policy. The
result of that Greek policy has been that the whole of the East is in
chaos, and that Great Britain has made enemies throughout the entire
East. Sir Basil Zaharoff is reputed to have paid 4 millions out of his
own pocket for the upkeep of the Greek invading force in Asia Minor."

In the House of Commons and in the country the campaign against
Lloyd George and Zaharoff was stepped up. Lord Rothermere, who
now had charge of the Daily Mail, said that "the Levantine Zaharoff
must be taught that the British nation was master in its own house".
Lord Beaverbrook s Daily Express demanded that the doors of Govern
ment offices should be shut to Sir Basil and his agents. Beaverbrook,
who had helped to bring Lloyd George to power, was now convinced
that the Prime Minister was set on a course that could only bring
hardship and disaster to the Empire.

The persistent Lieut.-Colonel Herbert asked: "If Sir Basil was
consulted before the Greek landing at Smyrna by the Foreign Office
or the Prime Minister." No satisfactory answer was ever given.
Officially, of course, Zaharoff was never called into the Coalition
Government s counsels, nor was he ever received at the Foreign
Office during this period. His sole dealings were with Lloyd George

1 There has always been a powerful, yet informal and unorganised pro-Moslem "lobby"
in the Tory ranks.

228 THE MASK OF MERLIN

in private. His agents were in constant touch with officials at No. 10,
at the Board of Trade and prominent in the counsels of the Prime
Minister s notorious "Shadow Foreign Office",

Mr. Walter Guinness in a scathing speech declared that "the voice
behind the Prime Minister was probably that of Sir Basil Zaharoff",
and added that if it was necessary for LI. G. to have advisers at all in
foreign affairs, these should be English.

These criticisms were fairly easily muted because Zaharoff had then
covered his machinations too well. He had even wisely safeguarded
his finances against a possible set-back to the extent of founding in
March, 1920, when war with Turkey seemed imminent, a new bank,
the Banqut Commerciale dt la Medittrranee, which was housed in the same
building as that of the former Deutsche Orientbank in Constantinople.

From the sun-baked rocks of Anatolia Mustapha Kemal conjured
an improvised but efficient fighting machine and drove the Greek
troops, financed by Zaharoff and armed by Britain, out of Smyrna
with weapons provided by France. The policy of "keeping the French
down" had completely boomeranged. It meant the end of Greek
imperialist ambitions and the renaissance of Turkey. It struck a blow
at Britain s prestige in the Middle East from which she has never since
recovered.

Lloyd George s reaction was one of panic. He imagined that Kemal
would chase the Greeks into Europe and set the Balkans ablaze with
a curtain of fire. Now he turned to the hand he had bitten and begged
aid from France. To Italy and all the British dominions he went,
almost abjectedly, pleading for aid against Turkey. The Allied Com-
mander-in-Chief, Sir Charles Harington, was ordered to defend the
neutral zones.

The replies from France and Italy were swift: each nation ordered
its forces to be withdrawn. The British dominions viewed the situation
with dismay and showed no desire to be drawn into "Lloyd George s
war". The Canadian Premier objected publicly, the Australian
privately ; only New Zealand and Newfoundland offered help.

It has been argued that, in standing firm, Lloyd George saved the
situation from developing into a major Balkan war. His action in
making an isolated stand is said to have stayed the advance of Kemal.
Had Kemal desired to press on, nothing could have stopped him. In
fact there is no evidence that he had any intention of pushing into the
Balkans. When an armistice was concluded at Madania in October,
1922, it was largely due to the common sense and statesmanship of the
soldier on the spot, Sir Charles Harington, and KemaPs calculating
moderation. Yet these last acts of the Coalition Government have
been hailed as a moral victory for Lloyd George. Dr. Thomas Jones
wrote; "Lloyd George s promptitude prevented war, his desire to
deliver Asia Minor from the Turkish yoke was defeated, but the Arab

THE END OF THE COALITION 22Q

world Iraq, Arabia, Palestine and Syria was set free. Turkey and
Britain were reconciled and their friendship endured throughout the
second world war/

Friendship with Turkey, in fact, only developed later and then
mainly through the close personal relationship which the British
Ambassador, Sir George Clarke, established with Kemal. Even so,
Turkey remained neutral in World War II. As for the setting free of
the Arab world, this really meant a veneer of freedom beneath which
all these territories were exploited by capitalism in the place of

imperialism.

*****

The Turkish adventure caused the Tory back-benchers to exert
more pressure on their leaders to withdraw from the Government, and
discipline in the Coalition ranks collapsed. But the rot had set in long
before this: the Greek-Turkish conflict was merely the last nail in a
coffin which should long before have been laid to rest. In an effort to
placate the Tories some time before this, LL G. had completely
antagonised his left-wing supporters by his treatment of Dr. Addison.
Addison had been mainly responsible for the Housing and Town
Planning Act designed to provide the homes "fit for heroes", but in
setting about his task with tremendous enthusiasm, neglected to provide
adequate stocks of materials. Prices for building materials which were
in short supply rocketed to unprecedented levels and the Government
declined to introduce any controls even as a temporary measure.
Lloyd George decided to appease the Tories rather than to come to
the aid of his old friend Addison by taking such measures, cynically
revealing his intention in this cruel letter to Austen Chamberlain:

"I will send for Addison. . . . He does not in the least realise his
position. He regards himself as a martyr to the cause of public health.
. . . Men in this condition of exaltation are very difficult to deal with
and I am not looking forward to a very pleasant conversation with
him."

Addison never knew of this letter. He was forced, according to
Carson, by "a disgusting intrigue" to resign. It was one of the worst
political betrayals of an era of betrayals and Addison always insisted
that, if he had been allowed to carry on, he would "have abolished
the slums". Later he was to stage a magnificent come-back, taking
office in two Labour Governments and eventually being made a peer,
Labour leader in the House of Lords and the first Knight of the Garter
in the Socialist ranks.

"If Lloyd George was a political Samson," wrote Mr. Malcolm
Thomson, "Greece had unwittingly been cast for his Delilah, and
delivered him bound into the hands of the Tory Philistines." Con
servatives meeting at the Carl ton Club decided by a vote of 186 to 87
that there must be an appeal to the country at once and that the Tory

230 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Part) f should act independently and with "no understanding" with
Lloyd George. Austen Chamberlain, Balfour and Birkenhead among
the Tories remained loyal to LI. G. to the last; Bonar Law, whom he

had trusted^ hesitantly capitulated to the Tory Party machine. The
Tory Ministers left the Government and Lloyd George tendered his
resignation to the King. The worst Parliament in modem history
had ended its career,

Bonar Law formed a Conservative Government and immediately
went to the country, the Tories gaining a majority of seventy-two seats
over all other parties, the Socialists moving into second place, with the
Independent and National Liberals coming third and fourth.

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF

"And he ... fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it
a molten calf; and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. "

Exodus, c. XXXII, v. 4

When a Prime Minister deliberately sets out to create for himself a
vast personal fund with which he can dominate, blackmail and destroy
the very existence of a political Party, the foundations of even an
ancient and well-tested democracy are threatened. Out of the instru
ment of a political fund Lloyd George fashioned a molten calf which
proved to be the undoing of the great Liberal Party to which he
belonged.

Perhaps the quickest and most cutting retort to which he was ever
subjected in the House of Commons was made by Mr. Wedgwood
Benn. The Labour Government of 1929-30 had promised dominion
status for India. LI. G., with his fondness for Biblical metaphor, des
cribed how Mr. Benn, then Secretary of State for India, had smashed
the "tables of the Covenant and substituted new ones of his own".

"This pocket edition of Moses," was his description of Mr. Benn*

"But I never worshipped the Golden Calf," retorted the Secretary
of State, misquoting from Exodus.

It was a rebuke which reduced Lloyd George to an unaccustomed
silence.

The earliest financial scandal in which Lloyd George was involved
was the Marconi Affair. In his early days, no doubt due to the ex
hortations of Uncle Richard, he had shown on many occasions a dis
regard for wealth, the Boer War being a prime example of this. But,
as promotion succeeded promotion, as he drew nearer to the coveted
Premiership, so his heart hardened and he became more conscious of
the power which the possession of wealth could bring. Early in 1912
rumours in the City alleged that Liberal ministers were speculating
in shares as a result of their knowledge of negotiations on behalf of the
British Government with the English Marconi Company for a network
of wireless stations which the Committee of Imperial Defence had
insisted on being set up. The Postmaster-General, Sir Herbert Samuel
(now Lord Samuel) had negotiated with the Marconi Company for

231

232 THE MASK OF MERLIN

the work, and on March 7, 1912, accepted their tender subject to
parliamentary approval. The chairman of the English company was
Godfrey Isaacs, brother of Sir Rufus Isaacs, a member of the Liberal
Government. The following month the American Marconi Company,
which had no financial connections with the British company of the
same name, made an issue of new shares and Godfrey Isaacs agreed to
place a block of these on the British market.

Godfrey Isaacs offered his brother Rufus some of the shares, but the
Attorney-General at first declined them, only subsequently making a
purchase of 10,000 shares when he learned that the American company
was quite independent of the British concern. Lloyd George was at
this time very friendly with Rufus Isaacs and, on the latter s suggestion,
he and the Master of Elibank bought from him 1,000 shares each. The
shares rose two days later when dealings opened on the London Stock
Exchange and LI. G. sold half his holding for a profit of 743, buying
a further 1,500 shares a month afterwards as an investment.

Rumours of these dealings, some of them ventilated in the Press, led
to the setting up of a select committee to inquire into the matter. This
committee opined that there was no foundation for charges of cor
ruption and "no ground for any reflection upon the honour of the
Ministers concerned". This verdict was accepted, but Lloyd George s
frank admission that he regretted the purchases had been made and
that he had been indiscreet did not convince the House, a vote of
censure being lost by only 346 votes to 268. Lloyd George s biographers
have already given much space to the Marconi Scandal and for that
reason it seems out of place to reiterate here what has been well docu
mented elsewhere, more especially as, in fairness to Lloyd George, his
part in the whole affair, though indiscreet in the light of the publicity
accorded it, was far less serious than that of the Attorney-General, Sir
Rufus Isaacs. The point of mentioning this incident and taking it out
of chronological order in this chapter is not to indict Lloyd George,
but to show how in his middle and later years he gradually took a
shrewder interest in pecuniary gain. Mr. Frank Owen states that LL G.
"offered the Prime Minister his resignation, but Asquith had stood by
him loyally ". Certainly Asquith regarded the political uproar about
the deals as distasteful and out of proportion and it was generally
conceded at the time that Lloyd George owed him much in escaping
the full consequences of this escapade. Equally loyal at this time was
Winston Churchill, who even went to the extent of persuading North-
cliflfe to handle the story in a friendly way.

But the Marconi Scandal pales into insignificance in comparison with
the story of a Prime Minister who sought to build up a financial war
chest over which he could have supreme control.

Lloyd George, having tasted the sweets of office, had no desire to
sustain himself on the strictly rationed fare of a secondary figure in the

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 233

Liberal Party, nor did the prospect of an old-fashioned Tory menu
appeal to him even if he were appointed head waiter of the "club"
he had spent so many years berating. His chances of success, as he
saw them, consisted either of forming a new Centre Party through
which he could weaken the main Parties by drawing support from
Liberals and Tories and bolstering it up with non-Party businessmen,
or maintaining a Coalition Government for an indefinite period on the
grounds that the national interest required it.

To achieve either object he needed funds. As a free-lance Prime
Minister with no Party machine behind him he was at a disadvantage.
Therefore, while on the count of Party loyalty he can be condemned
for acting in a manner calculated to destroy the Party to which he
belonged and to upset the political equilibrium of the nation, he was
within his rights in seeking to give himself both a Party machine and
funds to maintain it. That is the right of any political leader in any
democratic country. But the manner in which he built up his fund
and his despotic control over it are quite different matters. In effect
he issued not one, but several false prospectuses verbally, of course,
and not in writing or print to lure people to contribute to the fund.
These lures were all so different that they often contradicted each
other and no one could be sure whether the purpose for which he had
contributed was valid in Lloyd George s eyes.

During the war Lloyd George s income from investments increased
considerably. Lord Riddell had purchased a house for him at Walton
Heath, and in 1919 Carnegie endowed him with a life pension of
2,000. Nevertheless, Lloyd George, though comfortably off, had not
yet achieved the great wealth of his later days and he insisted on
maintaining the strictest personal control over his political fund.

His simple life of earlier days had given way to a more spacious and
opulent mode of living. Though no spendthrift in many ways the
reverse he acquired a love of luxury and he was continually seeking
alternative methods of making an income should he ever decide to
quit politics. Towards the end of World War I he had been very
anxious to obtain control of a newspaper for furthering his own interests.
He secured an interest in the Daily Chronicle and Lloyds Sunday News
through the agency of Lord Dalziel; he also acquired a controlling
interest in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Yorkshire Evening News.
When Lloyd George took an active interest in the Daily Chronicle he
developed a profound dislike for the editor, Sir Robert Donald, and
sacked him. Eventually he sold the Daily Chronicle at a substantial
profit and always claimed that his fund benefited from this.

Less well known is Lloyd George s attempt to buy The Timjs in 1922
shortly before the fall of his Government. He was anxious to have
control of the most influential newspaper in the country during an
expected period in opposition. Northcliffe had died the previous

234 THE MASK OF MERLIN

August and LI. G. sounded out various friends with a view to making
an offer. One of these friends was David Davies, the coal-owner, who
was promised the office of senior trustee of the paper. Yet even in his
efforts to bring off this deal Lloyd George could not refrain from double-
crossing his friends; he promised the post of editor to Lionel Curtis,
yet told David Davies that he himself would be managing editor and
that he would "give up my connection with the House of Commons".
It is believed that Davies himself extracted this promise from LI. G.,
though it seems equally certain that LI. G. would never have agreed
to leave politics permanently.

There was at the time a rumour, never substantiated, that he had
approached Zaharoff for funds for The Times. It is known that Zaha
roff was anxious to obtain an interest in a British newspaper and that
he had sometimes selected Times correspondents in the Balkans as
sub-agents for Vickers. Sir Basil, according to his obituary in The
TimeS} also had newspaper interests in Britain, though it was never
clearly divulged what these were. 1

But the very whisper of such a plan for Lloyd George to acquire
control of The Times was enough to bring powerful forces to bear, and
these made quite sure that this paper would never fall into his hands.
The Lloyd Georgian bid for The Times resulted in that newspaper being
converted into a trust permanently safe from the intrigues of a single
individual.

Some contributions to the Lloyd George Fund were genuine gifts
from personal admirers, possibly given without any qualifications.
Others came from businessmen who were anxious to be on the Coalition
band-wagon, or as payment for the privilege of being given office in
the Government, or key posts in the Civil Service. Thus the principle
was established of buying one s way into political power and into the
Civil Service, often over the heads of competent professional servants
of the state, who had the frustrating experience of seeing untrained
self-seekers promoted over their heads. But by far the worst feature
of the fund was its subsidising by the sale of honours and tides. It was
in this sphere that Sir William Sutherland in the early stages at least
and the notorious Maundy Gregory were touts-in-chief for the Lloyd
George war chest, and the latter succeeded not only in enhancing
Lloyd George s power, but, by deducting commissions for services
rendered, in substantially enriching himself.

Arthur Maundy Gregory, like Zaharoff, had a genius for obliterating
vital clues for anyone trying to probe his past. The son of a vicar of
Southampton, he was for a time an actor-producer and, after 1909,
he claimed that he ran a private detective agency on the strength of

1 The Sunday Express stated in 1922 that Zaharoff was part owner of a prominent Coalition
newspaper which was assumed at the time to refer to the Daily Chronicle, though this was
denied.

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 235

which he was able to offer his talents to the Secret Service when war
broke out. Certain it is that he worked closely with Sir Basil Thomson
and Sir Vernon Kell, the head of M.I.5. This, however, does not
explain the extraordinary influence which Gregory came to have in
the years immediately after the war, nor does it account for his apparent
wealth, nor his close association with King George of Greece, King
Alfonso of Spain and the Montenegrin royal family. It was Sir William
Sutherland who introduced Lloyd George to Gregory, and he was the
principal intermediary for exchanges between them. Sometimes there
were telephone calls between No. 10 and Gregory s offices in Parliament
Street, but more often the Prime Minister discussed business through
Sutherland, "Freddie" Guest, his Chief Whip, and Sir Warden
Chilcott, a close friend of the Prime Minister and Coalition M.P. for a
Liverpool constituency. A plump, middle-sized man who always wore
a rose or an orchid in his buttonhole, a bon viveur and lavish host,
Gregory flitted in the wings of the Coalition stage like a gilded butter
fly, waiting, watching, scheming, enriching himself and others.

There were precedents for raising political funds by the sale of
honours. The purchase of titles was practised by the Stuart kings;
Charles II and his ministers bribed M.P.s with pensions and subsidies.
Walpole was a notorious trafficker in honours, while Lord Bute as
Prime Minister in 1762 was reputed to have paid 25,000 for securing
a majority for the Peace of Paris. 1

But in Victoria s day the practice was condemned. Lord Palmer-
ston bluntly told an honours tout: "The throne is a fount of honour.
It is not a pump, nor am I the pump handle." To confirm this gener
ally accepted thesis Lord Selborne proposed a resolution in the House
of Lords in February, 1914, urging that a contribution to Party funds
should not be considered justification when honours were being given
and that all Parties should adhere to this rule. This perhaps is some
indication that there were still breaches of the unwritten rule on this
subject and that rich men who contributed to Party funds somehow
found themselves recommended for honours. The fact that the initia
tive for the donation of honours had through the centuries been passed
from Monarch to Prime Minister had not been an adequate safeguard
against the abuse of this prerogative. While King George II could,
by the kind of brilliant inspiration that comes to kings more easily than
politicians, bestow a knighthood on a dragoon who had cut his way
through the French cavalry, two centuries later Raymond Asquith
was bitterly complaining in World War II that, when it came to
decorations, it was always found that the Dukes were the bravest men
and after them the Marquises.

Yet there was no public outcry, no major criticism on the subject of
honours won through contributing to Party funds until the Coalition

1 Stanhope s History of England:

236 THE MASK OF MERLIN

era. Lloyd George, who had boasted of Ms cottage ancestry and had
been the most vehement critic of privilege, took a closer interest in the
subject of honours than any other Prime Minister of this century, or
indeed, of the previous hundred years. This was the measure of the
extent to which power had corrupted him and almost corroded the
idealism of his youth. It might possibly be said in extenuation that,
because he detested privilege and honours, he cynically set out to
ridicule the honours racket by what he did and that his exploitation
of them were indirectly an indictment of the whole system. Yet the
fact remains that he put back the clock to the days of the Stuarts and
Georges, disregarding the Victorians and Lord Selborne who took a
wiser view of such abuses.

Sir Harold Nicolson tells us that Sir George Younger, the Unionist
Chief Whip, did not "appreciate the Prime Minister s distribution of
honours, or the accumulation under his personal control of large
election funds. The King himself questioned the suitability of some of
those whom the Prime Minister recommended for high distinction,
Mr. Lloyd George insisted, and the King with explicit reluctance was
obliged to give his assent."

In the State Papers at Windsor Castle there is some very acrimonious
correspondence on the subject of honours, but Lloyd George always
refused to put his views on honours in writing to the King.

There was constant bickering between Lloyd George s representa
tives and Sir George Younger on honours. It is certain that Younger s
views were tinged with jealousy of the LL G. fund. Bitterly he com
plained: "These damned rascals come to me demanding to be made
knights and, when I refuse, go straight round to Lloyd George s Whip s
office and get what they want from him."

To what extent the Tories also dabbled in the sale of titles at this
time is uncertain, but it was never on the same scale as the Lloyd
Georgians. Mr. Robert Blake in his biography of Bonar Law, The
Unknown Prime Minister^ throws some light on Tory dealings with LL G.
in this connection. He quotes Lord Edmund Talbot as saying about
Lord Farquhar (the Conservative Party treasurer): "I have a strong
suspicion that he has handed sums perhaps large sums to LL G. for
his Party, while acting as our treasurer."

Lord Farquhar, who had received an earldom from Lloyd George,
had been involved in a row about some Tory funds which, Farquhar
claimed, belonged to the Coalition Fund and not the Conservative
Party. Presumably by "Coalition" he meant the Lloyd George fund.

Mr. Blake also revealed that Hicks, the Conservative Party account
ant, was told by Farquhar that the latter had "given no money to LL
G. except 80,000 from Astor". This referred to Lord Astor who had
died in 1919. Farquhar insisted that Lord Astor had given him
200,000 to dispose of as he saw fit and that he had given 40,000 to

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 237

a charity in which the King was interested and divided the rest between
the Tory funds and the Lloyd George fund.

"But no money was handed over to me/ 5 replied Talbot. The
mystery of what happened to the balance of the 200,000 remains
unsolved, but it would seem that a great deal of it went to the LI. G.
fund. 1

Maundy Gregory, who was also an associate of Lord Riddell, saw
illimitable possibilities for making money out of his association with
Lloyd George. From the latter s viewpoint Gregory had one positive
asset: he had no political affiliations, yet, being on closer terms with
the Tories than the Liberals, he was able to lure Tories into the Coali
tion camp as well as sell them honours. At the end of the war there
was an enormous surplus of wealth, swollen by profiteering, in the
hands of a number of very rich men. Businessmen purchased titles as
they would a yacht or a piece of land. Lloyd George, with a com
bination of cynicism and flattery, encouraged the practice of selling
honours until his personal fund was past the 3,000,000 mark- There
are some people who put the total higher and say that at least another
million went to the Prime Minister s own pocket.

A fluctuating tariff for titles met both the seniority of the honour
and the pocket of the recipient. The top price for a peerage is known
to have exceeded 150,000 and baronies were considered cheap at
80,000. A baronetcy cost as much as 50,000 and ordinary knight
hoods round about 12,000. Lesser honours, though costing hundreds
instead of thousands, were so prolific that they produced a considerable
aggregate. In 1917, on his own initiative and on the advice of Sir
William Sutherland, probably with some prompting from Maundy
Gregory, Lloyd George created the Order of the British Empire.

This title, which rapidly became a music-hall joke because of the
lavish way in which it was dispensed, soon brought opprobrium rather
than respect to its recipients. No fewer than 25,000 O.B.E.s were
distributed during Lloyd George s ministries and afterwards the Bonar
Law Government altered the Order s statutes to limit its future
membership. In Britain O.B.E. was contemptuously referred to as
"Order of the Bad Egg" on account of the many "bad eggs" among
its members, while in France the chansoniers of the cabarets called it the
Ordre Eritannique EmbtLsqiU.

Viscountcies, baronies, baronetcies and knighthoods were stepped
up at a rate which not only infuriated hereditary members of the
House of Lords, but worried King George V, whose responsibility it
was to confirm the honours lists submitted to him. Between 1916 and
1923 LI. G. nominated ninety-one new peers, double the average of

1 Lord Beaverbrook gives more details of this chicanery in The Decline and Fall of LLeyd
George, Only after he had been made an Earl was it discovered that Farquhar was an un
disclosed bankrupt who had been secretly diverting the huge sums the Tories had acquired
through the Honours system into Lloyd George s political fund.

238 THE MASK OF MERLIN

new peerages created either by Asquith or Campbell-Bannerman
during an exceptional period when it was politically necessary to
increase the Liberal representation in the Lords.

Prior to 1918, pointed out the Duke of Northumberland in 1922,
"Only two or three honours were conferred upon journalists every
year, but you will find that the number of this profession who have
been appointed Privy Councillors, peers, baronets and knights since
amounts to no fewer than forty-nine, and that number does not in
clude C.M.G.S and other unconsidered trifles of that kind."

This reference to journalists also includes newspaper proprietors
upon whom Lloyd George relied heavily for support. There never
was an era when the Press of the nation had such an unhealthy and
wholly unwarranted influence in Downing Street, though long before
1922 NorthclifFe had become disenchanted with LI. G, and Lord
Beaverbrook, though a great admirer of the man and to a large extent
his supporter, was sufficiently independent to come out strongly against
the machinations of Zaharoff and the Greek adventure. But in other
sections of the Press sycophancy could be detected. At a later period
two such diverse figures as Stanley Baldwin and Aneurin Bevan
equated sections of the British Press with "harlotry" and "prosti
tution": "Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot
throughout the ages," was Baldwin s comment; "The most prostituted
Press in the world," was Bevan s. But in Coalition days those who
went a-whoring in the newspaper world usually found that LI. G. was
the whoremaster and not the whore.

While all honours are in constitutional theory conferred by the
Sovereign, in practice, of course, the Sovereign only confirms the
recommendations of his or her ministers. The Prime Minister is res
ponsible for advising the monarch on all awards except for those of
the Services, the Orders of the Garter, Merit, St. Michael and St.
George and the Royal Victorian Order. The Chief Whip of the
political Party in power always has the major say in the award of
political honours, and this was where Sutherland s influence made
itself felt. Where the scope for corruption occurs most easily in the
field of honours is in its allegedly democratic tradition that any person
or recognised body of persons can recommend anyone for an honour.

It is remarkable that Lloyd George, who always had his ear to the
ground for the first rumblings of public discontent, should have con
temptuously ignored the growing criticism of his lavish and indis
criminate distribution of honours. He first of all excused himself on
the grounds that an increase in awards was necessary in order to
recognise services rendered during the war. But in the last eighteen
months of his period of office he was still handing out titles as though
they were handbills 26 peerages, 74 baronetcies and 294 knighthoods.
The lists between 1916 and 1923 contain countless examples of a

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 239

flagrant disregard for the principles governing the conferring of awards.
Zaharoff s embezzlement of funds did not prevent his receiving a
knighthood. There was the peerage of Sir William Vestey, who, during
the war, had moved his business to Argentina to avoid taxation,
throwing some 5,000 men into unemployment as a consequence. The
citation said he had "rendered immense services to his country" by
providing "gratuitously the cold storage accommodation required for
war purposes at Havre, Boulogne and Dunkirk". Yet it transpired
that, while no payment had been made to Sir William for cold storage,
payments had been made to the Union Gold Storage Company of
which he was chairman.

Scores of businessmen were similarly honoured for "services" which
were either non-existent or a distortion of the real facts. It was not
surprising that the Prime Minister was asked in the House of Com
mons on June 20, 1922: "How much do you give for a baronetcy and
what is the price of a knighthood?"

"Why is it," asked a Socialist member, "that only the very rich
men seem to get the honours?"

A man who had been created a baronet one year and a Privy
Councillor soon afterwards was later proved to have traded with the
enemy. Another who had made his living by writing pornographic
songs, which he sold secretly on the continent, was recommended for
a knighthood. Fortunately someone at Buckingham Palace drew
attention to the matter and the recommendation was speedily with
drawn. A man convicted of food hoarding was also knighted and
another who had been found guilty of homosexual practices with young
boys was awarded the C.B.E.

The Banker, a non-political journal of high standing, declared:
"Many [referring to the latest honours list] are gross, illiterate profiteers,
doubtful in their reputations, vulgar in their lives. . . Mr. Lloyd
George s funds are the wages of their over-gorged vanity."

Twenty-five distinguished persons wrote to The Times making a
plea for greater care in selecting candidates for honours. Slowly the
Press was shaking off its temporary sycophancy. Then on July 3, 1922,
the King wrote to Lloyd George on the subject. In Sir Harold Nicol-
son s King George V: His Life and Reign this letter is published:

"My dear Prime Minister, I cannot conceal from you my profound
concern at the very disagreeable situation which has arisen on the
question of honours.

"The peerages which I was advised to confer upon Sir and

Sir have brought things rather to a climax, though for some

time there have been evident signs of growing public dissatisfaction
on account of the excessive number of Honours conferred; the person
ality of some of the recipients and the questionable circumstances
under which the Honours in certain circumstances have been granted.

240 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"You will remember that both in conversation and in written com
munications I have deprecated the ever-increasing number of those
submitted for the half-yearly Honours Gazette and in recent years
there have been instances in which Honours have been bestowed where
subsequent information has betrayed a lack of care in the enquiries
made as to the fitness of the persons selected for recognition.

"The case of Sir must be regarded as little less than an insult to

the Crown and to the House of Lords and may, I fear, work injury to the
Prerogative in the public mind at home and even more in South Africa."

This last paragraph referred to the proposal to give a peerage to
Sir Joseph Robinson. In the House of Lords the Lord Chancellor,
Lord Birkenhead, admitted that no dominion citizen should have an
honour conferred upon him without the approval of the Government
of that dominion. But neither the Governor-General of the Union of
South Africa nor the South African Premier had recommended Robin
son, The last-named, who had been ordered by the Chief Justice of
South Africa to pay 500,000 in compensation for making an "illicit
profit" which he concealed from the shareholders of the Randfontein
Estates Company, took fright at the furore raised in Parliament. He
wrote, begging to "decline the proposal".

The citation announcing the award of a barony to Sir Joseph
Robinson described him as "chairman of the South African National
Banking Company". In fact this company had been liquidated seven
teen years before!

Well might King George be concerned at the effect on public opinion
in the dominions by the creation of such titles. In Canada, Parliament
passed a resolution that no titles were to be conferred upon persons
resident in Canada and that any such titles already conferred should be
cancelled. A "no honours" motion was put forward in the South
African Parliament.

One candidate for a peerage was asked by Maundy Gregory for the
"fee" for obtaining this in advance of the honour being conferred.
This cautious aspirant made out a cheque, post-dated it and then
signed it by the title he proposed to take. Lord Rhondda, quoting the
case of a South Wales peer, said he "Was paying for his honour on the
hire-purchase system, but died before finishing the instalments. The
executors refused to conclude the payments, saying they had no further
use for the title."

Critics in both the Lords and the Commons forced the Government
to take the subject of the abuse of titles seriously. A motion urging the
appointment of a committee of inquiry, tabled by Mr. Locker-Lamp-
son, supported by 180 members, finally forced a debate which was
made the subject of a vote of confidence. But, as a last attempt to
stave off a full-scale inquiry, Lloyd George proposed the appointment
of a committee of three Privy Councillors to consider the question.

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 241

During the past six years, he claimed, there had been an exceptionally
heavy honours list because of the war and these had included the
names of more than 400 Servicemen.

This figure was challenged by Lieut-Colonel Malone, who said
there had only been twenty-four awards to Servicemen. The dis
crepancy between the two sets of figures can be explained by the
familiar Lloyd Georgian technique with awkward statistics employed
with the same dishonesty as in the Maurice debate, Lloyd George
was referring to naval and military decorations as well in his total of
more than 400 and these awards had no connection with the Prime
Minister s department, whereas Lieut-Colonel Malone showed that
the number of peerages, baronetcies and knighthoods given to Service
men were a paltry twenty-four compared with 173 honours of those
categories to businessmen.

J. R. Clynes, from the Labour benches, quoted a devastating state
ment by Lord Carson, until recently a Cabinet Minister: "I have had
more than once in my chambers to advise on cases in which I have
examined long correspondence which showed there was a brokerage
for the purpose of obtaining honours."

Proof of the sales of titles came from all quarters. The Duke of
Northumberland in the House of Lords on July 17, 1922, told how
"a gentleman who held a position of great civic importance in the
north of England" had been informed by a certain M.P. 1 that to
make sure of an honour he must contribute to Party funds. He declined
to give any money and his name was not included in the next honours
list. The Duke quoted from a letter sent by an honours tout to two
distinguished men. The letter merely stated: "I am requested to
place before you a matter of a very confidential nature which it is
thought may be of interest to you. Will you kindly let me know
whether you can suggest a meeting within the next few days in London
or elsewhere. I cannot put more in a letter."

That letter, said the Duke, had emanated from 10, Downing Street,
according to evidence he had received, and the recipient was told at
a subsequent interview that he would have to pay 40,000 if he wanted
a baronetcy. The man who received the second letter interviewed the
writer and was told: "The Government would not last very long and
that when Lloyd George went to the country he wanted funds to
contest certain seats."

The Duke of Northumberland also gave details of a letter from
another honours tout, a Mr. Robert Wells, who made an appointment
with a prospective "victim". When asked the name of the person to
whom the money was to be paid, Wells was quoted as saying: "It was
formerly Sir William Sutherland. I don t know exactly who it will be
this time, but probably Mr. McCurdy."

1 Sir William Sutherland.

242 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Charles McCurdy was Coalition Liberal Chief Whip at the time and
was later on the committee of management of the Lloyd George fund.

Eventually the Prime Minister agreed to the appointment of a Royal
Commission of Inquiry into the question of honours. Its terms of
reference were obviously designed to avoid delving too deeply into the
subject. The Commission had no power to compel the attendance of
witnesses or to take evidence on oath, which ensured that the inquiry-
would be restricted. The terms of reference laid emphasis on the
future, not the past: "To advise on the procedure to be adopted in
future to assist the Prime Minister in making recommendations to
His Majesty of the names of persons deserving special honours/

The Commission did not begin its meetings until after the Lloyd
George Government had resigned. Its findings evaded the real issue.
The recommendation that in future there should be a committee of
three Privy Councillors, appointed by the Prime Minister, to whom
he should submit his final honours list for scrutiny, was a piece of
political eye-wash, even though it specifically stated that the Privy
Councillors should not be members of the Government. The only
really important recommendation was the proposal for an act imposing
penalties on any person offering to become instrumental in securing
an honour for another person in respect of a money payment.

The Commission s report was signed by all members except Mr.
Arthur Henderson, who said:

"I am of opinion that the Commission might with advantage have
made a more searching inquiry than they have done. I regret that
though the Commissioners were in possession of the names of persons
who are conveniently and appropriately described as touts , none of
them has been invited to give evidence. Nor was any person who had
been approached by "touts called to give evidence before us, though
the names of such persons were also before the Commission. . . . The
proposals contained in the report of my colleagues would not, if put
into operation, be sufficient, in my opinion, to prevent abuses or to
allay the suspicion which undoubtedly exists in the public mind."

In a final flurry to boost his political fund and knowing that respon
sibility would be his no longer, LI. G. cynically announced forty-five
names in his Resignation Honours List of 1922, nearly three times the
number submitted by Asquith in 1916. Was it a mere coincidence that
this list was published not officially from Buckingham Palace, as was
customary, but from an official of the National Liberal Party head
quarters. 1

Echoes of the honours racket linking it with the Lloyd George fund
continued for some years afterwards. At a meeting of creditors in con-

1 It should be made clear that in this narrative any mention of "National Liberal * or
"Coalition Liberal" whether to individuals or Parties refers strictly and only to Lloyd
Georgian Liberals not to the official Liberal party.

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 24$

nection with the sequestration proceedings concerning the estate of the
late Sir John H. Stewart in July, 1924, it was stated that Sir John
made a contribution to Party funds of 50,000. In December, 1922,
he was in serious financial straits and in order to avoid bankruptcy
asked for repayment of this sum.

The report of the case in The Times added :

"It was repaid to the deceased in December, 1922, and was dis
tributed amongst his creditors who were then pressing him.

"Mr. Ralston (representing Mr. William Rowland): Was that
50,000 paid to Mr. Lloyd George?

"The Trustee: I have not the slightest idea.

"Mr. Ralston: c But you have access to information. You must
know something about its destination/

"The Trustee: I would just say once and for all that this statement
was prepared and I am not prepared to add anything to it or take
anything away from it. /

Later in the inquiry Mr. Ralston said he did not believe that 50,000
was "the utmost paid for that baronetcy. It was more likely that
150,000 was paid and he did not believe the money was repaid".

A few days later the Press Association was informed by one of Lloyd
George s secretariat that the ex- Prime Minister "had no knowledge
of any such transaction" as the payment of 50,000 to Party funds
for a baronetcy.

Because the Lloyd George fond became a private trust, and there
fore detailed disclosures about it did not have to be made by law, its
exact origins and, more important, its precise purpose remain shrouded
in mystery. Yet, private or otherwise, the fund was a matter of public
interest not on the narrow political issue of which Party, or section
of a Party, was entitled to draw upon it, but on the grounds of what
policies it was scheduled to support.

Captain Guest, who had, as Coalition Chief Whip, played a leading
part in collecting money for the fund, claimed that it was "anti-
Socialist in its aim " and intended to help both Tories and Liberals to
"fight Bolshevism".

Sir Montagu Webb, who gave full details in a letter to the Morning
Post of November 23, 1922, of an offer made to him during the Coalition
period, wrote: "The Party officials who in 1921 offered to sell me a
baronetcy stated quite explicitly that the money was wanted to help
Lloyd George to fight the Bolshies V

As far as can be ascertained, the fond was never used for anything
of the sort; certainly Lloyd George s Russian policy made no pretence
to "fight Bolshevism", but it is easy to see how touts could conjure
money from the pockets of frightened capitalists by the suggestion that

244 THE MASK OF MERLIN

it could be used in this way. Maundy Gregory set himself up as the
arch-priest in the fight against Communism and Bolshevism. He
whispered to influential friends in West End clubs that he needed vast
sums to conduct Secret Service operations against the "Communist
enemy". In his journal the Whitehall Gazette, he devoted much space
to anti-Communist articles, to denigrating the achievements of the
Soviets and to supporting all opponents of the Communist regime,
including Mussolini and the Finnish war lords. Gregory, as has been
mentioned before, was an associate of Zaharoff, and it is interesting to
note what a former secretary of Zaharoff, Mr. Archie de Bear, had to
say on this subject: "Even British honours were bestowed occasionally
through his (Zaharoff *s) external instrumentality when it pleased him
to select this means of rewarding a colleague for services rendered.

"The honours traffic, indeed, as directed from Paris in those days,
was brought to a fine art. And it was not always a one-way traffic.
Sometimes, that is to say, the purchase price went more or less openly
to Party funds; sometimes it went by rather more devious channels to
private funds."

In the dossiers of both the Quai d Orsay and the Turkish Foreign
Office there is evidence that Sir Basil Zaharoff was involved in the
purchase of honours during Lloyd George s premiership. Zaharoff,
stated a report compiled by M. Barthe, "purchased the support of
Britain for Greece by disimbursements to the Lloyd George fund".

The proposals of the Royal Commission did not prevent further
abuses in the granting of honours, even though Bonar Law, Baldwin
and Ramsay MacDonald reduced the size of honours lists. The
Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925, which followed the re
commendations of the Royal Commission, resulted in the prosecution
of Maundy Gregory in 1933. A retired naval officer, Lieut.-Com-
mander E. W. B. Leake, reported to the police that Gregory had
suggested he should pay 10,000 for a baronetcy or knighthood,
claiming he was able to "pull strings in the right places".

The Maundy Gregory case caused much alarm both at Tory Party
H.Q, and among Lloyd George s own political associates. Gregory at
first entered a plea of "not guilty", changing this to "guilty" when
the case was resumed. Meanwhile he had induced a number of his
friends to lend him money on the understanding that he would keep
their names out of the case. Gregory had been severely hit by the
decline in the honours traffic and his means had dwindled accordingly.

The case was speedily disposed of; Gregory was convicted, fined 50
and sentenced to two months* imprisonment. His bankruptcy swiftly
followed. While he was in jail Scotland Yard began investigating the
circumstances of the death of a close friend of Gregory s, a Mrs. Rosse,
who had died in his house, leaving him all her money. An exhumation
order was issued and Mrs. Rosse s remains were removed from a river-

WORSHIPPING THE MOLTEN CALF 245

side churchyard in Berkshire. Despite the fact that a subpoena had
been served for his attendance, Gregory, who had completed his prison
sentence, failed to attend the inquest, having left for France. An open
verdict was recorded by the coroner and two damning revelations were
made first, that the details as given on the death certificate were
wrong, secondly, that a post-mortem failed to reveal the cause of
death, the coroner remarking that certain drugs decompose when a
body has been buried in waterlogged soil.

Whether Gregory was guilty of murder remains a mystery. There
seems to have been no excuse for officialdom allowing him to escape
from the country when he had been subpoenaed. He spent the remain
ing years of his life in various parts of France, impudently arrogating
to himself the bogus title of "Sir Arthur Gregory". Despite his bank
ruptcy and the fact that he had no job, he lived in the Hotel Vendome
in Paris and spent freely on himself and his friends, telling them he was
"in receipt of a Government pension and that he had been victimised
in the case brought against him, having taken the blame on behalf of
friends in high positions".

Mr. Gerald MacMillan, in his book Honours for Sale, tracked down
Gregory s movements until the latter s death in the Val de Grace
Hospital in Paris in 1941. Mr. MacMillan writes: "Party managers
of one or more political Parties might well have thought it worth their
while to pay Gregory to remain abroad. In fact, it has been said that,
when the summons under the Honours Act was issued, he was offered
a pension of i,oco a year from the funds of one Party, if he would
plead guilty and then go abroad and stay there; and that Gregory
held out for 2,000 and got it."

M. Emil Lachat, a waiter who was a valet to Gregory in France, told
the author: "I overheard Gregory say that he had an income of 2,000
a year, but I am quite certain his income was far in excess of this. He
was able to hire a yacht for cruises whenever he wanted. He had a
friend called Pierre 1 who arranged the remittance of money to him
from London for a while, but he also had funds sent to two different
Paris banks. I understand that Sir William Sutherland was one of
his influential friends who sent him a pension. He also boasted that
he was in receipt of a pension from Mr. Lloyd George. Whether cr
not this was true, I cannot say, but he certainly had a meeting with
Lloyd George in Paris shortly before World War II. I was the only
other person present at that interview, though not in the room all the
time."

1 Presumably this was Peter Mazzina of the Ambassadors Club in London, a dose associate
of Gregory and a friend of Mussolini.

9
NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT

"When gracious Anne became our Qiieen,
The Church of England s glory.
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory.

"When George in pudding-time came o er
And moderate men looked big, sir,
I turned a cat-in-pan once more,
And so became a Whig, sir."

From "The Vicar of Bray"

After the fall of the Coalition Government, Lloyd George sought in
an American tour to maintain his reputation as a leading statesman.
Feted, lionised and cheered by large crowds, he handled his susceptible
audiences with a skilful and sympathetic touch that was a refreshing
contrast to the usual chilly artificialities of visiting British politicians.
"It is natural for you to boast," he told the people. "It is your right.
In this country you never saw the Dark Ages. The Middle Ages passed
you by."

Describing Europe as "a ragged man standing in front of the plate-
glass windows of a well-stocked shop, but unable to buy food or clothes
because he cannot pay for them", he originated the legend that later
was to become such an obsession with some Americans the vision of
Europe as a sick, incompetent and feckless beggar.

But if his immediate aim was to obtain American co-operation in
the settlement of a desperate Europe, the role of apologist for Europe
as a whole and his grim picture of "currency gone, confidence gone
and hatreds still left" were not the way to set about achieving it.
While Lloyd George won a great deal of personal popularity
one newspaper said: "He is the most popular Briton to visit U.S.
since Charles Dickens " his speeches strengthened the hands of the
Isolationists.

Before he returned to Britain there was speculation about the possi
bility of another political somersault by which Lloyd George would
support a protectionist programme. That idea was promptly scotched
by Stanley Baldwin, who had succeeded Bonar Law after the latter s

246

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 247

brief Premiership. Baldwin forestalled LI. G. by announcing that to
conquer unemployment he would need to protect the home market.
That forced Lloyd George to a decision. Sensing acutely that any
move by the Tories to seek a mandate for protection would be
fatal to the Party s interests, he ceased his flirtation with tariffs and
arrived home to assure the nation that he was "an unswerving Free
Trader".

Baldwin s version of this affair was given in his pamphlet, A Memoir.
"I had information that he (LI. G.) was going protectionist and I had
to get in quick. I got the Cabinet into line. But for this move Lloyd
George would have got Austen Chamberlain with Birkenhead and
there would have been an end of the Tory Party as we know it."

Baldwin was almost certainly exaggerating the dangers to the Tory
Party, but, as a politician, he was always more than a match for LI. G.
True, Baldwin failed to get his mandate from the electorate, but he
won something far more valuable for the Tories. He finished the
election with the Conservatives still the strongest Party and a one
hundred per cent united Party at that. A Labour Government took
office for the first time with a minority of 192 members; the Liberals
had 1 60. The Liberal Party was in desperate straits financially, but
Lloyd George remained aloof and declined to give it assistance. Behind
the scenes he still hankered after a new Centre Party to include Austen
Chamberlain, Birkenhead and Churchill, and such shifty tactics made
the uneasy alliance of Asquithian and Lloyd Georgian Liberals a
doubtful proposition for the electorate.

Lloyd George also had to face the fact that Labour was now the
stronger challenger as alternative to the Tories and, when the Labour
Cabinet was photographed with the King, its image in the country
became more respectable. Asquith, who was still leader of the Liberal
Party, was not only of the opinion that Labour ought to be given a
chance to show it was capable of responsible government, but that
there could hardly be a more propitious moment for such a risk to be
taken safely, with Labour governing mainly through the courtesy of
Liberal votes.

Various accounts have been given of the wrangles between Lloyd
George and the Liberal Party over the LI. G. fund. They have been
mostly pro-Lloyd Georgian versions and omit many vital facts. Lloyd
George insisted that "my fund does not represent gifts made to any
Party. It started with donations made through my Whip to me when
I was a non-Party Premier to be used for such political purposes as I
thought desirable to spend upon them".

He refused absolutely to let the fund out of his personal control.
Asquith objected on principle to the existence of such a fund in the
hands of an individual in the Liberal Party when traditionally it
should have been vested in the Chief Whip.

248 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Mr. Vivian Phillipps, who was Chief Liberal Whip during the
1923-24 Parliament, was the man responsible for direct negotiations
with Lloyd George regarding the fund. A man of the greatest integrity,
a meticulously accurate recorder of events and possessed of clarity
and impartiality of mind, Mr. Phillipps s observations on this matter
are of considerable importance. These are set out in various papers,
letters and diaries and also in a book, My Days and Ways, which Mr.
Phillipps had printed for private circulation only, intending that it
should provide documentary evidence for a later generation. He
wrote:

"The cascade of baronetcies and knighthoods, and indeed a spate
of peerages, conferred during LI. G. s regime had resulted in the
accumulation of a vast political fund amounting to something like
3,000,000 (this figure was never subsequently challenged by LL G.),
and on the break-up of the Coalition Lloyd George walked off with
this huge fund and set up a headquarters of his own with an elaborate
personal staff at No. 16, Abingdon Street, three doors from our Central
Office.

" During the first Parliament after the fall of the Coalition, when it
was uncertain whether LI. G. would decide to ally his group with the
Tories or to rejoin the Liberals, the question of his personal fund*
remained in abeyance. When reunion with the Liberal Party came in
1923, it was expected that there would be a pooling of funds between
him and Liberal headquarters, but this did not happen. LI. G,
continued his separate headquarters and kept control of his fund in
his own hands. The position was far from comfortable, with a pro-
minent leader of the Party sitting aloof from the Central Office and
controlling a large fund which he was free to use for any political
adventures.

"More than once when a constituency organisation had recom
mended as their chosen candidate in a by-election Mr. X, an intimation
would come from LL G. s headquarters that they did not approve of
Mr. X and preferred Mr. Y, with a hint that if we endorsed the con
stituency s choice of Mr. X, they might provide Mr. "Y s election
expenses *in order to give the constituency a free choice between X
and Y , which, of course, would mean splitting the Liberal vote and
the loss of the seat."

When the Labour Government resigned and a general election was
imminent, Donald Maclean and Vivian Phillipps went to state the
urgency of the position regarding funds. To Maclean s amazement
Lloyd George merely remarked: "Why should we have more than
300 candidates?"

Vivian Phillipps recorded: "I told him (LI. G.) we had 280 can
didates, whereas with adequate funds it could well have been nearer
400. He said to me:

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 249

" You do not want more than 300.*

"I replied: Why, that is ruin.

"He said: Oh no, this election does not count. 5 "

At the last moment LI. G. agreed to contribute 50,000. "We
managed to add some sixty-odd candidates to the 280, but the Party
had been assassinated and the electors had no use for this corpse/
wrote Vivian Phillipps.

The Liberal strength was reduced to 42, while the Conservatives
were returned to power with 415 seats.

In foreign policy Lloyd George pursued his vendetta against the
French. He described the Geneva Protocol of 1924, which provided
for the outlawing of war and compulsory arbitration supported by
sanctions against an aggressor, as "a booby trap for the British".
Would the French refer disarmament and the evacuation of the Rhine-
land to arbitration, he sneered. He even went so far in mischievous
speech-making to hint that history would regard Locarno as "slobber
ing melodrama". There were passages in some of his speeches which
were almost an incitement for Germany to march into the Rhineland.

His articles in the Press, which were syndicated all over the world,
were, wrote Dr. Thomas Jones, "inspired by such animosity to France
that he and Riddell quarrelled over them and were estranged for some
time".

Meanwhile he used every opportunity to snipe at the leadership of
the Liberal Party and to criticise the competence of Party H.Q,. Sir
Robert Hudson, who was treasurer of the National Liberal Federation,
attended a private Party meeting and demanded bluntly of Lloyd
George: "How much money have you got? Where did you get it
from? What do you propose to do with it? "

Lloyd George declined to answer any of these posers. In the Life of
Sir Robert Hudson one learns: "The Lloyd George fund hung over the
Million Fund (the appeal launched by the Liberal Party in 1925)
and finally extinguished it. The small subscribers ear-marked their
subscriptions for their local associations; the bigger ones wanted to
know more of the facts before they gave freely."

The failure of the Million Fund drew from Lord Rosebery a letter
to The Times referring to the Lloyd George fund and asking: "What is
this sum, how was it obtained? It surely cannot be the sale of the
Royal Honours. If that were so, there would be nothing in the worst
times of Charles II and Sir Robert Walpole to equal it."

The reply from Lloyd George s office was: "We do not think it
necessary to comment on Lord Rosebery s letter further than to say
that the fund which Mr. Lloyd George controls was raised in a way
that does not differ from that followed by the Conservative Party or

25O THE MASK OF MERLIN

by the Liberal Party in the days before the Coalition, and that all
along it has been devoted to legitimate Party purposes/

This is a distinct change from the original suggestion that it was
raised for "fighting Bolshevism".

It is not denied that on various occasions Lloyd George subsidised
the Liberal Party from the fund. But the manner of doing this was
arbitrary and autocratic. During negotiations with Mr. Vivian
Phillipps, LL G. said he regarded the fund as "at his own disposal, to be
given to or withheld from the Central Office of the Party, upon such
conditions as he saw fit to impose".

Not only did LL G. dictate terms upon which he would contribute
to the Million Fund, but he obstructed the fund in every possible way.
"No doubt it was as obvious to LL G. as to everyone else that the
greater the success of the Million Fund, the less would be the de
pendence of our Central Office upon financial help from him," wrote
Vivian Phillipps. "... He assured me that I need not trouble about
Wales, as he would be responsible for looking after the fund in the
Welsh constituencies. From that moment, so far as Wales was con
cerned, the fund became a fiasco, and it soon began to look as if LL
G. s method of * looking after the fund in Wales was to block every
attempt from London to make it a success."

On July 13, 1925, Vivian Phillipps had an interview with LL G.,
who told him that he "had consulted his Trustees and that he was
prepared to subscribe 20,000 a year for the next three years to the
(Liberal Party) Organisation. . . . There was, he said, one difficulty
which he felt must be satisfactorily cleared up and that was the matter
of the new Land Policy. He disclaimed any idea of desiring to force
the Land Policy upon the Party, but he said he felt it would be a
ridiculous position for him, if he had bound himself to subscribe
20,000 a year to the Liberal Organisation and then found that the
Headquarters Organisation was not merely giving no hand to the
Land Policy, but might actually be opposing it."

Phillipps s reply was that he personally could not accept a contri
bution of that kind save with the assent of the Administrative Com
mittee of the Million Fund. "He (II. G.) did not raise any objection
to this, but suggested that the 20,000 a year might be subdivided
in three or four lesser divisions under initials in the public list of the
fund.

"I said I thought I should have to tell the Administrative Com
mittee that he had made this offer, as they would naturally wonder
where these large donations came from, and, at the same time, they
might well be under the impression that he was doing nothing to help.

"He went on to say that in addition to the 20,000 a year, he was
prepared to bear the whole expense of the Land Policy campaign."

Plans were made for a Party conference to consider the Land Policy,

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 25!

and Phillipps called on LL G. and reminded him of the arrangement
which he had suggested, and which Asquith had accepted, that pro
vided the Shadow Cabinet were prepared to hold such a conference,
he would instruct his "Trustees" to send a letter binding themselves
to implement his offer of 20,000 towards the expenses of Headquarters
for the current year.

"To my astonishment he repudiated any knowledge of any such
agreement," wrote Phillipps. "He would make no contribution to
Party funds until he knew what the conference might have decided
about his Land Policy."

Then Lloyd George, in breach of his unofficial undertaking to
Party H.Q., announced in his own newspaper, the Daily Chronicle, the
launching of a "Great Land Campaign" under a new organisation
styled the "Land and Nation League", with himself as its president.
Protests poured into Liberal Party H.Q. against the launching by the
leader of the Parliamentary Party of a policy which had not yet received
the official approval of a Party conference. Subscribers to the Million
Fund wrote in withdrawing their support,

Phillipps summed up the situation as follows: Lloyd George "had
ignored Asquith s appeal to him; he had gone back on his promise to
me of help for Headquarters; he had repudiated the agreement, to
which he himself had been a party, to avoid public propaganda for the
Land proposals until they had been approved by the conference and
he was now threatening the Party with a refusal of any financial help
unless it undertook to make his Land proposals an integral part of its
official policy."

There was marked opposition to that part of LL G. s policy which
aimed at "nationalising" the land, undoubtedly a proposal aimed at
winning left-wing support. But though Runciman and other right-
wing Liberals regarded the Land Policy as involving nationalisation,
Asquith did not take this view and was sincerely anxious to thrash out
an agreed and detailed policy. Some of the best brains in the country
were employed in working out LL G. s Land Policy which, despite
certain financial problems which it posed, could have prevented the
agricultural depression of the thirties and certainly would have avoided
the evils of the present system of subsidies. LL G. had, with that
inborn pessimism that was never far from the surface, convinced him
self that Britain s industrial supremacy had gone for ever and that her
people must grow more food on their own soil. His idea was that the
state should take possession of agricultural lands, paying off existing
landlords, but giving them security of tenure at fixed rents, providing
they kept their land properly cultivated and, more important, de
veloped it, using more modern methods. By this scheme, in theory
at least, production would be increased, and profits raised without
rents being increased.

252 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Yet even as late as 1925 Lloyd George was still dickering with the
possibility of an alliance with the Tories. When Baldwin announced
that the Government had decided to grant a subsidy to the coal mines
in order to give time for the owners and miners to come together on
the question of hours and wages, LI. G. caused surprise by what
appeared to be an appeal for a Tory revolt against Baldwin s leader
ship. He taunted Churchill (now back in the Tory ranks) as one
"who had been very eager to fight the Reds on the Volga, but had
run away from them on the Thames, leaving his purse behind". He
inferred that he would have no truck with the demand of the miners
for a subsidy in aid of wages.

In view of Lloyd George s irresponsible attitude during the General
Strike of 1926 this is an important point to bear in mind. Vivian
Phillipps wrote to William Pringle, a back-bench Liberal of the "Wee
Free" persuasion:

"If he (LL G.) could manoeuvre a combination with some of the
Tories for No surrender to Communism* or some similar cry, he might
down Baldwin and Ramsay at one blow."

At the same time J. L. Garvin was suggesting in the Observer that
men like J. H. Thomas and Lloyd George "would not be averse to a
policy of construction, production and communication throughout the
Empire". While LL G. was negotiating with the Liberals about his
Land Policy, he was scheming with Garvin to revive a Centre Party,
The Observer fulfilled the compact between them by stating that "Mr.
Lloyd George s gifts for national leadership may be urgently wanted".

But once it was clear that Baldwin s position was not being under
mined and that any idea of a Centre Party could not be revived, Lloyd
George turned smartly to the left. He felt that MacDonald s leader
ship of the Labour Party could not be long maintained, not merely
because MacDonald was causing increasing dissatisfaction to his left-
wing supporters, but by reason of his sudden liking for the drawing-
rooms of Mayfair.

Lloyd George s succession to Asquith, now in the Lords as the Earl
of Oxford and Asquith, as Parliamentary leader had done nothing to
improve the fortunes of the Liberal Party, at least half of whose
members mistrusted him. But the final show-down which led to his
absolute rejection by millions who had previously voted for him came
when he revealed his attitude to the General Strike of May, 1926. To
keep this story in its proper perspective it is important to recall that
when the Sankey Coal Commission in June, 1919, recommended by
nine votes to five the nationalisation of the mines, LI. G. had rejected
the plan. He slammed the door hard on the one enlightened proposal
which might have avoided the bitterness, the recriminations and the
anarchical attitude which besetted and besotted the problems of
Britain s coal for so many years.

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 353

By this single act he inevitably paved the way for the General Strike
of 1926. His rejection hardened the hearts of the miners who resolved
to challenge the nation at the first opportunity.

In fact, it says much for Baldwin s handling of his Government s
relations with organised labour that a show-down did not come earlier
than 1926. There is some evidence that Baldwin foresaw the risks of
a general strike, played for time by not aggravating labour relations
and worked feverishly behind the scenes to build up a " shadow "
organisation which would ensure the strike s failure when it came. It
is hard to imagine the placid Baldwin working feverishly at any time,
but he certainly showed more foresight on the home than on the foreign
front. Matters came to a head when the Royal Commission of Inquiry,
under Sir Herbert Samuel, recommended some immediate reduction
in miners* wages, for which the coal owners had been pressing, and
urged the acquisition by the state of the ownership of coal, but not
the nationalisation of the industry. This was a somewhat provocative
and two-faced recommendation, and it added insult to injury by
suggesting that the coal subsidy should not be renewed. Indeed the
whole report was unhelpful, unrealistic and, in a sense, an incitement
to direct action. The miners had had a very bad deal over a long period
and the threat of a cut in wages with no prospect of any real ameliora
tion of conditions gave them a strong case.

But, when the Council of the T.U.C. proposed a general strike, if
the Government " failed to make any acceptable proposals", and in
effect held the nation to ransom, a very different situation arose.

The Liberal Shadow Cabinet decided to condemn the strike and
support the Government in resisting it. Lord Oxford suggested the
Government should facilitate an accommodation with the miners and
that the coal subsidy should be continued pending the reaching of an
agreement.

The sequence of events clearly shows what was in Lloyd George s
mind. On May 7 he had an interview with MacDonald, Clynes and
Snowden. He told them he was compelled to make an appearance of
"contesting" against the General Strike, but that his sympathies were
really with the T.U.C. He was prepared to attack the Government, but
he realised that if he did so it would cause a serious breach in the
Liberal front.

What would their attitude be, he asked, if he decided to attack the
Government and possibly march boldly into the Labour camp. Then
he reminded his listeners that he had the residue of a large political
fund which, in the present state of trade union finance, would be useful
to them if a general election should suddenly be fought upon this
issue,

MacDonald, Clynes and Snowden refused to commit themselves,
but promised to "sound out" other Labour members. That these

254 THE MASK OF MERLIN

"soundings" were made is quite clear from an article by Josiah Wedg
wood, M.P., in an article in the Evening Standard of June 27, 1926.
Wedgwood declared : "The Labour members of the House of Commons
had been asked as to what their views would be if LI. G. desired to
join them."

J. H. Thomas confirmed that approaches were made by LL G. and
he personally seemed in favour of them But the Sunday Worker, a left-
wing Labour newspaper, emphatically rejected the plan in an article
which was headed: "We won t touch him with a barge pole," and
added: "We warn any politician in the Labour Party who thinks of
bringing this man in that he will be flung out of the window first."

When the Liberal Shadow Cabinet met on May 10, a letter was
received from LI. G., declining to attend, He attacked the Shadow
Cabinet for refraining from criticising the Government. Afterwards he
said the action of the Government was "precipitate, unwarrantable
and mischievous".

This marked the final cleavage between Lloyd George and Lord
Oxford. To make matters worse LI. G. wrote an article for the
American Press in which he had nothing to say against the stoppage
of work and even suggested it would be of long duration. His policy
at this time was to hinder and obstruct the Government, to make
personal capital out of the whole issue and to leave himself uncom
mitted in the hope that the strike would last long enough to bring
about the downfall of the Government and pave the way to a Coalition
of Lloyd Georgian Liberals and Labour.

There were even secret negotiations between Lloyd George and
A. J. Cook, one of the fieriest of the miners leaders, and it was from
this source that LL G. seems to have been assured that the strike would
last for a few months. In accepting this assurance he made a faulty
judgment, for after nine days the strike was unconditionally called off
by the T.U.C., a decision described by Baldwin as "a victory for
common sense".

Meanwhile, at a Sunday service in a Welsh Baptist chapel in London,
Lloyd George had told his congregation that "if Jesus Christ had been
one of the Liberal leaders at the time of the General Strike, He, prob
ably, would have been excluded from the Shadow Cabinet".

Neither Lord Oxford, nor his leading colleagues, would accept the
olive branch which LL G. preferred after the strike. Lord Oxford
wrote to him: "I have refrained from writing to you until the strike
was over and the life of the country had resumed its normal course.
I should not be doing my duty as Leader of the Liberal Party, if I did
not convey to you my regret at the course which you pursued in the
greatest domestic crisis which the country has had to confront in your
time or mine."

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 255

Lord Oxford referred to LL G. s article in the American Press: "It
contains a despondent, though highly coloured picture of our national
traits. It predicts a long duration of a conflict and the ultimate wearing
down on the steadfastness of our people through worry about their
vanishing trade . I cannot but deplore that such a presentation of the
case should have been offered to the outside world on the authority of
an ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain and the chairman of the Liberal
Parliamentary Party."

In reply Lloyd George talked scornfully of "the privilege of being a
Liberal Shadow" and reproached the "official gang" of the Party
with having "allowed Labour to capture the old Ark of the Covenant,
which for over three centuries had been resting in the Liberal Temple ".

After more than four months during which he had refused to co
operate with his old Liberal colleagues, Lloyd George offered to
provide the election expenses of some 300 Liberal candidates in the
rural constituencies. Mr. Vivian Phillipps circulated to members of
the Liberal Shadow Cabinet a memorandum of which the following
is an extract:

"The position is that Lloyd George is now offering to make a sub
stantial contribution to the next general election fund, at a moment
when the difficulties he created in May last are still unresolved and
the resources of Liberal Headquarters are precarious and dwindling.
If the position taken up by Lord Oxford and his Shadow Cabinet
colleagues in May last remains unaltered, how can this offer be
accepted? . . . The acceptance of the offer will mean that well over
half of the candidates at the next election will be financed by Lloyd
George and, because of this, chosen by him."

This offer was a barely veiled ultimatum: Lord Oxford could retain
the leadership of the Party only at the price of making his peace
with LI. G. and accepting a "dole" from the latter s fund. Lord
Oxford, worn out with ill-health and his mind set against further
wrangling, resigned from the leadership of the Party in September,
1926.

With Lord Oxford out of the way Lloyd George increased and
improved his offer to include the financing of urban as well as rural
candidates. Mr. Phillipps in his papers made the remarkable revelation
that Charles Hobhouse, one of the leading lights of the N.L.F., repre
sented to the Party s Administrative Committee that "if they accepted
LI. G. s proposal, the whole of his personal fund* would be handed
over to Liberal official headquarters."

This bait was undoubtedly laid with the full knowledge of LL G.,
who was closely associated with Hobhouse, but it is equally certain that
Lloyd George never had any intention of parting with the whole of

256 THE MASK OF MERLIN

his fund. Shortly afterwards a meeting of the Administrative Com
mittee was packed with LI. G. supporters at least a dozen of whom
had never previously troubled to attend a meeting and, on their
motion, carried by a majority of four, Vivian Phillipps was called upon
to resign from the chairmanship. This was the price demanded before
LI. G. would fulfil his promise of financial aid to the Party.

The Morning Post commented: "The money is paid over and the
body of Mr. Vivian Phillipps is thrown out of the committee-room
door! Never since the head of John the Baptist was delivered on a
charger has there been a transaction more crudely and cruelly direct,
and in such circumstances the use of words like trust and * honour
seem singularly out of place/

There is an illuminating passage on these events in a note made by
Vivian Phillipps of a conversation he had with Sir Robert Hutchison,
Lloyd George s Whip.

"He (Hutchison) said that Lloyd George was *all over the shop .
Hutchison had asked LI. G. whether Herbert Samuel would be accept
able to him as my successor. LI. G. was not at all favourable.
"Hutchison then said: Well, what about Charles Hobhouse?
"LI. G. said: Hobhouse! He isn t fit to run a whelk stall. "
Hutchison told Phillipps: "If all the decent men in the Party will
have nothing to do with him, he (LL G.) is finished, and the money
won t save him. My dear Vivian, I don t understand how you have
borne it."

By the time Lloyd George became leader of the Liberal Party
suspicion of him among the chief figures of Liberalism was so marked
and mistrust of his tactics so acute that he had little hope of maintaining
a united front* The management of his personal fund had passed to
a committee on which were two ex-Whips, Charles McCurdy and
William Edge. Later there was a new and enlarged committee, of
which Lord St. Davids was chairman.

A good deal of money from the fund was expended on drawing up
a plan for curing unemployment. Lloyd George enlisted the support
of some of the most brilliant economists of the day, men like Walter
(later Lord) Layton, Maynard Keynes and H. D. Henderson. Ideas
flowed from these fertile minds, brilliant pamphlets were poured out
of the presses, but they were little more than the blueprints of econo
mists living in their ivory towers surrounded by statistics. Nothing
short of dirigisme and a planned economy could have made them
practicable, and in this direction Lloyd George and his planners were
ultra-timid in their approach.

Added to this was Lloyd George s extravagant claim that if the
Liberals were returned to power, he would reduce the number of

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 257

unemployed by 50 per cent. Apart from LI. G M no one in the
Party knew how it was proposed to do this. It would have meant
finding work for 700,000 at a time when unemployment was still
increasing.

In 1929 six per cent of the population of Britain had been un
employed for eight years. The Welsh valleys were doomed; their
population dwindling. In the Rhondda alone the population had
dropped by 35,000 in ten years. In the distressed areas of the north,
the midlands and South Wales there were whole streets of empty shops,
and property which had brought good rents in 1919 was now derelict.
To rescue the nation from the apathy and dejection into which it had
sunk it required something far more dynamic either than Stanley
Baldwin s electoral slogan of "Safety First", or the theorising of Lloyd
George s team of academicians.

Can Uoyd George Do It? was the tide of a book which aimed at giving
the public the economic facts of life in simple terms. It was a com
petent little pamphlet written by Keynes and Henderson; an apter
title would have been Can Maynard Keynes Do It? for the central theme
was the familiar Keynsian thesis that in times of depression and un
employment vast sums must be spent on public works. A decade later
these methods were being put into practice effectively through the
stimulus which rearmament and redistribution of wealth through full
employment gave nations in wartime.

The Lloyd Georgian-Keynsian case was that since 1921 a sum of
500 millions had been paid out in unemployment relief: this was
enough to build a million houses. Lloyd George s calculation of the
development programme suggested by the authors of the pamphlet
was that 100 millions a year would bring back 500,000 men into
employment.

The programme on which Lloyd George went to the polls in 1929
was a technocrat s blueprint without the positive co-ordination of
state and private enterprise measures for putting it into action. It
relied too much on the co-operation of Government and private enter
prise; its implementation would have called for much more drastic
measures than were suggested: for example, the nationalisation of
transport and the mines, the establishment of development corpora
tions. Lloyd George was not prepared to commit himself to such
controls. Yet, with all its limitations, the Liberal programme was the
best of any in this election, and very similar policies were adopted a
few years later by President Roosevelt to enable America to recover
from the slump. Certainly the economic policy of the Liberals ill
deserved the sneers of the Tories "relief work" was how Churchill
termed it. "We are opposed to such a system especially when directly
conducted by the state," was the reply of Chancellor of the Exchequer
Churchill, now a high priest returned to the Tory temple.

258 THE MASK OF MERLIN

During the election Churchill complained that the Lloyd George
fund, which was "Raised for the express and avowed purpose of
enabling Conservatives and Liberals to make common fight against
Socialism, is now being used for the purpose of securing the return of
as large a number of Socialists as possible. It is an unjustifiable action,
a breach of moral faith."

This was one of the few occasions on which Churchill spoke really
harshly against LI. G. The allegation, of course, was not strictly correct
as far as Lloyd George s intentions were concerned, but in effect the
Liberals helped in many constituencies to put Labour in and put the
Tories out. The people were not dazzled by the election posters of a
white-haired Lloyd George in white armour on a white charger slaying
the Dragon Unemployment. They rejected this prospect as emphatic
ally as they turned down Baldwin s "Safety First" plea. The election
gave Labour 289 seats, the Tories 260 and the Liberals a mere 58,
despite their poll of twenty-three per cent of the votes cast.

Labour showed itself as irresolute, incapable and fearful of tackling
the unemployment problem as it did in facing up to the rapidly de
teriorating economic crisis. Unemployment rose alarmingly as the
effects of the Wall Street crash in the autumn of 1929 were felt in
Britain. Inevitably talk of coalition was in the air.

Lloyd George leaned a little further left, In March, 1931, at a
meeting of Liberal candidates at Caxton Hall, he declared: "In the
working of the three-Party system, unless common action between the
two Parties (Labour and Liberal) is obtainable, the democratic system
for which Liberalism has fought is utterly doomed. A defeat of the
Government on a major issue today, with trade and unemployment as
now, would mean that we should have a protectionist majority."

But if there was some measure of agreement between Liberals and
Labour on the issues outlined by Lloyd George unemployment, dis
armament, an Indian Settlement and Free Trade the right wing of
the Liberal Party, headed by Sir John Simon, firmly opposed Labour s
complicated and ambiguous Trade Union Bill and the proposed tax
of a penny in the on land values. Lloyd George supported the
latter under a mistaken impression that it was based on the principles
of land taxation embodied in his own Budget of 1909. In effect the
new plan meant that landowners who were already taxed under
Schedule A would be taxed twice over, a grossly inequitable proposition.

Towards the end of July, 1931, Lloyd George had to undergo a
serious operation inconvenient at the time for him, but a remarkably
opportune moment for Baldwin. The Conservative leader immediately
got in touch with Simon. Despite the prospects of an unbalanced
Budget, LI. G. refused to regard the approaching crisis as anything
more than a bankers ramp and he confidently believed he could form
an alliance with Labour on terms of equality with Ramsay MacDonald.

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 259

His intuition about a bankers ramp was nearer the mark than was
conceded at the time, but in his hopes of making a deal with Mac-
Donald he was being unduly optimistic. MacDonald found himself
increasingly alienated from some of his colleagues and was dismayed
by their refusal to take unpopular measures to check the flight from
the pound. To what extent the role played by King George V exceeded
the bounds of strict constitutional procedure may be a matter of con
jecture for many years to come. The King encouraged the formation
of a National Government and laid himself open to the charge of a
"Buckingham Palace plot" by failing to consult other Labour leaders.
Thus when the Labour Cabinet broke up and a National Government
was formed, with MacDonald at the helm and Baldwin, Simon and
Samuel as his chief colleagues, it appeared as though the King had
connived at a plot hatched during the recess.

The phrase "National" Government was a misnomer; this was
essentially a Tory Government with MacDonald its outwitted prisoner.
It went far beyond its immediate mandate, which was to check the
flight from the pound, and made the financial situation the excuse for
exaggerated economies. It was bad enough to cut the salaries of state
employees, but it was indefensible to slash unemployment benefit by
ten per cent. Lloyd George s first inclination, once the new Govern
ment was a fait accompli, was to veer round towards agreeing for the
need for it. But when it became known that MacDonald would appeal
to the country he regarded this and rightly so as a Tory plot to
gain a majority. He was angered at MacDonald allowing himself to
be inveigled into an election which he dubbed as "a partisan intrigue
under the guise of patriotic appeal ".

Baldwin was shocked out of his usual imperturbability when he heard
Lloyd George had suggested from his sick bed that he should be taken
to Buckingham Palace in an ambulance to confer with the King,
MacDonald and the Tory leader. Had such a meeting taken place
the whole situation might have been transformed; it is certain that
Lloyd George would have argued against an election. But the ambu
lance trip never took place and Baldwin recovered his equilibrium.

Speculation as to whether Lloyd George would join the Labour
Party was again aroused when a secret meeting was held at Ghurt
between Arthur Henderson and the Liberal leader. At this meeting
it was agreed that no Labour candidate should oppose any member
of the Lloyd George family at the forthcoming election.

LL G. told the Daily Herald correspondent, W. N. Ewer, "Where
there is no genuine Free Trade Liberal candidate and a Labour Free
Trader opposes a Tory Protectionist, I would vote Labour without the
slightest hesitation. The return of Mr. MacDonald and his Tory
friends to power would be disastrous to all progress. It would put the
clock back over eighty years."

260 THE MASK OF MERLIN

LI. G. took no part in the election. The battle was fought in his
own constituency by his family, friends and gramophone records of
the master s voice. The election, which was waged by methods almost
as discreditable as those of the "Coupon Election" of 1918, produced
a stampede towards Toryism. The National Government, having told
the electorate that Labour proposed to confiscate Post Office savings
a dastardly lie, brazenly propounded by, of all people, Philip
Snowden, the Socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer was returned
with 554 seats, 47 1 of them going to the Tories. LI. G., his son Gwilym,
his daughter Megan and a relative by marriage, Major Goronwy
Owen, all won their contests to form a tiny and ineffective group in
the new Parliament,

In prophesying that a victory for Toryism would put the clock back
eighty years, Lloyd George may have been exaggerating, but he was
certainly near to the truth. The National Governments of 1931 and
1935 dawdled through the economic crisis with the negative policy of
deflation, neglected to conquer unemployment and failed lamentably
to give the nation adequate defences, reducing Britain to the status
of a feeble and arthritic power which swiftly became the chief target
for impudent political attacks by Germany and Italy. This Govern
ment of uneasy compromise declined to invest in the Commonwealth
and neglected to utilise the vast sums of unused capital on deposit.
It connived at the disintegration of the League of Nations, encouraged
every aggressor from Tokyo to Berlin, dismayed its allies and evoked
the contempt of its enemies. Not a man in those two Governments
could match Lloyd George for ability or drive, but, alas, the political
Titan of the past had tarnished his reputation by the corruption which
power had brought to his soul.

"The view of the Lloyd George fund as a trust rather than a Party
chest accords with a Deed signed on May 5, 1925, by D. Lloyd George,
J. T. Davies, C. A, McCurdy, W. Edge and H. Fildes," wrote Frank
Owen in Tempestuous Journey* Yet Lloyd George had declined to reveal
the names of the trustees to Vivian Phillipps. Later Lord St. Davids
told Sir Herbert Samuel that the fund stood at 765,000 and about
the same time LI. G. was writing a letter to the Marquis of Reading,
claiming that it was "not a Party fund at all".

After 1931 the name of the fund was changed from "National
Liberal Political Fund" to "Lloyd George Fund". In 1937 there was
an extraordinary suggestion that Dr. Addison, now a Labour M.P.,
should serve as a trustee, but this idea appears to have been scotched
by Lord St. Davids. It would seem that at that time Lloyd George
was again toying with the idea of giving some kind of financial assistance
to Labour, for by this time the idea of a Popular Front of Labour,

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 261

Liberals and Communists against Fascist aggression was being built
up. Labour stamped on the idea by expelling Sir Stafford Cripps
from the Party when he openly advocated it.

Then in 1939 the Liberal leaders set up a private inquiry into the
fund to see whether any money could be claimed from it, They took
this step because two of the trustees had died within three days of one
another. One of Davies executors tried to prevent the fund being
transferred back to Lloyd George. But Sir Wilfrid Greene (later Lord
Greene) gave it as his opinion that the fund was indisputably Lloyd
George s and that he could, if he wished, "gamble it away at Monte
Carlo *.

Figures produced at the time of the Liberal Party inquiry showed
that a sum of 1,375,000 had been spent out of the fund between 1918
and 1935 on expenses for general elections, contributions to the Liberal
Party fund, etc. This would suggest that the estimate of a 3 millions
fund at some time or other was fairly accurate. But do these figures
tell the whole story? Dr. Thomas Jones stated that Lord St. Davids
"destroyed" the papers relating to the fund. Why were they destroyed
and what secrets did they contain? Was it desired that later trustees
should not learn the exact details of how the fund was built up, or
even the original total of the fund?

The Trust Law of this country is extremely complicated. Wharton s
Law Lexicon says a "Trust is simply a confidence reposed either expressly
or impliedly in a person for the benefit of another. Since it is not
necessary that a Trust be declared in writing, but only so manifested
and proved, no form is requisite either as regards the nature of the
instrument or the language; the Statute will be satisfied if the Trust
can be established by any subsequent acknowledgment of the Trustee,
however informally or indirectly made, as by letter under his hand, or
by a recital in a deed, provided it relate to the subject matter and the
precise nature and object of the Trust can be ascertained/*

But the precise nature and object of the trust of the Lloyd George
fund remained even more baffling after the technically accurate, but
frivolously expressed observation of Sir Wilfrid Greene. After Lloyd
George s death the Inland Revenue authorities made inquiries about
the fond, but were satisfied it was a private trust, which, by law, need
not make disclosures. So public curiosity as to the exact amount of
the fund and the purposes for which it existed remained unsatisfied.
One important question has been answered since and biographers of
Lloyd George have not referred to it. When Lloyd George died many
Liberals believed that the bulk of the fund would pass to the Party
funds. This belief caused some people to withhold subscriptions from
the Liberal Party until the position could be cleared up. An official
approach was made by the Liberals to the trustees. The reply was
polite but firm: the Liberals could expect no payment from the fund.

262 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Yet in 1931 Lloyd George had laid down terms, approved by the
trustees, that grants should be made from the fund for "political
purposes which would advance Liberalism in this country".

The Lloyd George fund is but one example of the undemocratic
workings of such trusts and funds to which money may have been
given under a misapprehension as to the purpose for which it could be
used. In the past the Tory Party was dominated by the power of the
brewers purses, yet today trade unions* contributions to the Labour
Party funds constitute a similarly unsatisfactory situation. It is highly
desirable that Party funds should be raised as far as possible solely by
membership subscriptions from individuals and not from commercial
firms, honours* touts, pressure groups, business organisations and

trade unions.

* * * * *

By 1934 Lloyd George was, temporarily, at any rate, turning right
again. The Liberals were hopelessly split up into Simonite, Samuelite,
Lloyd Georgian and even pro-Labour groups, all at war with one
another. Lloyd George wrote to Sir Herbert Samuel saying that he
was not a candidate for any office in the Liberal Parliamentary Party
because he was at variance with the disastrous course into which the
Party had recently been guided.

During 1934 he prepared another programme of "reconstruction**,
worked out in consultation with various agricultural and industrial
experts. This time he spoke as an elder statesman, aiming at a non-
Party appeal. But the prescription offered was not very different from
that suggested in 1929. The project attracted favourable attention
from some of the younger Conservatives, notably Harold Macmillan
and Robert Boothby. But it placed far too much emphasis on agri
culture and was ridiculously optimistic in its estimate of how many
extra people could be settled on the land. Lloyd George was bemused
by the belated success he had himself attained as a farmer, forgetting
that he was a rich man who could afford to play with thousands of
pounds before results were achieved.

Nevertheless he still clung to the idea that he might yet return to
power, and overtures for a reconciliation with the Government were
made at various levels, "During these months," wrote Dr, Thomas
Jones, "Lloyd George thought it just possible that he might be asked
to join a refashioned Cabinet. Baldwin, who became Prime Minister
in June, 1935, was now believed to be not unwilling to welcome LI. G."
But three people resolutely opposed any arrangement of this nature
Mrs. Baldwin, who was reported to be adamant against such a sug
gestion, Simon and Neville Chamberlain, who hinted that he would
resign if LI. G. were included in the Cabinet.

As an antidote to political frustration, Lloyd George founded the
Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction, which not only

NOW RIGHT, NOW LEFT 263

attracted the interest of many non-Party people, but of some Tories
who were promptly blacklisted by the Whips.

Reference has been made in earlier chapters to the evidence which
Lloyd George gave to the Royal Commission on the Private Manu
facture of and Trading in Armaments in 1936. It is indeed strange
that biographers who have praised him so extravagantly for less praise
worthy actions should have disregarded his opinions on arms manu
facture. For Lloyd George left the Commission in no doubt as to what
his opinion now was : he emphatically supported a state monopoly for
arms manufacture. As has already been shown, in many respects he
contradicted views he had previously held, but in a written memoran
dum he made a cogent and forceful case against the private manu
facture of armaments "to avoid the creation of powerful vested interests
whose prosperity depends upon war". Rearmament, he argued,
doubled the value of holdings of every shareholder in arms firms.

Here again was another example of those fascinating changes of
front of which Lloyd George was capable. The man who had backed,
intrigued with and honoured Zaharoff had never completely let go
of the pacifist beliefs of his youth. Political expediency might call for
deals with armament racketeers, but this was something apart from
what one felt to the very core of one s convictions. Perhaps only a
Welshman could think this way, perhaps, more probably, only a great
individualist would be bold enough to admit it, but Lloyd George
then proved against majority opinion, against the Government,
against his old subordinate, Hankey, and against that massive, material
istically-minded body of mediocre minds, the trade unionists of the
right-wing, who lapped up rearmament as a means to fuller employ
ment that he was in the vanguard of progressive forces in a bid to
take the cancer of private interest from the bowels of national defence.

KING S CHAMPION

"And indeed he seems to me
Scarce other than my king s ideal knight,
Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen d to it;
Who loved only one and who clave to her
Her over all whose realms to their last isle.
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse,
Darkening the world. We have lost him; he is gone."

Lord Tennyson

Had anyone told Lloyd George during the Boer War that he would
one day become the champion of a king whom Parliament had re
jected, he would probably have laughed outright at the suggestion.

Yet, despite jibes at the monarchy in his youth and a dislike of
Queen Victoria for her undisguised mistrust of Liberalism, he grew
to have an affection for the Throne which was deep and abiding.
With King George V he often clashed, but angry words from his
Sovereign never dismayed or upset Lloyd George; he accepted them
with equanimity and replied with all the charm at his command.
There was a measure of Celtic mysticism behind LI. G. s regard for the
monarchy. He had to believe that his Sovereign was King of Wales
as well as of England, as indeed he was, but until George V s reign
there was very little appreciation of this truth from the Throne itself.
Yet Lloyd George felt that if Wales could not get Home Rule, at least
she could be accorded a greater degree of recognition by the monarchy.

A story is told of one day, when he wandered through the streets of
Caernarvon to the archway entrance to the ancient grey turrets where
sat Mrs. Watkins-the-Castle, the stout, cheery saleswoman in the
black straw mushroom hat, who kept a stall and sold picture postcards,
and dolls in the Welsh costume of high hat, shawlan bach&gt; check apron
and red cloak.

"Good morning, Mrs. Watkins," he said in Welsh. "It s a pity
now that those lovely dolls of yours aren t real. Charming Welsh girls
they are and soon I suppose we shan t see their like again."

264

KING S CHAMPION 265

"Pity it is, too, Mr. George. Pity it is, too, that this old castle is
dropping to pieces. Can t you do something about it now in London?
High time it is we had a Prince of Wales come to see his true home.
There s something you might see about as well, Mr. George/

This talk with Mrs. Watkins-the-Castle set Lloyd George thinking.
He walked round the castle, climbed the stone stairs to the top of
Eagle Tower and peered through the long arrow-slits in the masonry
out across the Menai Straits. Looking down at Queen Eleanor s Gate
from which, centuries before, there was shown to the Welsh people
a babe, the infant son of an English King born in Caernarvon Castle,
he pondered on whether this ancient piece of history could not be
reconstructed in the form of a majestic pageant that would make the
Welsh feel the monarchy belonged to them.

The picturesque ceremony of the investiture of the Prince of Wales
at Caernarvon Castle had been neglected for three centuries. Lloyd
George decided to press for its revival. In this he received the ardent
support of his old antagonist, Bishop Edwards of St. Asaph, later to
become the first Archbishop of Wales when the Welsh Church was
disestablished under the Coalition Government. But in some quarters
the idea was regarded as a betrayal of Home Rule principles. A Welsh
Nationalist newspaper stated: "There has been talk here in Caernarvon
of the visit of some Prince of Wales, but the truth is that no such Prince
exists. The last Prince of Wales was Llewelyn . . . but as for the young,
fair-haired boy who comes amongst us, let him knock at any cottage-
door to ask for a drink of water and we would give him milk and a
welcome. *

The Prince of Wales was seventeen years old in 191 1. "Surprisingly
enough," wrote the Duke of Windsor in A King s Story, "Mr. Lloyd
George, who only a few years before had shocked my family with his
famous Limehouse speech attacking inherited privilege, decided that
its revival (the investiture) would appeal to the national pride of his
people. With an eye to what would please his constituents, LL G.
proposed that the ceremony be transformed into a spectacular Welsh
pageant. My father agreed."

King George told LL G. : "You had better take the Prince in hand.
Teach him to speak Welsh." So the radical Welshman became the
tutor of the Prince for a brief spell, and the Duke of Windsor still has
in his possession some of the Welsh sentences he spoke at the investiture,
copied out in Lloyd George s own handwriting.

"Out of these meetings," wrote the Duke, "despite the difference
in our years and, I might add, in politics grew a friendship that
lasted until his death."

For Lloyd George the investiture was a personal triumph in which
he took the greatest delight. Caernarvon made the perfect backcloth
for this superb piece of pageantry, with Snowdonia s peaks proudly

266 THE MASK OF MERLIN

holding up their heads to the July sky. The young Prince in his white
satin breeches and purple mantle, edged with ermine, with a slender
coronet cap on his fair hair, was not the only figure dressed specially
for the occasion; Lloyd George himself was a resplendent principal in
his uniform of Constable of Caernarvon Castle.

Yet if the occasion was pure symbolism, who knows what lasting
impressions it may have made on the leading actors. There was King
George V, who hinted gravely to his son that if he went through this
ceremony satisfactorily it might help him in his dealings with the
"difficult Mr, Lloyd George". The young Prince seems to have had
a distaste for the pageantry and dressing up: "I decided things had
gone too far . . . what would my Navy friends say if they saw me in
this preposterous rig? ... I made a painful discovery about myself.
It was that, while I was prepared to fulfil my role in all this pomp and
ritual, I recoiled from anything that tended to set me up as a person
requiring homage." Was this a shadow of events to come? Was the
act of abdication conceived subconsciously in the impressionable mind
of a young Prince that day at Caernarvon?

And Churchill, too, who was present in the capacity of Home
Secretary. He had rehearsed his part on the golf links with Lloyd
George. Did this act of faith and pageantry inspired by Lloyd George
bring him closer to the fiery radical? One can well believe that it
contributed towards such a frame of mind.

From that day in July, 1911, Lloyd George always insisted on
regarding the Prince as a Welshman. Here, he felt, was a future
monarch who could bring the democratic touch to the throne, one who
had at an early age shaken the dust of the Court from his feet and
rubbed shoulders with ordinary people in the trenches. He set out to
win over the Prince as an instrument through which he could modernise
the conception of the monarchy and relate its message overseas.

"The Prime Minister also had ideas for my employment in the
Empire beyond the seas. ... He was anxious that before the ardour of
wartime comradeship had wholly cooled, I should set forth at once
upon a series of tours to thank the various countries of the British
Commonwealth, on my father s behalf, for their contributions to the
war. ... As he once explained to me, the appearance of the popular
Prince of Wales in far corners of the Empire might do more to calm
the discord than half a dozen solemn Imperial Conferences."

In this decision Lloyd George was undoubtedly right and he acted
with great imagination. Not since the days of the young Henry VIII
had a scion of the British royal family so fascinated the ordinary people
everywhere as Edward, Prince of Wales. The half-shy, half-wistful
smile won the hearts of Australia and Canada as it had at home. The
monarchy seemed about to enter a new and more glorious phase. But,
as the Duke later ruefully admitted, Lloyd George "drove me hard".

KING S CHAMPION 267

The globe-trotting tours, the constant round of receptions, the founda
tion stone-laying, the planting of trees, the speech-making and civic
functions were wearying in the extreme; the adulation, the hero-
worshipping made it hard for a young Prince to settle down and live
a normal life.

When, after a tour of nearly 41,000 miles, the Prince returned to
Britain, Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, welcomed him back in
this speech at the London Guildhall:

"Whatever our feeling for him was before he went to India, it is
deeper today. It was a high act of statesmanship, carried through with
inimitable gifts of grace, of tact and of a drawing attachment which
is so very much his dominant characteristic. More than that, it was a
high act of courage, carried through with faultless nerve.

"There were difficulties, there were menaces, there was an atmos
phere which gave great concern to everyone. He went indomitably
at the call of duty, and whatever the Empire owed him before, it owes
to him a debt which it can never repay today."

"A debt which it can never repay." That was a phrase which was
quickly forgotten in 1936. But Lloyd George, to his credit, did not
forget. Whether his motives were disinterested, inspired by a desire
to make political mischief, or actuated by his own personal feelings on
the subject of love and duty, one cannot be sure. But he could claim
with every justification that he became the King s Champion when
almost every hand was against his monarch and when the people who
had lauded him often hysterically a few years earlier now indulged in
one of those occasionally disgusting exhibitions of moral humbug
which make the British race so incomprehensible to foreigners. How
could a French Catholic be made to understand why a nation, who
had defied the Pope so that Henry VIII could get a divorce, should
now make so much fuss merely because a modern king wanted to marry
a divorced woman? Meanwhile the long knives were being sharpened
by pompous parish priests and narrow-minded bishops; all the bitter
gall of the Book of Ecclesiastes was being distilled in vitriolic sermons,
and once again Lloyd George was the audacious, lonely and un
orthodox campaigner fighting for a lost cause.

LL G. had welcomed the accession of King Edward VIIL His
heart warmed to the monarch who defied protocol-worshipping Court
officials by walking to his office in the rain, holding up an umbrella
like any other citizen. He admired the new King s passionate desire
to do something for the unemployed, chuckled when he learned that
the monarch felt that the Baldwin Government was inert and inept in
tackling this problem.

"The King will do what nobody else can do," LL G. told James
Maxton. "He will get rid of this Government, not by unconstitutional
methods, but simply by showing that he is more concerned about the

268 THE MASK OF MERLIN

unemployed than they are. Why, King Edward VIII is the Labour
Party s greatest asset if they only knew it."

This remark, which was made in a loud voice in the lobby of the
House of Commons, was repeated back to Stanley Baldwin. It was
meant to be. Baldwin stirred himself from his usual lethargy to con
sider the problem of a King who, wittingly or otherwise, allowed
himself to be associated in the popular mind with the underdog.
To Baldwin and his Tory colleagues this was not "playing the
game". Some, notably Chamberlain, wanted Baldwin to persuade
the King to play down this role and avoid visits to the distressed
areas.

Whatever the apologists for the Abdication may claim, there is
little doubt that the King s independence of mind and his keen interest
in social and economic problems with which the Government only
temporised, tended to set ministers against him quite as much as his
well-known friendship with Mrs. Simpson. When King Edward,
accompanied by the Minister of Labour, Ernest Brown, toured the
grim and jobless valleys of South Wales, he was moved to tears by the
tragedy around him, a tragedy heightened not by resentful faces and
sullen hatred, but by the friendliness, the gleam of hope in the gaunt,
pinched faces and by the festooned Davy lamps which were the best
the out-of-work miners could do in the way of decorations. The
pathetic attempts at cheering by men and women with empty stomachs
and the sad little smiles of bare-footed children brought a lump to the
King s throat.

It was on this occasion that he made the simple, rather obvious,
but nevertheless sincere utterance: "Something must be done."

That was a natural, innocuous human heart-cry, but in Government
circles the word "must" was regarded as tactless and implying that
the Government had done nothing.

Lloyd George knew all about the King s devotion to Mrs. Simpson
and sympathised with his Sovereign s difficulty in resolving this problem
of the heart. He had been kept closely informed of the matter and
also of the anxiety of some ministers to force the King s hand. Never
theless, it was hardly in keeping with his desire to help the King to
pass the information on to William Randolph Hearst, the American
newspaper proprietor, at whose British home, St. Donat s Castle, LI. G.
had often been entertained.

Lloyd George s view was that Baldwin acted far too dilatorily in the
beginning and that in the end he forced the Sovereign into an im
possible position. He also shared Lord Beaverbrook s opinion that
underground and underhand forces in public life and in the Press
deliberately paved the way for the Abdication. And he let it be known
that if the King ever wanted "a champion against Baldwin and Com
pany, I am prepared to fill that role".

KING S CHAMPION 269

Baldwin knew this and dreaded its consequences. It was, therefore,
with relief that the Prime Minister learned that LL G. had gone to
Jamaica on holiday. If he needed any prompting it was provided not
by Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times, but by Wickham Steed,
an earlier editor and one who, as we have seen, was never well
disposed towards Lloyd George. Steed told Baldwin: "There is not
a moment to be lost. If this matter is to be settled without appalling
dangers to the country, it must be settled now while Lloyd George is
abroad. For I have information that LL G. intends to make a political
issue of this. You will find he will try to create a King s Party."

Baldwin grunted non-committally, but he took notice all the same.

The mystery of the "King s Party" has never been completely
solved, if indeed there ever was so foolish an organisation in anything
other than the heads of a few misguided people. Those who had either
been groomed for it, or who had groomed themselves for it, have since
maintained an absolute silence. But Wickham Steed was wrong in
thinking that Lloyd George would have created such a Party. He was
far too wily a politician for that. What he would have done was to
exploit such a Party. The British Union of Fascists, under Sir Oswald
Mosley, was certainly in favour of a King s Party, but in fairness both
to King Edward and Sir Oswald, the former had nothing to do with
this and the latter had not the ulterior motives suggested by his
adversaries. The late Sir George Sutton declared that "150 business
men and industrialists were willing and ready to form a King s Party,
if the need arose". One can well imagine into what a hotchpotch of
reaction and semi-Fascism any such combination might have developed.

There are indications that an attempt was made at government
level to mislead Lloyd George at this time. "There had," wrote Mr.
Malcolm Thomson, "been no indication of an imminent constitutional
crisis when Lloyd George left for Jamaica. LI. G. afterwards declared
that he would never have left London, if I had not been deceived
about the true situation ."

But once again Baldwin outwitted LL G. He had his plans well
laid; his agents had made very sure of their ground. From the Labour
leaders and from the new and Conservative-minded Liberal Party
chief, Mr, Clement Davies, he had had unofficial promises of support.
Me-tooism was rampant in all political circles. Speeches, Press leader
articles and even sermons had been written weeks beforehand to wait
for just such a moment as this. The signal was given for the silence
barriers to be lifted, and Press, Bishops and minor clergy rushed to
denounce the man whom for years they had idolised in the most
extravagant terms.

Baldwin forced the issue: renounce Mrs. Simpson or go. To this
the King replied, as one would expect from a man of honour: "I
intend to marry Mrs. Simpson and I am prepared to go."

27O THE MASK OF MERLIN

Lloyd George was "profoundly distressed" at the news. "He agreed
that Mrs. Simpson could not become Queen/* wrote Mr. Malcolm
Thomson, "but he did not want to lose the King and would have
been willing to allow a morganatic marriage by which she would be
the King s wife, but not his Queen. He was out of touch with the
currents of opinion in Britain which were mainly hostile to any such
solution/

But were they "mainly hostile ? We shall never know for certain,
because public opinion was given no time either to make itself felt,
or to form an accurate judgment. It is certain that the Government
would never have dared to take a referendum on this matter. The
creation of a "King s Party" was also a possible, if not a serious risk.
Lord Beaverbrook has said: "When Dawson set out to mobilise opinion
against the King in the columns of The Times he deliberately sup
pressed all the letters which were in favour of the King."

The History of The Times stated: "Dawson organised an analysis
of the vast mass of correspondence that had poured into Printing
House Square the largest ever received in order to have the
basis for the following day s leader. . . None of these letters
to the editor was ever published, but they were studied for the
indication they gave of the progress of public opinion. The earliest
letters, following the shock of the first newspaper comments,
mainly reflected an unquestioning loyalty to the occupant of the
throne."

It is beside the point that later letters "gradually wavered and gave
way to a more critical approach". For by then the King s case had
gone by default.

Lloyd George feverishly prepared to return to Britain to do battle
for the King. He sent out messages, insisting on the King s right to
marry whom he chose and was anxious to join with Churchill in an
onslaught on the Government. But Baldwin refused a debate in the
Commons and compelled the King to sign the instrument of Abdication
before Lloyd George could return.

The Christmas after the Abdication, appalled by the attacks on the
ex-King and the deplorable "they stand rebuked" tirade against the
King s friends by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd George sent
this cable to the newly created Duke of Windsor:

"Best Christmas greetings from an old Minister of the Crown who
holds you in as high esteem as ever and regards you with deep and
loyal affection, deplores the shabby and stupid treatment accorded to
you, resents the mean and unchivalrous attacks upon you and regrets
the loss sustained by the British Empire of a monarch who sympathised
with the lowliest of his subjects,"

This cable has often been criticised as a mischievous and un
warranted intervention. In fact, coming just after the unedifying

KING S CHAMPION 271

spectacle of Christian prelates crucifying verbally a man who was
down and out, it summed up the true feelings of the majority of the
British people.

The unctuous Archbishop had done more to restore the ex-King in
the people s favour than anyone else could have achieved: after Cosmo
Gordon Lang s vituperation Lloyd George s message was a signal of
returning sanity and sense of proportion. The Duke replied: "Very
touched by your kind telegram and good wishes which I heartily
reciprocate. Cymru am byth."

Lloyd George always took the view, which he caused to be aired
in the American Press, that the King had been partly dethroned
because of his sympathy with "the lowliest of his subjects". It was a
distortion of the facts, but it had an iota of truth in it all the same.
His views on the Abdication, however, soon brought trouble on his
head, this time, ironically enough, in Wales. Mr. Thomas Water-
house, chairman of the North Wales Liberal Federation, said:

"I hold strong views on this matter and I am indeed surprised that
Mr. Lloyd George should have thought fit to intervene, particularly
as the North Wales Liberal Federation passed a resolution during the
crisis expressing their determination to stand behind Mr. Baldwin and
the Government to uphold the dignity, authority and integrity of the
Throne."

Other prominent Liberals also criticised LI. G. One comment was
that he "had shocked the consciences of many Christian Welshmen
from whom he drew votes at election time" . In Caernarvon Boroughs
it was estimated that he had lost himself at least 2,000 votes.

Meanwhile, LL G. agreed to sit on the committee to frame the new
King s Civil List, fixing the incomes of the Royal Family. He registered
a protest against the fact that no State provision was to be made for
an income for the Duke of Windsor. A year later, while holidaying
at Cannes, he dined with the Duke and Duchess.

The lessons of this tragic chapter of British history do not seem to
have been learned. The whole position regarding royal marriages
remains obscure, archaic, unsatisfactory and inhuman. A similar,
though far less serious, problem concerning a proposed royal marriage
occurred again in the fifties. Future governments need to take warning
from a letter which the Duke of Windsor received from a friend: "I
must humbly express my intense admiration of your obvious and
inflexible determination not to encourage a King s Party . It was
within your power to create Civil War and chaos. You had only to
lift a finger, or even to come to London to show yourself, to arouse
millions of your subjects to your support."

Another time such a situation might end in the overthrow of the
monarchy. That was Lloyd George s firmly held view. In 1936
Britain was in a bewildered and fluctuating mood when confronted

272 THE MASK OF MERLIN

with a situation people had never dreamed could ever confront them.
A King s Party would have been an act of absolute folly, drawing into
its wake all the most irresponsible and reactionary elements of business,
industry and politics, and the quasi-romantics with their impractical
sentimentalism. It could have provoked an opposition equally irre
sponsible and ended in a bitter struggle between left and right,

Lloyd George summed up this problem when he told Lord Castle-
rosse: "An institution so pampered and panoplied as the British
monarchy is bound to be changed into a hot-house plant and that is
just what we have done with it. When Victoria was on the throne,
awkward old devil that she was, at least the monarchy fended for
itself and, though she was sheltered at Osborne and Windsor, she
developed an uncanny instinct for symbolising the middle-class strength
of Britain. Under Edward VII and George V that trend was slightly
reversed even though Edward VII was more progressive in his out
look than Queen Victoria. It was reversed because the aristocracy,
for whom the old Queen never had much time, now began to draw
closer to the monarchy for protection from what they believed was an
attack on their privileges by the Commons. But Edward VIII could
have changed all this. He could have brought about a spring-cleaning
of the monarchy, wiping away the cobwebs from its palaces."

All that Edward VIII unhappily succeeded in doing was to reveal
the hitherto hidden truth that the Sovereign is as frail as any flower
in the fields. The Abdication may have been right, but its cost was
the stifling of the sure instincts of Sovereigns of modern times for paving
the way for the right sort of changes. All such changes seem better
when the impetus appears to come from the highest in the land. Self-
effacement was the useful but negative virtue which George VI had
to offer. But self-effacement, surrounded by panoply and mysticism,
is not the ultimate answer.

VISIT TO HITLER

" You are old, Father William, the young man said,
And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Do you think, at your age, it is right? * "

Lewis Carroll

While Neville Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer was putting
his faith in a cheap-money policy and Imperial Preference as the cure-
all for Britain s economic ills, Adolf Hitler, one-time corporal and
house-painter, was solving Germany s problems of poverty and un
employment with remarkable success.

This noisy demagogue of the Munich beer-halls had by personal
magnetism, relentless political pressure and bloodcurdling denuncia
tions of the "enemies" of Germany, made himself more powerful than
the Kaiser had ever been. He was, wrote Churchill in 1933, "The
child of the rage and grief of a mighty empire and race which had
suffered overwhelming defeat in war."

By the mid-twenties Lloyd George had revived much of his early
admiration for Germany and he continually urged that her claims to
equality of status and fairer treatment were well founded. At Bar-
mouth in September, 1932, he declared: "All the trouble that has
arisen in Europe and in Germany in particular has come from a
flagrant breach of the undertaking to disarm by all the victors but one,
and the League of Nations failure to enforce that pledge has destroyed
its moral influence. If the Powers succeed in overthrowing Nazism in
Germany, Communism will follow."

This was very much the Hitler theme, and one which was pro
pounded by such misguided intellectuals as the Marquis of Lothian
and Lord Allen of Hurtwood and by bankers and economists such as
Montagu Norman and Josiah Stamp. Yet already Hitler had shown
his hand by his ruthless suppression of opposition, his anti-Jewish
pogroms and his contempt for liberal democracy. If ever there was
a moment when Britain should firmly have announced her deter
mination to stand by France this was it. Strangely, while tolerating
Hitler, Lloyd George was harsh on Mussolini. He was not opposed
to giving Germany back some of her former colonies "as a gesture",
but he condemned Mussolini s march into Abyssinia. Even when

273

274 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Hitler made a fool of the Western Powers by occupying the Rhineland
and had the impertinence to back it up with the offer of a twenty-
five-years peace pact, Lloyd George thought this should "be taken
seriously".

Undoubtedly LI. G. was influenced by the views of his old friend,
Philip Kerr, now Marquis of Lothian, who, while lecturing France
in tones of moral indignation, proclaimed that Germany was inspired
by a noble crusade against Bolshevism.

In Germany Lloyd George s views on the new regime were noted
with approval and interest. When Hitler insisted that "we must not
lose this unexpected and valuable ally of the German Reich", his
Ambassador in London, Herr von Ribbentrop, formally invited Lloyd
George to visit Germany. The Welshman willingly agreed, though he
was cautious enough to announce that his visit was simply to see what
Germany had accomplished in conquering unemployment. Lothian
had hailed the trip joyfully and Professor Conwell-Evans, of Konigs-
berg University, a Welshman who enthusiastically supported Hitler at
that time, was requested to make the necessary arrangements and act
as interpreter.

There have been various versions of the meeting between Lloyd
George and Hitler on the Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden, on
September 4, 1936. It lasted for four hours and was, wrote Dr. Thomas
Jones, who accompanied Lloyd George s party, spent "in the friendliest
fashion".

"For Hitler s National Socialism and his totalitarian system Lloyd
George had no sympathy whatsoever," wrote Malcolm Thomson.
This can hardly be reconciled with LI. G. s enthusiasm over his German
visit, his extravagant praise of Hitler on his return, or by the evidence
of those who overheard their talks.

When Hitler walked briskly down the steps to greet the white-haired
British statesman, there was nothing of the arrogance and chilly
contempt with which he later received Chamberlain. The Fiihrer
was in his sunniest and most charming mood.

"I am particularly glad," said Hitler as he shook hands with Lloyd
George, "to greet in my house the man who always seemed to us to be
the real victor in the world war."

"And I regard myself as lucky," replied Lloyd George, "to be able
to meet the man who has gathered the whole German people behind
him and who has helped his people rise again after defeat."

They sat together in the reception room of the Berghof, of which
the most striking feature was the vast window which filled one side
of the room and looked out on the Berchtesgaden countryside in the
full glory of its September sunlight.

Details of their conversation can be pieced together from the state
ments both published and unpublished of various people who were

VISIT TO HITLER 275

present, including Dr. Thomas Jones, Mr. A. J. Sylvester and Dr.
Paul Schmidt, chief interpreter of the German Foreign Office, who
gave a very detailed account in his Statist auf Diplomatischer Buehne*

Lloyd George told Hitler that "alliances are always dangerous. In
the last war they spread hostilities like a prairie fire. Without them
the conflict might have been localised". This ill-chosen view, of course,
coincided exactly with Hitler s insistence on the futility of collective
security.

The two men also discussed German measures for solving unemploy
ment, relief works and Nazi methods of teaching people how to use
their leisure time. There appears to have been only one disappoint
ment for Hitler: LI. G. declined to accept an invitation to attend the
Nazi Party meeting in Nuremberg. "I have not come to Germany
for matters of politics," said Lloyd George in explanation. "I wanted
to study your social institutions and above all your solution of the
unemployment problem. If I went to Nuremberg, it might be mis
understood in Britain."

Next day the veteran British politician and the dictator of the
German Reich met again for tea. Hitler presented his guest with a
signed photograph of himself, to which LL G. replied: "I am honoured
to receive this gift from the greatest living German. I shall place it
beside my pictures of Marshal Foch and President Wilson."

Dr. Schmidt described how Lloyd George asked Hitler: "To which
positions we had withdrawn, what moral effects the Allied counter-
thrust had made on us, and interrogated me almost as carefully as the
American interrogation officers in 1945.

"I had read in Glemenceau s memoirs of a dinner party which
Clemenceau and Lloyd George attended on the eve of the Armistice.
The future of Germany was discussed and Lloyd George was of a
different opinion from his French colleagues.

" What has happened to you? Clemenceau asked gruffly. You
have completely changed.

" Yes, don t you know that from today I am pro-German? LL G.
answered. Lloyd George assured me this story was true."

But if Hitler impressed LL G. the aged statesman charmed and
delighted Hitler. Heinrich Hoffman, Hitler s photographer, said Hitler
told him, "Lloyd George is the greatest visiting statesman I have
met." Hoffman also mentioned a remark of Lloyd George s: "You
can thank God you have such a man as your Fiihrer."

Hitler s admiration for LI. G. was not transitory. Even in 1942 he
continued to speak in highly eulogistic terms of the man who visited
him in 1936. Many of these remarks are recorded in Professor Trevor-
Roper s book, Hitler s Table Talk.

"Churchill s pre-destined opponent was Lloyd George. Unfor
tunately he is twenty years too old,"

276 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Or this judgment: "The man who without doubt will find himself
justified by history is Lloyd George. In a memorandum drafted at the
time (the Peace Conference) Lloyd George declared that, if peace
were made in the conditions foreseen, it would lead to the start of a
new war. The Germans fought so heroically, he wrote, that this proud
nation will never be content with such a peace. If Lloyd George had
the necessary power he would certainly be the architect of German-
English understanding."

Again in August, 1942, Hitler declared: "The Briton who made the
deepest impression on me was Lloyd George. Eden speaks a repulsive,
affected type of English, but LI. G. is a pure orator and a man of
tremendous breadth of vision. What he has written on the Versailles
Treaty will endure for ever. He was the first man to declare that the
Treaty would lead to another war.

"I asked Lloyd George why it was that he had failed to gain his
point when negotiations for the Peace Treaty were in progress. He
explained that Wilson opposed him from the beginning and that the
French never ceased from their witch-hunt. It was not his fault and
he had done all that was in his power to do."

Lloyd George reminded him that at the time "The British were
hated by France, He also told me that he was surprised and taken
aback when at the last minute the German delegation declared its
readiness to sign. As they went out Clemenceau hissed in his ear:
Voila! "

From these scraps of conversation and comment it is possible to
gain a fairly accurate picture of the line which Lloyd George took with
Hitler: criticism of the recently signed Franco-Soviet Treaty, stressing
the bad points of the Versailles Treaty, while ignoring the prospects
of collective security which it could have offered.

Evidence of the damaging admissions Lloyd George was prepared
to make about his own country is provided by Heinz Linge, Hitler s
valet. "I believe that it was not only Ribbentrop, but your own great
statesman, Lloyd George, and other British visitors who helped to
implant in Hitler s mind the idea that Britain hated the idea of war,
and from this he drew the conclusion that Britain would put up with
anything rather than fight again.

"After Lloyd George visited him at the Berghof, Hitler said to me:
Lloyd George has just told me that for some time during the war
Britain was on the point of surrender, I told him I believed the
German mistake was that we surrendered at five minutes to twelve.

" He agreed with me. I have told him that if there is ever another
war between Germany and Britain, so long as I am the Fiihrer, Ger
many will fight until five minutes past twelve/

"It may be that the version he gave me of his meeting with Lloyd
George was due to a mistranslation of what the British statesman

VISIT TO HITLER 277

really said. Maybe. But whether those words were actually used by
Lloyd George or not, the impression was firmly implanted in Hitler s
mind that they had been."

During his visit Lloyd George saw factories, reclamation schemes
and even the labour camps of Robert Ley s Arbeitsfront. There can be
no excuse that he did not know what was going on in Germany, for
Dr. Schmidt has testified that Lloyd George "got to know Robert
Ley s Arbeitsfront people quite well and was taken to see the social
installations ". In other words he saw some of those camps bearing
the sardonic motto Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free) over the
entrance gates, but which were really concentration camps.

On his way home, according to Dr. Thomas Jones, Lloyd George
was "so enthusiastic in praise of Hitler and all his works that the
combined pressure of his fellow travellers had to be brought to bear
upon him to tone down his superlatives". This was a reference to an
article he was writing for the Daily Express.

"I have never seen a happier people than the Germans, and Hitler
is one of the greatest of the many great men I have met," he told
reporters on his arrival back in London. "I am fully convinced that
the German people earnestly desire peace. . . . Undoubtedly Germany
fears an attack by Russia, and in the same way Russia fears an attack
by Germany. Germany, too, is very suspicious of the Franco-Russian
Pact, It is quite natural that she should be suspicious, because you
have two of the most powerfully armed countries in the world on her
frontiers. This is really why Germany is re-occupying the Rhineland.

"We hear a great deal of the efforts that Germany is making in th*
direction of rearmament, but very little is said of the colossal scheme*
that are being pushed through for the development of the internal
resources of the country and the improvement of their working
population.

"They have reduced unemployment from six millions to one million
in three and a half years that in itself is a very great achievement"

But it was his Daily Express article that attracted most attention and
which sent a shudder of horror through the ranks of orthodox Liberal
ism. It was a wildly extravagant tribute to Hitler: "One man has
accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic,
dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and
a dauntless heart. . . . The old trust him; the young idolise him. It is
the worship of a national hero who has saved his country from utter
despondency and degradation . . . not a word of criticism or dis
approval have I heard of Hitler. He is the George Washington of
Germany."

The George Washington of Germany: this recklessly eulogistic phrase
was to re-echo mockingly round the world, syndicated for profit in a
score of languages. But it was symbolic of an era summed up so well

278 THE MASK OF MERLIN

in Douglas Reed s Insanity Fair in which bishops told us the Nazis were
stamping out immorality and Tory back-benchers were referring to
Fascist Franco as "a gallant Christian gentleman".

A clue to the reason why Lloyd George detested Mussolini and yet
lauded Hitler was provided in a letter he wrote to Professor Conwell-
Evans at the end of 1937: "It looks as if the Fiihrer has committed
himself to Mussolini that adds enormously to the obstacles in the
path of a friendly accommodation of the troubles of Europe. Musso
lini is temperamentally an aggressor. I have never thought that Herr
Hitler was and I do not believe it now,"

It was the vanity, the posturing and petty boastfulness of Mussolini
which LI. G, disliked, and he could not, or would not, believe that
Hitler, who had achieved such power over a whole nation, could be
other than a great statesman. It was partly wishful thinking: Hitler
was for Lloyd George the sort of colossus he himself desired to be.

Meanwhile in Germany Lloyd George was marked down as a poten
tial ally of the Third Reich in the same way that Hitler had already
singled out Pierre Laval in France.

When Lloyd George sent his sympathetic cable to the Duke of
Windsor its contents were duly noted in the Berghof, and Hitler
decided that the ex-King and ex-Prime Minister would, in certain
circumstances, be a formidable and useful combination. Ribbentrop
also reported to the Fxihrer that "the ideal team for us in Britain would
have been King Edward and Lloyd George. Together they could
have achieved through public opinion all that we could desire".

Hitler heartily agreed about this, and so an invitation to the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor to visit Germany was sent from Berlin. The
intermediary was Charles Eugene Bedaux, an American businessman
who had become a member of the Windsors intimate circle of friends.
Bedaux was detested in America on account of his Fascist ideas on
industrial and labour problems and his close links with Nazis and
French Fascists. British friends, including Lord Beaverbrook, advised
the Duke not to make the trip, but he ignored their warnings, sincerely
believing this visit might help international relations. So in October,
1937, the trip, sponsored by Bedaux s friend, Dr. Ley, took place.

Working as a secretary in the archives of the Berghof was a young
woman, Helga Stultz, who was an informer for the American intel
ligence. She had been secretly married to an aide of Captain Roehm,
the head of the Stormtroopers who was purged in the blood bath of
June 30, 1934. The secret of the marriage had been kept from Roehm
because the aide had been a paramour of this notorious homosexual.

VISIT TO HITLER 279

When the aide was summarily executed after Roehm s death it was
still necessary for Stultz to hide her past, so she changed her name.
Not unnaturally Helga Stultz had no reason to love the Nazis. She
had come to spy for the Americans because they arranged for her to
smuggle funds to Switzerland where she had a child.

Back to Washington went this report from Helga: "I have overheard
a conversation between Hitler and Ley. They discussed the visit of
the Duke of Windsor. Ley said he was keeping in close touch with the
ex-English Prime Minister, Lloyd George, through the Arbeitsfront*
Hitler was very excited. * You must find a way of letting Lloyd George
know that in my opinion the only hope of an understanding with
Britain would be if he returned to power and the ex-King came back
to the throne. That cannot happen unless there is a war. But, though
the British don t want to fight and have no stomach for it, I believe
they may blunder into war. If that happens, they will collapse within
a year. We should have new rulers to dead with and I am certain
Lloyd George would give us back our colonies without any fuss. He
promised me he would agree to this.

" Lloyd George s position is not easy. He has to pretend to work
with the left-wing of his own Party and the ruling clique mistrust
him. But I am not without hope that Lothian may play a part in
removing the ruling clique s dislike of LI. G. " 1

That message was transmitted to Washington by a free-lance
American agent who happened to be on the staff of Admiral Canards
intelligence service.

For a long time Washington refused to believe it.

Secret lists of possible supporters of the Nazi regime abroad were
prepared in Berlin during the years 1937-39* These lists were fre
quently revised as intelligence reports constantly contradicted each
other. The chief failing of the German Secret Service was its de
centralisation, information being provided by some thirty competing
agencies. Copies of the lists have been discovered from time to time
since the war. Some are in private hands; others are in the hands of
Allied Governments. Lloyd George s name appeared on a number of
these lists. It was markedly prominent in 1936-37, it was demoted
from "probable" to "possible" in 1938, when for a brief period LI. G.
attacked Chamberlain s appeasement policy, but it was presented in
1939-40 as follows:

"David Lloyd George, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain 1916-22.
Critic of the Versailles Treaty. Has worked for National Socialist co
operation with England. The only politician with sufficient authority
and prestige to act as leader in the event of the downfall of the Cham
berlain Government and to maintain order by creating a pro-German
administration." A somewhat naive footnote added: "Alternatively

* Wythe Williams (see bibliography).

280 THE MASK OF MERLIN

might be made Gauleiter of Wales, if could be persuaded to

become head of the British Government."

In March, 1938, Lloyd George paid a visit to Paris. He met Leon
Blum, Paul Boncour, Herriot and Reynaud, but Daladier, the Prime
Minister, refused to see him, recalling that, whatever his views about
ending non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War which was then
raging, Lloyd George was notoriously sympathetic towards the Sudeten
Germans and that he had referred to Benes, of Czechoslovakia, as
"that little French jackal". And for Daladier the imminent dangers
of Germany s claims on Sudeten territory were of more importance
than the Spanish Civil War.

For a while Lloyd George warned the Government that the policy
of appeasement was leading to war, not pacification. "You have
retreated so often before the dictators that they have come to the
conclusion that there is no point at which you will stand. They are
convinced you won t fight. So am L"

Yet, while winning cheap popularity by his attacks on one of the
most unpopular and unconvincing Premiers Britain has ever had, he
gave ample evidence that he was not prepared to carry his opposition
to Chamberlain to the extent of defending every bastion of democracy
in Europe. When the Czechoslovakian crisis came his sympathies
were with the Sudetens and, privately, he agreed with Chamberlain
that "Czechoslovakia was not worth a war".

Not even the British Premier s belated guarantees to Poland,
Rumania and Greece impressed Berlin. Why should they when the
countries selected for such guarantees were territories which Britain
could not possibly defend? However defeatist Lloyd George s speech
of May 8, 1939, may have sounded, he was being realistic when he
declared:

"Without Russia these three guarantees to Poland, to Rumania and
to Greece are the most reckless commitments that any country has
ever entered into. They are demented pledges that cannot be re
deemed with this enormous deficiency, this great gap between the
forces arrayed on the other side and the forces which at the moment
we can put in."

The only military advisers the so-called National Governments of
iQS 1 --* were prepared to listen to were "yes-men". General Sir
Leslie Hollis, who was secretary of the Joint Planning Committee of
Imperial Defence during part of this period, has told how one draft
of a plan providing against attack by Germany on Britain was received
by the Cabinet. "It was rather a gloomy forecast . . the first draft
did not pull its punches. But our document by no means found favour
with them, Mr, Baldwin in particular was extremely cross Hankey

VISIT TO HITLER 28 1

gave me a severe dressing-down- My future in the Committee of
Imperial Defence clearly hung by a thin thread."

Hankey s influence on the Cabinet in these years appears to have
been quite the reverse of what it was in World War I. But the last
straw in the edifice of defence without bricks was Chamberlain, By
his obstinate, insensate folly he had changed the balance of power in
Europe overnight. He had put even the most resolute opponents of
the Nazi regime in an impossible position; the prospect of standing up
to Hitler without an alliance with Russia was far more "midsummer
madness" than the imposition of sanctions on Italy during the Abys
sinian crisis. In condemning the guarantees to three near-Fascist
powers with thoroughly corrupt governments, when we had failed to
stand by the democracies of Czechoslovakia and Republican Spain,
Lloyd George was, from any strategical conception, talking common
sense.

The die was cast in August when it was revealed that Ribbentrop
had brought off his biggest triumph a German-Soviet Pact of non-
aggression, largely if not entirely due to the fact that Chamberlain
had never taken talks with Russia seriously and had, as Lloyd George
aptly pointed out, only sent his "Foreign Office clerk" Strang to
discuss the possibility of military co-operation between the two coun
tries. LI. G. lashed out at Chamberlain in bitter tones and stung the
Prime Minister into promising that full details of the abortive negotia
tions with Russia would be published in a White Paper a promise
that was never fulfilled. Nine days later the invasion of Poland began.
When, after two days delay which shocked the nation, Chamberlain,
in the accents of a political mouse, spoke to the British people, and
announced that we were at war with Germany, Lloyd George said in
the House of Commons: "The Government could do no other than
what they have done. I am one of tens of millions in this country who
will back any Government that is in power in fighting this struggle
through."

It was the last time that he so positively and openly supported the
war effort.

WORLD WAR II

"Here lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot."

John Milton

Lloyd George was convinced that Chamberlain would not last long
as Premier. Because of this he continued to be a prophet of doom and
gloom. When Germany announced the partition of Poland after her
first victorious blitzkrieg and said that Britain and France could have
peace if they desired it, he urged that this question should be con
sidered in secret session of the House of Commons. He suggested a
conference between Britain, Germany, Russia, Italy, France and the
United States.

"I do not propose to do anything to weaken the hands of the Govern
ment, but I ask the House and the Government to pause and not to
be in a hurry coming to a conclusion.

"In my judgment, if you had a conference, it would be a first-class
mistake to enter into it unless you invited not merely Russia and Italy,
but the United States as well, because there you have a great power
whose interests are not European interests and which has not been
involved in any of these disputes and quarrels.

"The fate of this war may depend not upon Britain and France
and Germany, but upon the neutrals. Italy has proclaimed herself
neutral. 1 The fate of this war may well depend upon the attitude of
these three powers."

His speech was attacked. Duff Cooper "deplored and regretted it"
as a "suggestion of surrender". Sir Henry Morris-Jones, Liberal-
National (Simonite) member for Denbigh, declared that Lloyd George
"had done a great disservice to this country. Wales would be ashamed
of the words he uttered".

Chamberlain s refusal to consider a conference only made Lloyd
George more determined to follow up this theme. At a special meeting
of the Council of Action in London he proposed that Britain should
invite Hitler to state his peace terms. On October 21, 1939, he told

1 Italy did not enter the war until the following year.
282

WORLD WAR H 283

people at Caernarvon that "we could be firm at a conference as on
the battlefield". At the same time he developed the argument that,
even if Germany were crushed, the next and more dangerous enemy
might well be Russia. The tremendous interest which this meeting
aroused many of the 8,000 present came from as far afield as Liver
pool and the midlands was a tribute to the magic which LI. G. still
evoked.

"The international situation," he declared, "has fundamentally
changed with the signing of the Russo-German pact, and our diplomacy
should be based on the realisation of this fact. The reluctance to open

large-scale hostilities reveals a desire for peace The Prime Minister

has himself predicted that the war will last for three years. The Russo-
German pact may well prolong that period, for it has appreciably
diminished the chances of a blockade. I, therefore, think that if there
were an opportunity of achieving our aims by peaceful means now it is
better than running tremendous risks and incurring terrible sacrifices
to achieve at the end terms which might not be better than those we
have a chance of securing now, providing we obtain the presence and
help at the conference of neutral states who are as anxious to avert the
consequences of a prolonged war as we are. That is my proposal."

Lloyd George went on to condemn the "rash guarantee to Poland
without even consulting Russia". It was, he pointed out, only after
Britain had given her guarantee to Poland that negotiations with
Russia were opened. "Two-fifths of Poland is not Polish at all. It is
occupied by men of another race, language and religion who protested
fiercely against this act of aggression by Poland and even fought
against it. The Supreme Council of the Allies in Paris protested
against it. The Versailles Treaty did not recognise it. Vilna was sub
sequently annexed by Polish forces in spite of the protest of the League
of Nations. I am very glad to learn that the Russians have restored
it to the Lithuanians, to whom it belonged. We guaranteed Poland
without reference to these facts.

"We guaranteed Poland without even consulting our General Staff
as to whether it was possible to make such a guarantee effective. I
rose immediately in the House of Commons and said that you could
not send a single battalion to the aid of Poland without first of all
securing the help of Russia, and I described a guarantee without
Russia s aid as an act of madness walking into a trap. You must
agree with me that what I said then has been completely justified by
the event. We never sent a single tank or gun to Poland because it
was impracticable. We might have relieved the pressure on Poland
by our Air Force. We employed our aeroplanes to amuse the Germans
with childish tracts."

Lloyd George had been the only politician ruthlessly and accurately
to expose the futility of the guarantee to Poland without first obtaining

1284. THE MASK OF MERLIN

the aid of Russia, His logic here was indisputable. One can criticise
the wobbling policy which he pursued in these years, one can condemn
the lack of principles and the ever-present desire to improvise policies
according to the exigencies of the moment, the urge to have a foot in
both camps. Yet it must be conceded that he pinpointed the dangers
and sign-posted the errors and fatuities of the Government with much
greater foresight, lucidity and imagination than any other critic of the
Government at this time. It would be quite erroneous to suggest he
was suffering from senile decay. He never had the unflagging patriotism
of Churchill, and he regarded his old colleague s return to office at the
Admiralty with some dismay. LI. G. feared that Chamberlain might
blunder to defeat through sheer incompetence, but he feared even
more that Churchill might lead the nation to defeat by obstinately
refusing to recognise that the combination against Britain was too
formidable. By this time he realised that if Chamberlain had to go,
Churchill was a natural candidate for the leadership on the strength
of his pre-war warnings about Nazi Germany.

From September, 1939, until May, 1940, the war was looked upon
by a majority of the British people with an apathy and calm indifference
that seems incredible when one contrasts it with the Dunkirk mood
of a few months later. Lloyd George probably misinterpreted this
mood as meaning the British people had no heart for a long and hard
war, whereas in reality what the people disliked was the uncertainty
of the military position and the unreality of the "Phoney War" period.
In Britain the fact that the Germans had refrained from attacking the
Maginot Line and bombing open cities over here did not impinge on
their nervous systems so much as was the case with the French, whose
morale was undermined during the long lull in fighting during the
winter months.

Lloyd George s mind was as flexible as ever early in 1940. One
moment he would be talking in the accents of defeatism, the next he
would be evolving novel ideas for surprising the enemy. In the New
York Journal he complacently assessed the reasons why Germany was
stronger than in 1914, saying "as the belligerent nations will be all
equally tired of the costly futility of war which provides no spectacular
appeals to national emotions, they will be in no mood to prolong a
destructive conflict for the satisfaction of the ambitious schemes of
their leaders".

Yet Lloyd George was one of the first to see tremendous possibilities
in raising a force of Commandos, He even claimed to have originated
the phrase when he told Admiral Sir Roger Keyes: "Don t let us copy
what we did in the Boer War, let us copy the Boers. Don t launch
whole armies on a big front, but send out surprise attacking parties of
Commandos like the Boers, at night, and where they are least
expected." Whether LL G. really impressed this idea on the military

WORLD WAR II 285

initially one cannot tell, but Admiral Keyes s biographer records that
Lloyd George had a long talk with Keyes, whom he greatly admired,
more especially as Keyes was a stern critic of Chamberlain. The subject
of this talk was Combined Operations, of which Keyes was eventually
made Chief. LL G. believed that Commando operations on the South
African model could be employed at relatively little cost of life to make
surprise attacks during the stalemate on the Western front.

On March 14, 1940, LL G. conferred with Sumner Welles, President
Roosevelt s "peace ambassador". Immediately afterwards there was
a report in the American Press that Lloyd George might enter the
Cabinet. He certainly confided to his friends that "my day will come
yet" and continued to lead vigorous assaults on the toppling Chamber
lain Government: "Don t turn yourselves into a bomb-proof shelter
for an inept government." The Norway debacle, when after a gallant
naval action, the British were forced to retreat, made the Prime
Minister s "Hitler has missed the bus" speech seem foolish in the
extreme. Chamberlain made a further error when he talked about
his "friends" saving him in the division lobby. Lloyd George had not
intended to speak that day; he was in the smoking-room of the House of
Commons when a friend reported to him what Chamberlain had said.

" His friends?" exclaimed LL G. in amazement. "He has dared in
the face of this terrible fiasco to plead for his friends to support him?
I never recall such a thing happening in Parliament before in a national
crisis. I wasn t going to speak, but now I must."

Then, without time for preparation and completely off the cuff,
Lloyd George tore into Chamberlain with a series of crushing retorts.
He intended to break the Prime Minister and force his resignation,
and his forthright denouncement must have made many Tories abstain
from voting.

"It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister s friends," he
stormed in the Commons, "but a far bigger issue. He has appealed
for sacrifice. I say solemnly that the Prime Minister should give an
example of that sacrifice, because there is nothing which can con
tribute more to victory than that he should sacrifice the seals of office."

Chamberlain won his vote of confidence by the narrow margin of
eighty-one votes. There were some in the Cabinet who were weary of
the war and believed that Chamberlain should stay on in office until
France and Belgium fell and then make way for a government which
would be prepared to sue for peace with Germany. Not all these
intrigues were conducted by members of Parliament; powerful figures
outside Parliament and close to the throne were even prepared to
suggest to King George VI that, in the event of the fall of France,
the King should send, not for Churchill, but for Lloyd George. In this
event Lothian would probably have been recalled from Washington
to become the new Foreign Secretary. There was still a powerful

286 THE MASK OF MERLIN

anti-Churchill clique who, while disliking Lloyd George, preferred him
to Churchill.

As for George VI, his own biographer, John Wheeler-Bennett, has
revealed that it would not have been Winston Churchill for whom the
King would have sent if he could have avoided it. George VI was
probably the worst-equipped and least politically knowledgeable
monarch who could have sat upon the throne of Britain in such a
crisis. Only the constitutional system saved him from precipitating an
appalling blunder and then only by a political hair s breadth. The
King at that time though later they were to be on the best of terms
distrusted Churchill, partly because of his opposition to Chamberlain
before he entered the Cabinet, but mainly because of the role he had
played in supporting his brother, Edward VIII, at the time of the
Abdication. The King wrote in his diary about his last interview with
Chamberlain; "We then had an informal chat over his successor. I,
of course, suggested Halifax, but he told me that H. was not enthusias
tic, as being in the Lords he could only act as a shadow or a ghost
in the Commons where all the real work took place. I was dis
appointed over this statement as I thought H. was the obvious man." 1

The contrast between the commonsense political nous of his father
and this new and naive monarch shows how perilously the functions of
the monarchy operated in this time of crisis* It does more than this:
it reveals how uninformed and ill-briefed George VI must then have
been on the political facts of life. Halifax was a peer, and ever since
Curzon was turned down for the Premiership it had been generally
accepted that the Prime Minister must be a Commoner. In addition,
Halifax, though a man of great integrity and high principles, was far too
closely linked with the policies of appeasement to be acceptable to the left*

Sir Harold Nicolson, giving his own views of the dangers of those
dark days when a groping monarch was utterly at the mercy of bad
advisers, has said: "If there had been no Winston, I rather think that
Chamberlain would have gone on until we were pushed out of France.
Then he would have resigned and the King would have sent for Lloyd
George. Lloyd George was hopelessly pessimistic at the time of Dun
kirk. I used to see him from time to time he kept an office in Mill-
bank. ... He thought it was "all over that s what he used to say.
He told me so several times/

Fortunately Chamberlain decided to go before any of these plans
could mature. Public opinion and the new-found enthusiasm of
Labour for Churchill swept him out of office. But the same obstinate
sentimentalism which made Churchill recall Fisher to the Admiralty
in World War I caused him to turn to Lloyd George as a new candidate
for the Cabinet in World War II. It could have been a fatal error.

1 Lothian believed that Halifax in the Lords and Lloyd George in the Commons would
have been an ideal combination.

WORLD WAR H 287

There was something about LL G. which always mesmerised Churchill
on occasions. Despite intermittent sharp attacks on his old ally, Win
ston never forgot that Lloyd George fought tooth and nail against Tory
opposition to bring him back into the wartime Coalition Cabinet as
Minister of Munitions. Lord Boothby in his memoirs recalls a meeting
between Churchill and LL G. when the former was Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the latter out of office. Churchill told Boothby: "It is
a remarkable thing, but Lloyd George hadn t been in this room for
three minutes before the old relationship was completely established
the relationship of master and servant/

There are conflicting views of what happened at this time. Mr. A. J.
Sylvester says that when Churchill asked LI. G. in the middle of May
whether he would join his Government, the latter was agreeable. But
the morning after Churchill took command, LL G. was reported to
have said: "It would be impossible to be in a Cabinet like that. They
would be fighting me."

Correspondence between Churchill and Lloyd George makes it
clear that the latter was asked to join the Government and equally
obvious that the major obstacle to this from LL G. s point of view was
Chamberlain s retention in the Cabinet. Garvin, editor of the Observer,
had had a talk with LL G. and expressed the opinion that he was
"still good for six hours a day and it would be six hours of radium".
Dr. Thomas Jones told of a lunch party given by Lady Astor at which
Lloyd George was present and during which he clearly expected to be
invited to high office shortly. But it is more likely that at this time
Chamberlain had not then fallen LL G. still half expected a call to
Buckingham Palace. He was anxious to keep everyone guessing as to
his real intentions, whether he meant to wait until a call came from
the King, or whether he would serve under a new Prime Minister.

Doubtless LI. G. felt that he would be in a minority in the new
Cabinet and that the suggested office of Minister of Agriculture was
not particularly attractive. But, as later evidence will show, he still
believed there was a chance that the Churchill Government would
fall and he would return to No. 10 Downing Street. The outlook was
bleak: Belgium had been crushed, France seemed likely to collapse any
day and there were still many of the same old incompetents in the
Churchill Government.

Meanwhile in Berlin, though Hitler had over-run most of Europe,
the military experts still shied away from the project of an amphibious
operation against Britain. The men who could be so brave when
fighting on land disliked the prospect of attacking even an undefended
mole hill if it was surrounded by water. Hitler himself, though more
favourable to "Operation Sea Lion", did not think it would be
necessary. He was convinced that Britain would either sue for peace,
or that the Churchill Government would be overthrown.

288 THE MASK OF MERLIN

This viewpoint was strengthened when Hitler learned through the
Abwehr that Lloyd George had declined to join the Churchill Govern
ment and had addressed a private meeting of certain members of Parlia
ment at which he expressed his fear that "the war cannot be won by
Britain" and had talked about the need for a new "Treaty of Amiens".

Not least among the factors which prevented a triumphant Germany
from crushing swiftly a disorganised and largely defenceless Britain
was the German belief that, by holding her hand, the Third Reich
could make it easier to come to terms with the Fifth Column which
Hitler was certain was as all-powerful in Britain as it had been in
France* The Nazis were specially interested in the extreme nationalist
movement in Wales which, shortly before the war, had shown itself
violently hostile to the British Government, Allegations that Germany
had active sympathisers among a "group of Welsh nationalists" are
made in The German Fifth Column, by Dr. L. Dejong, a Dutch historian.
The author says: "In the spring of 1940 a group of Welsh nationalists
lent themselves for this purpose. Six months later it was noted in Berlin
that they had developed along the lines of the task set by the Abwehr"

It should be made clear that Dr. Dejong s allegations refer to Welsh
nationalists and not to the Welsh Nationalist Party. Dr. Dejong s book
was compiled with the aid of captured German documents, including
diaries of the Abwehr. But it is clear from a variety of sources that the
German Secret Service had contacts with fanatical sympathisers in
Wales who became known as "the Welsh group"* Dr. Fritz Hesse,
who was Ribbentrop s adviser on British affairs, has since stated that
Herr Otto Behne, the putative Gauleiter of Britain, some time before
the war had talks with "a young Welsh nationalist to discuss harnessing
national forces in Wales in the German interest", while Hauptmann
Nikolaus Ritter, former head of the Abwehr branch, Ast-Hamburg, has
recorded that two German agents were dropped near Salisbury in the
summer of 1940 to "contact Welsh nationalist circles who had already
expressed themselves as willing to help in the event of a Nazi invasion
of Wales ". Referring to a fire started in an aircraft factory at Denham
in April, 1940, the Abwehr* s official war diary states that this was the
"first major sabotage task set for the Welsh agents group", while a
note dated the following August i5th, signed by Major-General
Lahausen, says: "The dispatch of agents to take up direct contact with
the Welsh group has been approved by me."

Despite all this organisation, carefully supported by the Abwehr and
the military, the results of these operations were negligible, due largely
to the absence of proper briefing for agents working in Wales and lack
of suitable training. But there was a definite plan to take Wales by
a combination of paratroops and seaborne divisions which were to be
based on Ireland. This was "Operation Green", linking up the
invasion of Wales with that of Ireland, and it was to have been launched

Lloyd George with Hitler in 1936.

The bridge over the River Dwyfor at Llanystumdwy.

Lloyd George s last resting place overlooking the Dwyfor.

Topix Picture Service

WORLD WAR II 289

at the end of August, 1941. A subordinate project, code-named
"Whale", concerned the Welsh part of this operation, and the Abwehr
diaries reveal that: "An attempt is to be made to set down the agent
Lehrer with a wireless operator on the coast of South Wales in order
to establish better communications with the Welsh nationalists/ 1

Unfortunately all agents mentioned in the Abwehr diaries and other
documents are given code-names and it is almost impossible to establish
their identity except in certain cases where the very choice of code-
name suggests it. General Lahousen, who was responsible for these
diaries, is dead and a great many of the documents are either missing
or "unavailable" for independent research. Code-names for pro
minent Britons were frequently being changed during the war, but
available details from the Verbindungsstab show that in 1939-40 LI. G.
was designated "Mr. Hindhead".

Whereas there is no evidence of Lloyd George being directly con
nected with any of the attempts to organise Welsh quislings by the
Abwehr, there was an attempt before the war, organised by Admiral
Canaris s intelligence service, to arrange for secret messages to be
passed between LI. G. and certain people in Germany through the
pro-Nazi organisation in Britain known as The Link. There were
thirty branches of this organisation, whose chairman and founder was
Admiral Sir Barry Domville, former Director of Naval Intelligence at
the Admiralty. One of these branches was at Hindhead, the village
situated close to Lloyd George s estate at Ghurt in Surrey.

A German woman teacher, who had been assigned to "look after"
the Hindhead branch of The Link in 1938, a Fraulein Bumke, told
American intelligence officers after the war; "It was not our aim to
stir up trouble or to destroy England. The emphasis was on making
friends and building up contacts to improve Anglo-German under
standing. We knew that if war came, we should be cut off from our
contacts in England and we needed to make sure there was a line of
communication. I was assigned the mission of making sure that Mr.
Lloyd George could get news of our plans and intentions. He was
referred to in correspondence as Mr. Hindhead ."

There is no doubt that the Germans were still anxious to exploit
both Lloyd George and the Duke of Windsor. Volume VIII of Docu
ments of German Foreign Polity confirms this. Reports from the German
Minister at The Hague on January 27 and February 19, 1940, claim
to reveal certain opinions of the Duke of Windsor. He said die Duke
was not entirely satisfied with his position as "a member of the British
Military Mission with the French Army Command" and that he was
disgruntled. "He has expressed himself in especially uncomplimentary
terms about Chamberlain, whom he dislikes. Also there seems to be
something like the beginning of a Fronde forming around W., which
at some time might acquire a certain significance."

THE MASK. OF MERLIN

The Duke has since refuted these allegations. It was stated on his
behalf that he "never met or had any communication with Count
Zech-Burkersroda [the Minister at The Hague]" and that "the
suggestions affecting the Duke in letters are completely without
foundation".

Volume X of the Documents on German Foreign Policy shows that
Ribbentrop and the German Foreign Office were convinced after the
fall of France that they could induce the Duke of Windsor then in
Madrid and Lisbon to stay on in Europe instead of leaving to become
Governor of the Bahamas. They were certain that he would lend him
self to their peace campaign and that he and Lloyd George could be
brought into a secret accord. Their efforts in this direction range from
the sinister to the fatuous and, as the book rightly states, "the German
records are necessarily a much tainted source. The only firm evidence
they provide is of what the Germans were trying to do in this matter
and how completely they failed to do it."

An elaborate plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess was ordered by
Hitler and Ribbentrop, and the man chosen to organise it was Walter
Schellenberg. It was to take place while the Duke was hunting near
the Spanish frontier. He was to have been "inadvertently " lured over
the frontier by a ruse and taken to the German Embassy in Madrid.
But at the last moment the British had warning of the plot, the Duke
cancelled his shooting trip and guards were posted around the villa
where he was staying just outside Lisbon. Schellenberg, who went to
Madrid to organise this ambitious coup, wrote in his journal: "I had
accomplices in the house where the Duke was staying. Servants at
table were in my pay and reported to me all that was said."

The two most remarkable features of this astonishing story are,
first, that the British authorities allowed the Duke to stay in such an
espionage centre as Lisbon and, secondly, the extraordinary credulity
and wishful thinking of the Nazis. Von Stohrer, the German Am
bassador in Madrid, reported that "Churchill had threatened W. with
arraignment before a court-martial in case he did not accept the post
[Le., Governorship of the Bahamas], . . . The Duke was considering
making a public statement and thereby disavowing present English
policy and breaking with his brother. . . . The Duke s agreement [for
the Germans future plans] can be assumed as in the highest degree

probable."

r * * * * *

Fugacious and futile as many of these espionage activities of the
Germans must appear in retrospect, they nevertheless illustrate how
deep was Germany s misunderstanding of Britain and the British
people. For the first two and a half years of the war there was a firm
belief in Berlin that Britain could be brought to her knees by creating
a Fifth Column and forcing the break-up of the Churchill Government,

WORLD WAR H

The folly of the Duke of Windsor in agreeing to pay a visit to Ger
many after his Abdication and the enthusiastic pro-Nazi utterances
of Lloyd George had flattered the enemy into believing these two
men could be manipulated like puppets for paving the way to a new
regime in London.

Lloyd George stepped up his criticism of the Churchill Government.
He condemned the holding of secret sessions in Parliament "a per
nicious sham". Even after Chamberlain s death, when it seemed he
might at last change his mind about joining the Cabinet, he held back.
"The difference between Winston and me," he said, "is that when I
was Prime Minister I listened to everyone s opinions and then did the
opposite. He listens to no one s opinions and then does what they
want."

Mr. Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman and Nation, has
given a particularly illuminating version of Lloyd George s true stand
point at this time.

"I had long conversations with him at this period and the other
day unexpectedly turned up a full note of a talk with him after a visit
to Churt. The memorandum is undated, but it clearly refers to the
dark period before the German invasion of Russia.

"He began almost at once to tackle me about our two leaders in
the N.S. & Jf. 9 which argued that a compromise peace with Hitler
would be fatal. He said that if it were a question of survival, he would
fight to the last man, etc. He was no pacifist and, if he could win, he
would fight it out. But he judged that we could not win.

"... At best he saw stalemate. e ln a year s time/ he said, c if we
are both alive, you will be sitting here and I shall remind you of this
conversation. We shall be weaker and Germany will be stronger.
Peace will be more difficult to get, the war will have spread every
where in the world, causing suffering and destruction beyond imagi
nation, and you will not be a whit nearer solution,

"I said: This is an odd conversation between you and me. In 1917
you proclaimed the knock-out blow and Lansdowne was defeated. I
regarded you as the devil and I think I was right. A compromise with
that Germany was possible, and the results of victory have been what
we have seen.*

" No, he said, *I did not proclaim the knock-out blow until I had
Asquith s agreement and had inquired from the Germans whether
they were willing to evacuate Belgium. I got no answer. And a knock
out blow was justified by a rational calculation. I could see how we
could win. And I was right. We did win. This time there is no
rational calculation which shows how victory is possible/

"The memorandum goes on with a foil summary of LL G. s argu
ment that in our desperate situation, and with Winston as Prime
Minister, negotiation was impossible. Winston/ he said, * likes his

THE MASK OF MERLIN

war. He had had much argument with Winston who had shouted
Never, never, never when he talked of conversations with the Nazis.
But LI. G. had no positive proposals except to call for a world con
ference of powers, proclaim the futility of war and invite a general
settlement. He thought we might be invaded but not out-and-out
defeated. His view was that in such circumstances, if he were not
identified with Churchill, he might be England s last chance as a
negotiator. As it turned out, Hitler invaded Russia instead of Britain
and LI. G. lived on until Churchill s military victory was assured."

Then in December, 1940, Lord Lothian died. When the question
of replacing him in Washington arose, Lloyd George s name was
instantly suggested. Here again the evidence is conflicting, for LL G.
told some people he would not accept the post, but informed others
he was seriously considering it. It may well be that he had difficulty
in making up his mind. For, with that astonishing ability in one so
old to switch from one idea to its opposite, he was, despite his defeatism,
often thinking up schemes to prosecute the war more vigorously. Mr.
Sylvester has suggested that in World War II Lloyd George s "in
feriority complex" soured his outlook and made him intensely jealous
of other political leaders. He may have been jealous, but "inferiority
complex" is not a phrase one would normally apply to Lloyd George.
As in World War I, LL G. was at heart only interested in power, and
he believed that one way to power was to take the side of those military
and naval leaders with whom Churchill, or the Chiefs of Staff, dis
agreed. Wavell was one, Keyes was another.

In World War II, though his overall view of the prospects of the
Western forces was pessimistic, his ideas on strategy and his summing-
up of the military situation were sounder than in World War I. His
experience was invaluable and, if he had only recaptured some faith
in his own countrymen and their cause, he might well have contributed
usefully to the war effort instead of remaining a critic. If Germany
had not been so rash as to attack Russia, Churchill might have failed;
if Japan had not attacked U.S.A., many of LI. G. s gloomy forecasts
might have come true. In either or both of these events Lloyd George s
long-term view could have been right and Churchill s wrong. Despite
his age, his ideas for military diversions were quite as bold as some of
Churchill s. At heart he was still an "Easterner", though in World
War II for "Easterner" one had to read "Mediterraneaner".

Pantellaria was one example of his ideas for Mediterranean diver
sions, Lloyd George, who discussed this with Roger Keyes, then Chief
of Combined Operations, believed that a few not too costly operations
which diverted the enemy might restore our prestige, and, even if a
settlement had to be made with the enemy eventually, give us more
bargaining power. Keyes wanted diversions in Norway and the
Mediterranean. He urged an attack by Commandos aimed at two

WORLD WAR H 293

objectives: first, to capture the island of Pantellaria in September,
1940, thus wiping out an Italian strong-point and taking the sub
marine pens which were menacing the convoys to Malta; second, to
land Commandos along the Tunisian coast close to the Libyan border
to link up with the advancing column of WavelTs men.

Keyes and Lloyd George in their different ways argued that this
could knock Italy out of the war. LI. G., who had been bitterly critical
of Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the cautious First Sea Lord, pressed his
views on Keyes: "The Italians have no stomach for further fighting.
If at the same time British naval forces can strike a blow at the Italian
fleet, it may deter Franco and prevent the French fleet from falling
into German hands. If Britain hesitates now, the Germans will come
to the aid of Italy in North Africa. Pound is too much of an old woman.
As for the Chiefs of Staff, they are as hesitant as a covey of neurotic
cases in a psychiatrist s parlour."

In this Lloyd George was right. Delay and hesitation in 1940
certainly prolonged the war by at least a year. For once Churchill
and Lloyd George seemed to have been in agreement. In her book
Geoffrey Keyes, V.C., Elizabeth Keyes stated: "Mr. Churchill had pro
posed seizing Pantellaria in September and my father had been pressing
to be allowed to capture the island from October, 1940, onwards, as
he was convinced that it was the key to the Central Mediterranean.
The island s aerodrome, with its large underground hangars and bomb
proof steel doors, could have provided fighter cover to protect our
convoys as they approached Malta. ... He [Keyes] . . . knew the
fortifications were not particularly formidable. He hoped to see the
entire Italian army in Libya cut off and surrendering to General
Wavell."

General Sir Leslie Hollis wrote that Admiral Keyes had "fighting
spirit in his bones and fear was unknown to him. Every operation he
submitted seemed to envisage that he himself would lead the assault.
The Chiefs of Staff had some difficult passages with this intrepid
Admiral."

Lloyd George was extremely bitter when Churchill, whom he
accused of having a "Dardanelles complex", changed his mind about
Pantellaria and sided with the Chiefs of Staff. An expedition had been
equipped, but it was repeatedly postponed. The Commandos were
already embarked to attack Pantellaria in mid-December, 1940, but
the Admiralty refused the destroyers to support them. ^

Depressed after his brief enthusiasm for military diversions, Lloyd
George once again relapsed into defeatist mood. Keyes was replaced
by Mountbatten as Chief of Combined Operations, and Wavell was
baulked in North Africa. The impracticable guarantee to Greece
resulted in the denuding of British forces in North Africa and an end
of WavelTs magnificent advance across Libya, still one of the most

294 THE MASK OF MERLIN

under-rated operations of the war. The Germans came to the aid of
the Italians in North Africa, as LL G. had forecast, and the attack on
Pantellaria was postponed for more than two years.

*****

President Roosevelt in earlier years had a high opinion of Lloyd
George, but he was disturbed to read reports in the American Press
of July, 1940, that LL G. favoured peace with Germany. When the
idea of sending Lloyd George to Washington as Lothian s successor
was mooted, Roosevelt s first reaction was that it "might take the old
man s mind off gloomy things". But, after warnings from the Secret
Service, he vetoed the proposal on the grounds that Lloyd George
would be a bad security risk. New light has recently been shed on this
apparent attempt by Churchill to make LI. G. Ambassador to Washing
ton in Lord Casey s book, Personal Experience: i939~4 6 - In I 94 Lord
Casey was Australian Minister to Washington and he was formally
requested to inquire what President Roosevelt thought of the proposal
to send LI. G. to U.S.A. Lord Casey says that he learned on the best
authority that Roosevelt s reaction was "consternation" and that any
such appointment would be an embarrassment for him.

Mr. A. A. Berle, junior, who was Assistant Secretary of State at the
time, says of the proposal: "Everybody had great respect for Lloyd
George. He wasn t turned down in any formal sense. We wanted
someone who would be very close to the British Government, and it
was felt that LL G. was no longer intimate with the situation and with
the feeling of the then British Cabinet."

The warning that Lloyd George was politically unreliable and a
bad security risk had been passed to Roosevelt personally by one of
his closest friends, Robert E. Sherwood, the author and playwright.
Markedly pro-British and vehemently anti-Nazi, Sherwood had been
in touch with certain intelligence agencies in an unofficial but advisory
capacity to the President. He had learned of a report from Helga
Stultz that Hitler was keenly interested in the proposal to send LL G.
to Washington and saw "useful possibilities of establishing contact
with him in a neutral country"*

Sherwood, like Roosevelt, had been favourably disposed to LL G.
and, though he passed this information on to the President, was not
inclined to attach too much importance to it. But Roosevelt took the
report seriously, and he valued Sherwood so much that in 1941 he
appointed him to the staff of his co-ordinator of intelligence, Colonel
William Donovan.

An immediate check on Helga Stultz s reports was ordered by
Washington. They produced some surprising results. Fraulein Bumke,
the woman who had used the code-name of "Mr. Hindhead" for
Lloyd George, had arrived in Tangier, which had become one of the

WORLD WAR n 295

world s chief spy centres. To a retired British army officer in that city,
a member of The Link, she confided that the Verbindungsstab established
contact with Lloyd George through " a tiny group of Welsh nationalists
who were agents of the German Secret Service". She claimed that
Iloyd George was prepared to negotiate with Hitler, should the
Churchill Government fall. The authority for this statement was a
former member of The T.i nk in Tangier, and he added that, according
to Fraulein Bumke, "LI. G. would agree to Germany having Tangan
yika and possibly other territories in East Africa and he would support
German claims to Tunisia rather than those of Italy, But he was
emphatic that Japan must be contained by a joint agreement between
Britain and Germany."

Helga Stultz provided further enlightenment in a report to Washing
ton: "Hitler has been in a terrible mood. I am sure he will repudiate
the German-Soviet Pact. Ribbentrop is most anxious not to upset the
Russians, but I do not think his view will prevail. Hess sides with
Hitler; he believes that Germany must settle her account with Russia
and that by doing this some agreement can be reached with England.
Hess is so confident of this that I feel sure he has had important news
from England. Lloyd George s name is often mentioned here in a
favourable context.

"Hess is contemptuous of the Abwekr and is pursuing his own ideas
of espionage. He has organised the Verbindungsstab, which is so far the
only real attempt to build a co-ordinated espionage system. It is
interesting that the Welsh section of the Verbindungsstab has been set
up in Lisbon. The Cafe Chiado in the Rua Garetta in Lisbon is a
rendezvous for their meetings. The Hotel Riff in Tangier is another.
One of these intermediaries, a Welshman, uses the code-name of
Caradoc and he has urged that the time is now ripe to make a direct
approach to Lloyd George. This, he has indicated, will not be easy,
but channels of communication with Mr. Hindhead have been kept

Churchill must have suspected that there were still prominent
people in Britain, even on the fringes of his own nominal supporters,
who believed that the best prospect was of an armistice with Germany
in return for giving her a free hand against Russia. For this reason he
probably did not show his hand until the last possible moment The
flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland must have caused as much perturba
tion as delight in Downing Street. Then on the night after Germany
marched against Russia, Churchill spoke on the radio: Germany was
told that Britain would fight on, with Soviet Russia as an ally.

This was one of the biggest shocks which the German espionage
organisations suffered in the war and one from which they never
recovered. It marked the beginning of the end for Admiral Canary
The new espionage body that Hess left behind him disintegrated. For

296 THE MASK OF MERLIN

all their fanciful and imaginative planning, their hopes of winning
over the Duke of Windsor and Lloyd George, Germany s Secret Services
broke down in 1941.

On May 7, 1941, three days before Hess landed in Britain, Lloyd
George revealed his unhappiness about the war and his critical attitude
towards the Government and the High Command in the House of
Commons.

"I know there is such a thing as assistance to the enemy, but there
is such a thing as assistance to our side," he said. "If we had more of
the facts, we could get more of that kind of assistance."

He stressed that the war was passing through one of its most
"difficult and discouraging phases". "The position now is that we
have practically no ally. America is not an ally at the present moment
at any rate."

Tribute was paid to Wavell: "One of the most brilliant series of
successes won by any British general in a long and continuous war."

But in the main LI. G. was still defeatist. He denounced the idea
of the "invasion of Europe in the teeth of an army often million highly
trained and well-equipped men" as "fatuous".

This drew from the Prime Minister the barbed response that: "It
was the sort of speech with which, I imagine, the illustrious and vener
able Marshal Petain might well have enlivened the closing days of M.
Reynaud s Cabinet."

For one who had so deeply sentimental a regard for Lloyd George
as Churchill the necessity for such a remark must have been painful.

Even after Russia was invaded and America had entered the war,
Lloyd George continued to take the gloomiest possible view of events.
He did not believe that Russia would survive the Nazi onslaught; he
condemned the Churchill-Roosevelt agreement of "unconditional
surrender". On this last issue LI. G. showed a realistic appraisal of
what was an underwriting of the anti-German views of Henry Mor-
genthau. His criticisms of this declaration might have carried more
weight if the general tone of his other utterances had been more
responsible and less pessimistic, for by early 1943 there were growing
forces within Germany which might have been encouraged by a less
rigid approach. In private Lloyd George warned that "unconditional
surrender" merely played into the hands of the Russians, that it would
result in gain to Russia and loss of influence to the West. He also urged
that Britain should make some effort to contact those in Germany
who wanted to end the Hitler regime men like Adam von Trott,
whom the Foreign Office refused to regard as other than enemies.

The death of Dame Margaret Lloyd George in January, 1941, had
been a harsh blow. A snowdrift in Shropshire delayed LI. G. s journey
by car to reach her bedside in time and when he reached North Wales
she had already died. Thus the serenest and purest influence in his

WORLD WAR II 297

life since the death of "Uncle Richard" passed away. Though in
later years they had not been together very often, indeed, perhaps
because of this, the blow seemed harder to bear. From that day he
aged visibly.

On January 16, 1943, he told the political correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian: "Here we are in the fourth year of the war and
we have hardly tackled our main enemy, Germany, at all. I doubt
if we are opposing 100,000 Germans in North Africa. The only country
that is tackling Germany is Russia. Japan is still fighting on the borders
of Australia."

Had this political enigma been in supreme power during those years,
anything might have happened. It might well have been that Britain
would have followed France and sought an armistice in the summer
of 1940. Yet, defeatist, intriguer and scuttler that he was, the fighting
spirit was always lurking beneath the surface; he never completely lost
the love of doing battle. One could never say for certain that he
harboured traitorous instincts, though more than once he was on the
verge of revealing something akin to them. Never would he have
admitted, even to himself, that they were traitorous.

As the evidence shows, in some ways, even in his late seventies, he
was more daring than Churchill when the light of battle took over
from the clouds of pessimism. In another mood, had he been in power,
he might well have backed Wavell more strongly, supported Keyes
and overruled the Chiefs of Staff. It is certain that he would have felt
for the prim and prissy Alanbrooke all the pent-up detestation he vented
on Robertson, and that Alanbrooke would have come off worse. Lloyd
George would never have let Alanbrooke have his own way to the
extent that Churchill grudgingly did. That might have been fatal to
the course of the war, but one may be sure that LI. G. would have
been prodding his Chiefs of Staff for a short cut to victory. Indeed
he might have insisted on the attack on Pantellaria and made sure the
Italians were driven out of Africa before the Germans got there.
Certainly he would have had no qualms in repudiating the guarantee
to Greece. Again, he might have done all these things and precipitated
a situation as bad as any in the spring of 1918.

But none of this was to be. The ill-considered guarantee to Greece
was honoured, North Africa was temporarily sacrificed and the war
dragged on for a longer period. But Lloyd George lived on to see the
liberation of France and to drive to London for his last visit to the
House of Commons in the summer of 1944 to congratulate the man
who had compared him to Marshal Petain.

The tired old warrior had had his last fling . . . "so hung his destiny,
never to rot, while he might still jog on and keep his trot."

2 3
THE LAST YEARS

"Ease was his chief disease: and to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come.
And lack of load made his life burdensome . . . ."

John Milton

As one concludes this quest for the riddle of the Wizard one finds the
maze-like path of his tangled and tempestuous career that "tem
pestuous journey " which Frank Owen has called it bringing one back
to the bridge over the Dwyfor at Llanystumdwy.

"All things flow/ said Bergson, in explaining his philosophy of life
force, but there is a backward flow, too a flow of dissipated energy
that withdraws into the River of Forgetfulness, that oblivion of which
we read in Virgil. For Lloyd George the River Dwyfor was his River
of Forgetfulness and of memories, too. His mind, as he grew older,
flowed back into these surroundings and sought there the Nirvana
after which all men thirst when they have drawn too far away from
the original fountain of their inspiration.

On October 23, 1943, Lloyd George married Miss Frances Louise
Stevenson, who had been his private secretary for thirty years. The
ceremony was conducted at Arlington House Register Office, near
Guildford.

The story of their association began when Miss Stevenson was a
teacher at the school attended by his daughter Megan. Invited to tea
one day when LL G., then at the Exchequer, happened to be exception
ally short-staffed, Miss Stevenson volunteered to help him, and LL G.
was so impressed by her ability that he asked her to stay on as his
permanent assistant.

Miss Stevenson inherited the business acumen and efficiency of her
Scots father and the good looks and vivacity of her French mother.
She had been educated at London University and was an excellent
linguist. Following LI. G. from the Treasury to the Ministry of Muni
tions and the War Office, she became in 1916 the first woman in
history to be secretary to a Prime Minister of Britain*
But shadows swiftly appeared to obscure the brief happiness of this

THE LAST YEARS 299

second marriage. Suddenly Lloyd George aged perceptibly and
became frailer. His zest for politics ebbed away and his mind and
heart turned increasingly towards Llanystumdwy. Perhaps he sensed
that he was dying, despite the fact that when the doctors diagnosed
the cancer that was slowly eating away his life, they did not tell him.
He asked no questions. Sometimes he blamed the war and his own
inactivity for his condition; at other times he would mellow and a
ghost of the old smile would creep around the now wrinkled and
emaciated features.

In September, 1944, he left Churt and went to Ty Newydd, a small
farm near Llanystumdwy which he had bought in 1939. At the age
of eighty-two he returned to the mountains he loved so deeply and to
the Dwyfor which had so often provided him with balm, solace and
inspiration. Here he could savour old memories and re-live the past
On warm, bright mornings three old men could be seen standing on
the bridge over the Dwyfor exchanging the gossip of the day and
recalling their schoolboy pranks. They were John Roberts, a fanner,
Evan Elias, a retired insurance agent, and Lloyd George,

Occasionally the old enthusiasm for farming would return. "So the
village gets its fruit and vegetables from Liverpool, does it? " he asked.
"That s all wrong. We must grow more here." It was pointed out to
him that his land, overlooking Cardigan Bay, was too exposed to winds
sweeping across tie sea. His answer was to plant rows of poplar trees
as a wind break. He went round the village, mustering a staff of eight,
and planted fruit trees and vegetables.

By late 1944 it was obvious that soon the war in Europe would be
over and a general election must be held. The question of whether
Lloyd George should stand again was one he could not shirk answering,
for the local Liberal Association was becoming restive. Doctors and
friends were agreed that he could not stand up to the strain of another
election contest; the only hope was whether the Conservative and
Labour organisations would agree not to oppose him as a tribute to
the most famous living Welshman.

But his name no longer carried the same weight in North Wales.
His attitude over the Abdication and his defeatism during the war had
told against him. A new generation had grown up, the Liberal-
minded of whom were antagonistic to Lloyd George and saw Labour
as a more effective vehicle for their aspirations. Evacuation and the
influx of English professional men and women had also increased the
potential Tory vote. For the first time for more than half a century a
Conservative victory seemed in sight and there was a distinct possi
bility that the Liberals would come third.

Intuitively, Lloyd George must have known there was a revolt
against him and that if he stood again he would be defeated. When
Churchill, in a mood of sentimentalism, overlooked the feet that a

30O THE MASK OF MERLIN

year or two earlier he had compared the old man to Petain and wrote
offering to submit his name to the King for an Earldom, LI. G. after
some hesitation accepted.

But he was also somewhat ashamed of joining the Peers whom he
had so bitterly attacked most of his life. He tried to excuse himself
on the grounds that perhaps in the Lords "I can make some useful
speeches on the problems of a peace settlement".

On New Year s Day, 1945, the Honours List appeared and hence
forth David Lloyd George, commoner, became Earl Lloyd-George of
Dwyfor. "I am sure he was very sorry," said his secretary, A. J.
Sylvester. "He took the peerage after consulting his brother, Dr.
William George, because he felt he could not fight another election
and did not want to break with Parliament after fifty-five years."

Lloyd George s first suggestion for his title was Arfon Lleyn or
Eifon, but this was finally rejected in favour of retaining his own name.
When the Earldom was granted, the names of Lloyd and George were
hyphenated for the first time, a purely academic point which caused
much fussing and pontificating by the College of Heralds. Garter King
of Arms had originally insisted that the title should be George only,
but he had ceased to be known as George for more than half a century;
Lloyd George he always would be, whether hyphenated or otherwise.

In Wales there was bitter regret that he had accepted an earldom.
Even Ramsay MacDonald, the secret lover of things aristocratic, had
avoided that final devastating blow to the pride of a radical commoner.
The Commoner of Commoners had sold his birthright for the doubt
ful messpot of an Earldom. The man who had brought honours into
disrepute had himself committed the final fatuity in accepting a title.

Baldwin of Bewdley in the sole flash of pure wit whether uncon
scious or otherwise he had ever shown, chose as his peer s motto,
"With God s help I leap over the wall." Perhaps mindful of the
ditches which lay behind Lord Baldwin s walls, Lloyd George went one
better than this. From the Druids he took the motto, "Truth against
the World."

As his weakness became more marked, he was fretful if no one came
to see him. His mind strayed back into childhood, sometimes expressing
itself in Biblical allegories that were confusing and confused.

A Nonconformist minister who called on him returned home shaking
his head. "I cannot make him out," he said. "His sense of dogma is
all mixed up. At times he talks like a Catholic. It was very strange
that he should tell me all about his visit to the Pope years before, and
how the Pope gave him sweets to take back to Tim Healy. Papal
sweets, 5 he muttered. You have to hand it to those Catholics. They
even make sweets a subject for religion. "

This same minister told the author some years later: "Lloyd George
had a sense, a feeling for religion, but he was not truly a religious man.

THE LAST YEARS 30 1

He liked a good sermon, but he had very little patience for the rules of
religion. I had the impression that as he felt death approaching his
mind wrestled with two spirits the spirit of fear which our Non
conformist ancestors preached, hellfire and vengeance, and the spirit
of mysticism like the Catholic possesses. Not long before he died he
told me: I wish I could have the blind faith of the Catholic/**

The mind of a dying man is either an open book or a fluttering of
pages turned so fast that the words cannot be read. It was the latter
with Lloyd George at least to those apart from his family with whom
he talked in these last weeks.

The spring of 1945 burst with all the magic of an early summer in
the final days of February; it was as though Nature was heralding the
approaching victory. Down to Llanystumdwy came reporters from all
over the country to wait and watch for the old man s death. The end
came on March 26, on the evening of a perfect spring day.

On the Good Friday he was laid to rest in a place of his own choosing
on a bank of the River Dwyfor, near the old road bridge and his house,
Ty Newydd. The grave was lined with evergreens brought by work
men on his estate. Long before the time fixed for the funeral, men,
women and children flocked to the burial site. Easter holiday-makers
from Liverpool and Manchester, from Birmingham and bomb-stricken
Coventry, lined the grassy banks of the lane leading from the house
to the spinney, where the open grave was situated. On the meadows on
the other side of the river thousands had gathered.

The bitter duel between the Church of Wales and Nonconformity
had given way to a more Christian spirit of co-operation, for assisting
at the service were the Rector of Llanystumdwy and the Welsh Pres
byterian and Baptist Ministers.

"A choir of men and women, each wearing a daffodil, began to sing
a Welsh hymn," recorded The Times special correspondent. "The
opening bars . . . brought a hush over the vast assembly and the power
ful, melodious cadences swept over the valley. Another of the hymns
sung was to the tune of Tyddyn llwyn (cottage in the spinney),
written and composed by one of Lloyd-George s friends of his early
days."

* * * * *

A memorial service in Westminster Abbey marked the final tribute
to the Restless Warrior who had at last found rest. And on the morrow
of his death, as the speeches to his memory were made in London,
Ottawa, Gape Town, Canberra, Cardiff, Caernarvon and Caerphilly,
the magic seemed to return. Some of the tributes have been quoted
in an earlier chapter and they show to what extent the magic had
flamed again and stirred the minds of great men to extravagant imagery.
There were even indignant complaints that the burial had not been

3O2 THE MASK OF MERLIN

carried out in Westminster Abbey, But, as one cynic said, "It would
have been like burying the Unknown Quantity beside the Unknown
Warrior/

Yet even in death Lloyd-George became a centre of controversy.
His will was the subject of prolonged arguments and debating in the
Probate Court. On June 6, 1945, the details of the will were announced.
To his widow he bequeathed his Parliamentary and other political
papers. There were other bequests to his widow and family, with one
notable exception, his eldest son, Richard. The new Earl formerly
Major Richard Lloyd George commenting on the fact that the
Earldom carried no emoluments, told the Press: "I shall have to go
back to my job as a civil engineer if I am going to have any money.
I am left nothing at all in the will. My father was always very dis
appointed because I would not follow in his footsteps as a politician.
That is why he has not left me a bean in his will."

A harsh judgment on an eldest son who had been his mother s
favourite. Yet not even old age and approaching death could rob Lloyd-
George of a streak of vindictiveness.

There was a sequel to all this in the High Court of Justice, Probate
and Admiralty Division, when an application was made for the appoint
ment of an administrator pendente lite of the Lloyd-George estate, Earl
Lloyd-George being the defendant. The plaintiffs were Countess
Lloyd-George, Mr. Gwilym Lloyd George and Mr. J. E. Morris, the
executors under the will dated November 12, 1943, and two codicils
dated September 2 and September 19, 1944. Earl Lloyd-George entered
a caveat and opposed the will and codicils. Later it was announced
that a settlement out of court had been reached in the dispute over
the will and the two codicils. This followed the intimation that an
action was listed in which Earl Lloyd-George contested the will and
codicils on the grounds of "want of knowledge, lack of testamentary
capacity" and that they were "not duly executed". In the Probate
Court, Mr. Justice Byrne consented to delete "paragraph 17" from
the will.

Mr. W. Latey, for the Earl, agreed when the judge asked: "You
say they are offending words which have no testamentary effect?"
When Mr, Latey asked that the judge s order should include a direction
that "paragraph 17" should not appear in the registry copy of the
will, Mr. Justice Byrne replied, "Certainly".

There was much surprise when the published figures showed that
Lloyd-George had left only 141,147. This was a considerable sum
for a life-long politician to leave, when one bears in mind that in recent
years several old colleagues of Lloyd-George had died in relative
poverty. But at one time Lloyd-George was reputed to have been
worth more than a million pounds and many expected him to leave
as much as half a million, A great deal of his capital had been devoted

THE LAST YEARS 303

to the development of his model farm at Churt and to improving the
farm at Llanystumdwy.

The Lloyd-George legend persisted. There was a demand for the
preservation of his birthplace at Manchester. Books about LI. G.
followed one another in quick succession: Jack Jones even performed
the seemingly impossible feat of writing The Man David in the form of
fiction.

Post-war Britain sometimes sighed for the return of his magic touch
to relieve the monotony of the tedious "Me-tooism" of the two major
political parties. Whatever Lloyd-George had been, he was never a
"Me-Tooist", though the deviousness of his policies and his fondness
for facing both ways had, ironically enough, been responsible in no
small degree for the growing tendency towards "Me-Tooism".

A Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to decide
whether a statue to him should be placed "within the precincts of the
Palace of Westminster, or in Parliament Square ". The House approved
a resolution, moved by the Prime Minister (then Sir Winston Churchill)
that a monument "with an inscription expressive of the high sense
entertained by this House of the eminent services rendered by Earl
Lloyd-George to the country, to the Commonwealth and Empire in
Parliament and in the great offices of State" should be provided*

"He might have liked it to be as near this chamber as possible,"
added the Prime Minister. "When the British history of the first
quarter of the twentieth century is written, it will be seen how great
a part of our fortunes in peace or in war were shaped by this one man*"

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK

"O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies
Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws
Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,
Gag of a dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies
The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayer-piece,
The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies . . .
. . . To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners. ..."

Dylan Thomas

As more than a decade has passed since Lloyd-George s death and as
this year marks the centenary of his birth, one might be tempted to
say that the time has surely come to assess what he really did shape
and how true was the generous tribute made by Sir Winston Churchill
mentioned in the last chapter.

A clearer picture of the man has certainly emerged in these inter
vening years, much that seemed gold has turned to lead, while less
well-remembered phases of his life notably during the South African
War seem more courageous in retrospect than his wartime Premier
ship. But the clearer picture is at the same time a bewildering image,
not so much because of the magic and quicksilver genius which lights
it up, but because of the contradictions of that genius, the extraordinary
manner in which the facts of his life contradict one another. The
mental inconsistencies of the man, especially in times of crisis, frequently
rob him of the right to be the architect of any particular policy.

It is not without significance that more space has been given in this
book to his earlier speeches than to those of his heyday. The former
will live as examples of some of the most splendidly pungent radical
perorations of any age, The latter are too often so full of false senti
ment and insincerity, so lacking in reasoned argument, so leavened
with barely disguised sophistry that they appal one by their triteness,
ambiguity and unadulterated humbug. True, when listening to him
speak, they never sounded thus: no statesman could mask his insincerity
and make it wring the heartstrings more effectively. He could coo like
a dove with the same facility that he could roar like a lion. But in
cold print these speeches of his hey-day lose their magic. Occasionally
in the latter years there was a notable exception, and the speech which

304

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK 305

helped to bring down the Chamberlain Government in the House of
Commons in 1940 was one such example forthright, unrelenting,
fearless and effective.

One cannot help feeling that those early speeches helped to shape
a new consciousness in national life, Lloyd-George s homespun
imagery, his unerring gift for selecting a simple anecdote to illuminate
a political idea did much to bring the political facts of life within the
grasp of the man in the street. Also, in the early days, Lloyd-George
did as much as any man to prick the bubble of unreasoning imperialism
which besotted the British mind at the beginning of the century.
Dilke, Rosebery, Asquith and Haldane were great radical imperialists
who saw how radicalism could improve and rebuild an Empire and
Commonwealth. But Lloyd-George saw the faults and warts of im
perialism: he showed them up and, with a devastating wit and repartee,
forced men to do some re-thinking on this subject. The fruits of this
change which he helped to bring about can be seen today in the very
wide measure of agreement between all Parties on colonial problems
and the need for speeding up the process of self-government within the
Commonwealth. It is also a sad reflection on how power corrupted
Lloyd-George that he took so savage and barbarous a course with
Ireland, thus setting back the clock which he had so eagerly put
forward twenty years before.

It was the part he played in the Boer War which gave Lloyd-George
two of his earliest allies in the Press, Robertson Nicoll, of the British
Weekly the man who "made" LL G., according to A. J. P. Taylor
and C. P. Scott, of the Manchester Guardian. C. P. Scott never forgot
LL G/s role in the Boer War and later he obstinately supported him
in many causes regarding which both his intellect and his conscience
must have told him to be wary. There was a streak of vanity in G. P.
Scott on which Lloyd-George was not slow to play. Whenever LL G.
spoke in Manchester, Scott was always given a seat close to him on
the platform, and LL G. was subtle enough never to miss referring to
him in his presence as "the world s greatest living journalist ". Mas-
singham, another notable journalist of the era, once declared: "To
me there are few spectacles more melancholy than that of dear old
C. P. Scott drearily dredging in a foul pond for the soul of LI* G."

When papers and records belonging to Lloyd-George were acquired
by Lord Beaverbrook from Countess Lloyd-George, it was announced
shortly afterwards that Robert E. Sherwood, the American author,
would have access to the papers to write a new life of LL G. But the
man who was four times a Pulitzer Prize winner, who helped to prepare
many of President Roosevelt s speeches and wrote a biography of
Harry Hopkins, finally decided to turn down the project.

His reasons for arriving at this decision in view of what has been
mentioned in the chapter on World War II-H$eemed worth seeking.

306 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Inquiry of his closest friend, George Becker, produced this reply:
"The idea of doing a book on Lloyd-George at first attracted Bob
because he thought it would lead up to his own book on Hopkins, Roose
velt and Europe* He saw Lloyd-George at first as the architect of post-
Victorian Europe, but this he found out was not true.

"To have used Lloyd-George as leading up to Roosevelt would
have been artificial. LL G. didn t fit into the scheme of things and
in the end had no particular interest for Bob. *

Nor did the Lloyd-Georgian proposals between the wars do much
more than underline the fact that both Tories and Socialists in that
era preferred a cheap dole to costly public works. That his proposals
did not receive more attention was a national disaster. It was unfair
and unfortunate that they were misrepresented and distorted by
opponents and allies alike. At the same time, in pursuing his theme
for the need for public works and the creation of new fields of employ
ment, by over-enthusiasm he helped to foster the dangerous, demagogic
idea that Britain was a bottomless pit of abundance into which one
had only to dig to give plenty to all.

On the subject of waging war, Lloyd-George set out to give the
impression of vigour, valour and immense drive. The important fact
at the time was that he seemed to provide all these qualities, and a
majority of the nation believed he possessed them. Yet it was by
propaganda, dictatorial methods, ruthlessness, deceit, plotting and
lying, allied, of course, to his own irresistible personality, that he
succeeded in convincing some contemporary writers. History will
almost certainly arrive at the conclusion that he did not shape the
final victory, but that it came on the very front he had always decried.

The Coalition Government over which he presided after 1918 was,
by any judgment, Tory, Liberal or Socialist, a thoroughly bad adminis
tration. It was dishonest, unstable, irresponsible, incoherent. It
approached the tasks of peace with the mentality of a gambler, betting
now on Greece, now on the Black-and-Tans, on "Hang the Kaiser"
as an election gimmick and selling honours to boost its funds.

In every age decent people have been exploited by the unscrupulous
and self-seeking Burleigh, Strafford, Clarendon, Shaftesbury, Boling-
broke, Walpole, Chatham, Wellington and Disraeli. But after Disraeli s
time there had been a marked improvement in the standards of political
conduct of the leaders of the nation, while the integrity of the Civil
Service had become a national tradition. It cannot be denied that the
corruption and lowering of standards in poEtical morality during the
Coalition days was a malaise that spread far and wide. It was through
the corruption which power brought during this epoch that Lloyd-
George most shaped our destinies. He destroyed the Liberal Party
which had provided stability for so long and gave Britain the choice
of a Labour Party, which was then unfit to rule, and a Tory Party

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK 307

which eschewed its best brains and wallowed in the incompetence and
apathy which large majorities bring in their trail. By doing so he forced
the nation into a prolonged and bitter class warfare and threw the
middle classes to the wolves of the two political collosi, to be wooed
and punished in turn.

It may be strongly arguable that modern degeneracy is due rather
to decline in talent than to any difference in moral standards that
politicians have been equally dishonest in every age, but that while
in the past clever rogues have risen to power, we are now afflicted by
knaves of mean ability. Yet this accession of mean ability may indeed
be attributed to Lloyd-George, for he became so feared for his astute
ness by friend and foe alike that he inspired a preference for dullards
and plodders known to be incapable of his cleverness, and thus his
successors Baldwin, MacDonald, Chamberlain, Attlee, Eden and
Macmillan (all, in fact, except Churchill, who would never have come
back to power except for a wartime emergency) have all been
mediocrities in contrast, naturally gathering about them still lesser
men, on the principle laid down in Landor s imaginary conversation
between Pitt and Canning: "Employ men of less knowledge and
perspicacity than yourself, if you can find them. Do not let any stand
too close or too much above; because in both positions they may look
down into your shallows and see the weeds at the bottom."

In effect, Lloyd-George disenfranchised the thinking classes, or
rather those who are too intellectually honest to be tied irrevocably
to the chariots of the Tories or Socialists, leaving them with Hobson s
choice in those constituencies where no Liberal or Independent candi
date submitted himself. But, worse than this, by his example, his
contempt for ethics in political life, he created a politique dtgringolade
of which the Coalition Government of 1918-22 was the symbol. First,
this was done by seeking accommodations with his political enemies
in a manner that can only be compared to the machinations of Pierre
Laval under the Third Republic. Then it was by creating a huge politi
cal fund, by selling honours and undisguised nepotism, and, not least,
by infiltrating unorthodox and unworthy citizens into the Civil Service.

All this helped to pave the way to the age of the Whips. Both the
Conservative and Labour Parties after 1922 used dictatorial powers
undreamed of half a century before. The Tory Whips instilled Prussian
discipline into their ranks and silenced the honest warnings of Churchill
and the murmurings against Chamberlain s vacillations. As for
Labour, they expelled anyone with a mind of his own: Cripps and
Bevan were hurled into the wilderness when they urged a common
front against Fascism. Perhaps the most brutal, callous and typical
comment of Labour s official mind was that of Ernest Bevin saying
he was tired of listening to George Lansbury s conscience "being
hawked from conference to conference".

308 THE MASK OF MERLIN

Since 1922 opposition within the ranks of a political Party has been
condemned as treason and conformity has been increasingly demanded.
This state of affairs is still draining political life of all constructiveness.
The winding-up of the university seats was an example of this. But
the real gold in British politics has come from the unorthodox and
selfless individualist. It glittered somewhat wickedly in the tirades of
John Wilkes, it shone like burnished metal in the heart of Eleanor
Rathbone, it sparkled in the polished wit of Labouchere, it warmed
with its rich, human glow in the passionate sincerity of James Maxton
and the practical Christian beliefs of Sir Richard Acland.

Yet, having made this indictment, the magic of the man remains.
Magic does not shape our destinies, but it colours them. And Lloyd-
George s greatness lay in his talent for colouring our destinies with
vivid phrases, with lighting up the dark corners of our minds with an
oratory that stirred the emotions.

With Lloyd-George the phrases flashed like butterflies in the after
noon sun, but they floated away and dissolved like bubbles. T. P.
O Connor wrote that "no orator of his time has been so often trans
lated and so abundantly read by continental countries".

The truth of this is apparent when one realises how un-English
these Lloyd-Georgian speeches often are. His phrases have none of
the moral appeal of Burke, or the grandeur of Gladstone, none of the
massiveness and sense of history which is the secret of Churchill s
oratory, nor the cool, almost detached marshalling of facts and the
logical development of argument so characteristic of Asquith. There
is in his speeches no understatement, so beloved of the English, but in
its place the shot-silk of speech, the embroidery of Welsh melody and
the rhythms of the English Bible.

Most Prime Ministers of Britain in modern times have found that
the long hours and strain of office have not only undermined their
health, but severely curtailed their private lives. But Lloyd-George,
like Churchill, had a stamina and remarkable physical fitness which
defied long hours and unremitting toil. His resilience not only enabled
him to relax at will, but to indulge in an uninhibited and varied life
in his hours of leisure. Mr. A. J. Sylvester wrote that * a doctor, meeting
Lloyd-George for the first time, once told me that everything about
him was at least double of an ordinary man. That included not only
his good qualities, but his bad".

This particularly applied to one aspect of his private life. Perhaps
no Prime Minister of Britain since the days of Palmerston had been so
careless of his reputation in private life, or risked so much to satisfy
the slightest sexual whim. How he escaped unscathed in a country
so prone to outbursts of moral indignation is one of the social miracles

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK 309

of his time. Luck was always with him in his private life so that even
the scandals which were perpetually surrounding his name were re
pudiated as fast as the rumours developed.

He had an insatiable interest in and appetite for women and was
fascinated by them from his youth, just as they were equally fascinated
by him. This fascination was peculiarly feminine in some ways, rather
like that of a slightly ageing actress who is for ever playing Peter Pan.
The atmosphere he created was that of Oberon, but beneath the
surface the rough, blunt, roguish maleness of Puck was ever ready to
jump out and surprise. He also had an uncanny, almost telepathic
gift for sensing some subtle affinity for him in even the shyest and most
self-effacing of women. It has been recorded by many who knew him
that often at a dinner party he would delight in spotting some shy
woman he had never met before and then set about bringing her into
the conversation and charming her out of her shyness and silence.

His son, Earl Lloyd-George, has said that he can "never forgive"
his father "for what he did to my mother. I shall never understand
how my mother stood all she did. With one word she could have
ruined his political career for ever. But she kept quiet. She must have
loved him far more deeply than seems possible.

"They used to say that Charles II was the father of his people, or
at least a great many of them. That was true of my father, too. No
woman could resist him and he could not resist them. Casanova was
just an amateur. Father just couldn t help himself."

No doubt the dangerous combination of religious and sexual obses
sions in the North Wales of his youth played a part in shaping the
tastes of the young Lloyd-George. There is perhaps nowhere in the
British Isles even today where the atmosphere, the social climate and
the language is so impregnated with a Rabelaisian delight in the
venereal pastimes as in parts of rural Wales. Anglo- Welsh literature
can never escape from this preoccupation. But, even allowing for this,
Lloyd-George continued until late in life to display a rashness, a ruth-
lessness and an almost anarchical attitude in his amours. He pursued
sexual pleasures with the single-mindedness which another man might
devote to chess, to cricket or to painting. For him it was almost a
recreation; he was the hunter with the light rein, questing vigorously
and purposefully, but light-heartedly and casually, always regarding
it as a game, never as a romantic pastime. He would banter, he would
tease, he would coax; he never indulged in sentimentalism, or the
luxury of a grande passion.

On affairs of the heart he left no incriminating letters, or, if he did,
all trace has been obliterated. " Letters are the very devil. They ought
to be abolished altogether," he told Lord Riddell. He wrote far fewer
letters than either Asquith or Baldwin, though as many memoranda
as Churchill.

310 THE MASK OF MERLIN

In every big city he visited he delighted in making excursions into
what he called "the underworld ". It was in much the same spirit
as spurred Samuel Bennett in Dylan Thomas s Adventures in the Skin
Trade to explore the night life of the Metropolis. When the "Jack the
Ripper" murders were terrifying Whitechapel and Limehouse in 1888
he made a noctural tour of the area with the late Sir Alfred Davies, a
superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, who was born in Caer
narvon. The Tories were in power at the time and there was a strong
demand that the Home Secretary of the day should be dismissed.
Lloyd-George hoped that this fact-finding tour might enable him to
find material for more attacks on the Government. Sir Alfred Davies
said afterwards: "Mr. Lloyd George showed then what a formidable
cross-examiner he could be, and I should welcome him as a detective."

One isolated incident such as the divorce action in which he was
involved in the nineties might have been ignored, but during his life
others occurred which created the legend in political and social circles
that he was an amorous adventurer. His enemies and some sections
of the Press went out of their way to remind him that hostile publicity
can be the price of dalliance with married women.

In July, 1908, the Bystander published a paragraph which com
mented: "Mr. George has, of course, been overloaded with flattery
of late, especially from the fair sex, which is always difficult for a man
of temperament to resist. The matter may, of course, be kept quiet.
Also, it may not."

An action for libel was brought, an apology and denial were pub
lished, and at LL G. s request a donation of 315 was paid to the
Caernarvon Cottage Hospital by the magazine in question.

A year later another newspaper, without mentioning Lloyd-George s
name, referred to a prominent public figure who was about to be
named as co-respondent in a divorce case. Later it stated that the
divorce action had been withdrawn as a result of pressure by "friends"
at a cost of 20,000. Again Lloyd-George brought an action; again
the proprietors of the paper admitted the libel and this time 1,000
damages were paid to charity.

Yet on this occasion Lloyd-George was saved from committing
political suicide only by the loyal support he received from Asquith,
his Prime Minister. Not only did Asquith offer advice, but he person
ally interceded with the husband of the musical comedy actress with
whom LI. G. had become entangled. For good measure his son,
Raymond, together with Rufus Isaacs and F. E. Smith, were briefed
on Lloyd-George s behalf. But had a divorce action been brought it
is almost certain that he would have been unable to deny the charges
with quite such vehemence as he did in the witness-box at the Old
Bailey.

In later life Lloyd-George became more demanding in his quest for

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK

feminine company. He was particularly attracted to actresses, and
was always anxious to meet any new star who appeared in the theatrical
firmament. He frequently attended the Gaiety Theatre shows in which
Julia James was acting and, she recalled, he sent her "not a bouquet of
flowers, or a necklace, but a cooked chicken".

His interest in actresses was not always an amorous whim, as, no
mean actor himself, he had a genuine technical interest in their art.
Maud Allen, Lily Langtry and TaUulah Bankhead all aroused his
attention. Tallulah Bankhead tells in her autobiography how she met
LI. G. through Lord Beaverbrook. "We went to LI. G. s place in
Ghurt. We met the great Welshman in his garden. I was impressed
with his charm and gallantry. He cut a rose and handed it to me.
Then he took me into his living-room. Spread out on the floor were
the London reviews of The Green Hat, in which I had opened at the
Adelphi the week before."

No other Prime Minister has had such a passion for travel as LI. G.
This is all the more remarkable when one realises that he grew up in
an age when it was neither fashionable nor popular for Cabinet
Ministers to travel far afield. The early Victorians and those of the
middle of the nineteenth century had shown some zest for travel, but
after that period even Foreign Ministers rarely went abroad even in
their professional capacity before World War I. It was considered
beneath their dignity to do so. But Lloyd-George as a young man went
to France, South America and Canada. As Cabinet Minister he went
all over Europe in quest of ideas and pleasure, while the latter years
of his life were spent in such diverse holiday trips as motoring across
Europe, hiring a yacht to cruise through the Mediterranean, some
times visiting Zaharoff, and enjoying the medieval splendours of the
entourage of the Pasha of Marrakesh in Morocco, visiting the West
Indies, Brazil and Ceylon.

The "physical stamina and sustaining power" of LI. G., about
which Professor Severn spoke, could not last for ever. Lloyd-George
worried about this and disliked the idea of growing old.

It was Sir Basil Zaharoff who, well versed in LL G. s weakness for
women, provided the answer to this. He introduced Lloyd-George to
Dr. Serge Voronoff, a Russian who had become a naturalised French
man, and made a fortune out of an operation which was supposed to
make old people young again. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties
Voronoff made a considerable revenue from men and women who
visited his clinic at Mentone to undergo his rejuvenation operation
by the grafting of monkey glands. His standard fee for this was a
thousand guineas.

This operation was never performed in Britain; the Home Secretary
ruled it to be a breach of the anti-vivisection laws. Today it is regarded
as out-of-date, having been overtaken by research on the endocrine

312 THE MASK OF MERLIN

glands. Lloyd-George was fascinated by VoronofFs experiments and
even more by the philosophy which he had evolved from his study of
human nature. "The source of life," wrote Voronoff, "is intimately
linked with love. Love is the chief aim of life." VoronofFs own aim
was to increase the human span to 120 years.

Voronoff stated: "Lloyd-George came to my continental clinic. The
whole object of my treatment was to increase both the mental and
sexual vigour of the patient. He was then at the critical age for a
man between sixty and seventy, when the glands are wearing out.
He was particularly interested not only in my experiments in the
human field, but in agriculture, too.

"In 1927 I carried out experiments with sheep on a farm at Tadmit
in Algeria and found that grafted sheep gained 22 Ib. in flesh and 24^
ounces in wool compared with ungrafted sheep. Lloyd-George was
very excited about this idea of creating super-sheep . He championed
my experiments among British agriculturists and in 1928 a body of
British experts appointed by the Board of Agriculture came to investi
gate my efforts in this field."

Whether gland grafting proved successful with Lloyd-George, Voro-
noff declined to say, but nevertheless LL G. seems to have believed
in the efficacy of monkey glands in whatever form they were presented.
He also turned to the new science of hormone-vitamin therapy. Boxes
and bottles of capsules containing glandular extracts were delivered
to him regularly.

The impromptu humour of Lloyd-George was irrepressible and it
took many forms. It did not seem to matter whether it was with adults
or children, with wits or bores, it never failed him. He would romp
with children and indulge in their games with Gargantuan laughter.

Lord Alness once said; "If you set Mr. Lloyd-George at the dinner
table next to his bitterest enemy, man or woman, and heaven knows
he has not a few, he will have made a complete conquest of that
individual by the end of the meal."

Aboard ship and at dinner parties he was the best of companions.
He would invent amusing games, adapting the games to the company.
A favourite was "epitaphs", in which each guest had to compose his
or her own epitaph. Then there were trick questions. He would ask
a Tory M.P., "Who would you rather have as companion on a cruise
Stanley Baldwin or Tallulah Bankhead?" Or to a female passenger
he would pose: "If you could take three people to a desert island, who
would you choose?"

One evening aboard ship during a cruise the captain, introducing
LL G., said in a speech: "Some of my passengers don t take the same
view of our distinguished guest as I do. One lady said to me today:

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK 313

Captain, I marvel that you can welcome that man on board your
ship. If I had my way, I would throw him overboard. "

When it came to LI. G. s turn to speak he made the comment: "I
was very much interested in the captain s speech, and, in particular,
in what he told us the lady said about me. All I can say is that she
must be a real lady ! "

While writing his War Memoirs, Lloyd-George went to Marrakesh
to seek peace in the sunshine, and the Pasha of the Moorish city put
at his disposal his private golf course which was presided over by
Arnaud Massy, a Frenchman who spoke French with a slight Scots
accent. The Pasha knew all about Lloyd-George s fondness for women
and wished to make a gesture to the statesman. "It was a delicate
and somewhat embarrassing mission to pass on this offer to Mr. Lloyd-
George," Arnaud Massy told the author. "I felt like a procurer. A
villa, which housed some Moorish beauties, had been set aside for
LI. G. s personal use, but how to name it without giving offence I
could not think.

"It was to all intents and purposes a private bordello. I tried to
make a joke about it by calling it Mr. Lloyd-George s pavilion. But
I need have had no qualms. Lloyd-George gave me a roguish smile
and said: I think we d better call it the Nineteenth Hole. "

Quixotic trains of thought, bantering gaiety in the sunshine, and
white-hot, thunderous invective in the gloom; these are the fleeting,
kaleidoscopic impressions of a peep behind Merlin s mask. The ability
to quote the Scriptures with intense fervour one moment and to bear
witness that he denied the existence of God the next. Mr. Frank Owen
has described movingly how, when his favourite daughter Mair died
at the early age of eighteen, Lloyd-George was in such a state of despair
that he declaimed in anger against the very idea of a Creator who
could permit such a thing to happen. Others have testified that at
that time he was for weeks like a man living with a nightmare, neither
sleeping nor caring, neither eating nor talking, except to himself.
C. F. G. Masterman described him as "a man who gave the impression
of having taken the lid off hell and been overwhelmed by what he
saw, a man without faith or hope. I thought he was really going
insane."

In his many casual relationships with women LL G. nearly always
gave the impression of being a shallow philanderer with no deep or
lasting emotions at all. The man who could so easily evoke emotion
in his speeches seemed, when it came to his own life, to mistrust emotion
altogether. He could make emotional appeals to people, but he was
never easily moved by emotional appeals to himself and tended always
to harden his heart against them, to regard any concession to such as

314 THE MASK OF MERLIN

a major weakness. The death of his daughter Mair seems to have
been the one occasion in his life when he allowed emotion to over
whelm him.

Dame Margaret, his first wife, was undoubtedly a stabilising in
fluence in his early days. With another woman he might easily have
foundered disastrously on the rocks of his own peccadilloes. Her
selflessness, humility, forgiveness and, above all, her intense pride in
her husband were qualities which sustained this marriage long after
it had ceased to have any real or abiding meaning for LI. G. During
the last twenty years of his life he only saw her on occasional visits to
North Wales.

If Lloyd-George liked to roam far and wide, his roots were also
firmly established in the British countryside. Yet when he became an
experimental farmer it was not towards his native Wales he turned
first, but to Surrey. Perhaps when in 1921 he bought some land at
Ghurt and built a house there, Bron-y-de, he tried to recapture some
thing of North Wales in the Surrey highlands with their expansive
views of heather and gorse. He was for ever developing and improving
this new home, borrowing ideas from Hitler s berghof, so that he replaced
the wall of one room by an immense sheet of glass. He added to his
land until he acquired in all about 780 acres, including several farms,
and employed about eighty men. It was his proud boast that "I have
grown two or three apples where there was only one thistle before,
and ten potatoes where there was only one dock". But the fact that
he had ample capital with which to experiment and adopt the most
modern methods made him fail to realise that every other farmer
could not do likewise between the wars. A Lloyd-George farming policy
as distinct from his Land Policy of the late twenties could only
have been set up at the price of costly subsidies, restrictive tariffs and
even more feather-bedding than the British farmer has today.

Many have tried to interpret the Merlinesque magic, but it has
eluded most non-Welshmen. Most try to see Lloyd-George as an
Englishman and so fail to understand him. Thus one gets this hasty
and unsubtle picture of him by Maynard Keynes, irritated because he
is baffled by the magic of the man. . . ,

"This extraordinary figure of our time, this syren, this goat-footed
bard, this half-human visitor to our time from the hag-ridden magic
and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company
that flavour of final purposelessness, inner irresponsibility, existence
outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning,
remorselessness, love of power, that lend fascinating enchantment and
tenor to the fair-seeming magicians of North European folk-lore."

It is not an inaccurate picture, though hyperbolic and allowing the

A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE MASK 315

Keynesian zest for sparkle to obscure its purpose. It is a perceptive
portrait, but from a narrow viewpoint. The real answer lies much
deeper than this. A clue to it is to be found in the development of
Anglo-Welsh literature during this century. In a curious way Lloyd-
George was the unconscious father of this bastard oflspring of the
Muses. For in some form or another, by some quirk or foible, he
appears again and again in this branch of literature. He peeps out
in Caradoc Evans s stories of peasant vice, in the tales of the border
animosities of Margiad Evans, and not least in the rumbustious humour
of that self-styled "Rimbaud of Gwmdonkin Drive ", Dylan Thomas.

Anglo- Welsh literature has enriched the English language with new
jewels of rhythm and idiom in the same refreshing way that Lloyd-
George himself embellished public speaking. Both the literature and
his speeches were born and flourished in periods of social upheaval;
both reacted to the broken society that surrounded them, not in a
passion of moral fervour but by a purely amoral desire to be icono
clastic, to break "the system", to be lively, jaunty, sardonic and
satirical in turn.

Thus Caradoc Evans and Lloyd-George in their respective spheres
delighted in shocking their audiences and making them draw in their
breath. There is a parallel between LL G. s picture of the squire and
the parson "breaking into the poor-box" and Evans s lecherous
Chapel deacon bringing home his daughter s corpse on a dung cart.

Professor Gwyn Jones has said: "The contemporary Welsh story is
the product of a passionate, rebellious and humorous generation with
a huge delight in life and no small relish for death." That generation
is not Lloyd-George s generation, but he was of it in spirit that was
the measure of his modernity of outlook. He was that generation s
forerunner who, like Dylan Thomas s Uncle Jim, could "set the dark
ness on fire".

For the Welsh Nonconformists of Lloyd-George s youth the real
sources of inspiration were not Christ, or St. Paul, or John the Baptist,
but Gladstone, Robert Owen, Mabon; already fundamentalism had
been decried and denied. Having denied it, the political and radical
elements of these sources were cherished, while the religious and moral
aspects were ignored, and the new thinkers "new lifers" might be an
apter phrase revelled in a secret inner freedom which permitted
them to pray and to lust, to sing hymns and tell bawdy stories, to soar
to the heights of mysticism and to enjoy being down-to-earth, randy
and passionate materialists. The Welsh poets, short story writers and
novelists of this century have realised all this and sought to interpret it.
For this reason their contribution to literature is not a shallow piece
of current reporting, but a three-dimensional portrait of the period
from the i86os to the 19605.

Search for the magic of Lloyd-George and, even though they cannot

;j 1 6 THE MASK OF MERLIN

capture it, they will provide many clues to the mystery. Through
them one will see this magic mellowed from the extreme and biased
portrait of Maynard Keynes into something which is human and not
"half-human", dishonest only in a desire to be honest with innermost
thoughts, Lloyd-George would have agreed with Strindberg that truth
is relative. He always marvelled that Bonar Law should resent being
called a liar. "Now / don t mind," was his comment.

He was akin to the eighteenth-century view of a Welshman "Full
of pride, petulance and pedigree, hot as a leek and amorous as a goat."

And for the man who did not mind being called a liar this verdict
is probably the one which Lloyd-George himself in his sunniest
moments would have appreciated most.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. GENERAL

The following biographies of Lloyd George have provided useful,
background information

BURBIDGE, WILLIAM F., The Wizard of Wales. A biographical sketch of
the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George. John Growther: London &
Bognor Regis, 1943.

CLARKE, TOM, My Lloyd George Diary. Methuen & Co.: London,

1939-
DAVIES, SIR ALFRED THOMAS, K.B.E., The Lloyd George I Knew . . .

supplemented by the story of the Welsh Department. Henry F.

Walter: London, 1948.
DAVIES, WILLIAM WATKIN, Lloyd George, 1863-1914. Constable & Co. :

London, 1939.
DILNOT, FRANK, Lloyd George: the Man and his Story. Harper & Bros.:

New York & London, 1917.
Du PARCQ,, HERBERT, Baron du Parcq, Life of David Lloyd George.

4 vols. Caxton Publishing Go,: London, 1912, 13.
EDWARDS, JOHN HUGH, The Life of David Lloyd George^ with a short

history of the Welsh people. 5 vols. Waverley Book Co. : London,

1913-1924.
EVANS, BERIAH, The Life of Lloyd George. "Everyman": London,

1916.
GEORGE, WILLIAM, My Brother and I. Eyre & Spottiswoode: London,

1958. .

JONES, JOHN J., The Man David. An imaginative presentation, based

on fact, of the life of David Lloyd George from 1880 to 1914. Hamish

Hamilton: London, 1944.
JONES, THOMAS, G.H., Lloyd George. Oxford University Press: London,

MAJSKY, V., Lloyd George. A political character-sketch. Petrograd:

1916.
MALLET, SIR CHARLES EDWARD, Mr. Lloyd George. A study. Ernest

Benn: London, 1930.
OWEN, FRANK, Tempestuous Journey. Lloyd George, his life and times.

Hutchinson: London, 1954.
SYLVESTER, ALBERT JAMES, The Red Lloyd George. Cassell & Co.:

London, 1947.

317

318 BIBLIOGRAPHY

THOMSON, MALCOLM, David Lloyd George. The official biography by
M. Thomson with the collaboration of Frances, Countess Lloyd-
George of Dwyfor. Hutchinson: London, 1948.

WEST, GORDON, Lloyd George s Last Fight. Alston Rivers: London,
1930*

B. CHAPTERS 1-24

A check list of books consulted
Chapter i
BARNES, JAMES THOMAS STRACHEY, Half a Life Left. Eyre & Spottis-

woode: London, 1937.
GEORGE, RICHARD LLOYD, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, Dame Mar

garet. George Allen & Unwin: London, 1947.
HAIG, DOUGLAS, Earl Haig, The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, 1914-

19 19. Edited by R. N. W. Blake. Eyre & Spottiswoode: London,

1952.

Chapters

COUPLAND, SIR REGINALD, K.C.M.G., Welsh and Scottish Nationalism.
A study* Collins: London &gt; 1954.

Chapter 4

GARDINER, ALFRED GEORGE, The Life of Sir William Harcourt. 2 vols.

Constable & Co.: London, 1923.
HALDANE, RICHARD BURDON, Viscount Haldane. Richard Burdon

Haldane: An autobiography. Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1929,
HAXEY, SIMON, Tory M.P. Victor Gollancz: London, 1939.

Chapter^

ASQUTTH, EMMA ALICE MARGARET, Countess of Oxford and Asquith,
The Autobiography of Mar got Asquith. 2 vols. John Lane: London,

BROODBANK, SIR JOSEPH GUINNESS, History of the Port of London. 2 vols.

Daniel O Connor: London, 1921.
GARDINER, ALFRED GEORGE, Prophets, Priests and Kings. Reprinted

from the "Daily News". Alston Rivers: London, 1908.
HYNDMAN, HENRY M., The Murdering of British Seamen by Mr. Lloyd

George, the liberal Cabinet and the Board of Trade. Verbatim report of

a speech on this subject delivered April i4th, 1913. The British

Socialist Party: London, 1913.
JENKINS, ROY HARRIS, Mr. Balfour s Poodle. An account of the struggle

between the House of Lords and the government of Mr. Asquith.

Heinemann: London, 1954.
MASTERMAN, LUCY, formerly LYTTELTON, C. F. G. Masterman. A bio

graphy. Nicolson & Watson: London, 1939.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 319

ChapterG

LINCOLN, IGNATIUS TIMOTHY TRIBICH, afterwards CHAO KUNG, The

Autobiography of an Adventurer. Translated by Emile Burns, Leonard

Stein: London, 1931.
MORLEY, JOHN, Viscount Morley of Blackburn* Memorandum on

resignation, August, 1914. Macmillan: London, 1928.
MURRAY, ARTHUR CECIL, Viscount ElibanL Master and Brother.

Murrays of ElibanL John Murray: London, 1945.
NEUMANN, ROBERT, Zaharoff, the Armaments King. Translated by R. T.

Clark. Allen & Unwin: London, 1935,
RYAN, ALFRED PATRICK, Mutiny at the Curragh. Macmillan: London,

1956.
SIMON, JOHN ALLSEBROOK, Viscount Simon, Retrospect. The memoirs

of the Rt Hon. Viscount Simon. Hutchinson: London, 1952.
SPENDER, JOHN ALFRED and ASQUTTH, HON. SIR CYRIL, Life of Herbert

Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith. 2 vols. Hutchinson: London,

1932.

Chapter 7

ALLEN, FREDERICK LESLIE, The Great Pierpont Morgan. Harper & Bros. :

New York, 1949.
ARTHUR, SIR GEORGE COMPTON ARCHIBALD, Bart., Life of Lord Kitchener.

3 vols. Macmillan: London, 1920.
HOUSE, EDWARD MANDELL, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Ar

ranged by Charles Seymour. Ernest Benn : London, 1926.
JAMES, SIR WILLIAM MILBURN, G.GJB., The Eyes of the Nosy. A bio

graphical study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall. Methuen: London,

MILTJS, WALTER, Road to War: America 1914-1917. Fabcr & Faber:

London, printed in U.S. A., 1935.
MOOREHEAD, ALAN McGRAE, Gollipoli. Hamish Hamilton: London,

1956-

SPEARS, RT. HON. SIR EDWARD Louis, Bart., Prelude to Victory. Jonathan
Cape: London, 1939.

Chapters

BAKER, RT. HON. PHILIP JOHN NOEL, The Private Manufacture of Arma

ments. Victor Gollancz: London, 1936.
BALLARD, COLIN ROBERT, Kitchener. Faber & Faber: London,

1930-
BETHMANN-HOLWEGG, THEOBALD THEODOR FRIEDRICH ALFRED VON,

Reflections on the World War. Translated by Geoige Young. Thornton

Butterworth: London, 1920.
DAVENPORT, GUILES, aharof t High Priest of War. Lothrop, Lee &

Shepard: Boston, 1934.

320 BIBLIOGRAPHY

GEORGE, DAVID LLOYD, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, War Memoirs
of David Lloyd George. 2 vols. Odhams Press: London, 1938.

LEWINSOHN, RICHARD, The Man Behind the Scenes. The career of Sir
Basil Zaharoff. Victor Gollancz: London, 1929.

Chapter g

ATTKEN, WILLIAM MAXWELL, Baron Beaverbrook. Politicians in the

War, 1914-1^16. 2 vols. Thornton Butterworth: London, 1928.

Men and Power, 1917-1918. Hutchinson: London, 1959.

BLAKE, ROBERT NORMAN WILLIAM, The Unknown Prime Minister. The

life and times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923. Eyre & Spottis-

woode: London, 1955.
COCKERILL, SIR GEORGE KYNASTON, What Fools We Were. Hutchinson:

London, 1944.
DAVIES, SIR JOSEPH, K.B.E., The Prime Minister s Secretariat 1916-1920.

R. H. Johns: Newport, Mon., 1951.
GROOS, OTTO, Der Krieg in der Nordsee. Berlin, 1920.
HANKEY, MAURICE PASCAL ALERS, Baron Hankey. The Supreme Command

1914-1918. 2 vols. Allen & Unwin: London, 1961.

Chapter 10

A COURT, afterwards A COURT REPINGTON, CHARLES, The First World

War, 191 4-1918. Personal experiences. 2 vols. Constable: London,

1920.
"CENTURION", The Man Who Didn t Win the War. An exposure of

Lloyd Georgism by Centurion. " National Review": London,

1923.
CHURCHILL, RT. HON. SIR WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER, K.G. Great

Contemporaries. Thornton Butterworth: London, 1937.
EDMONDS, SIR JAMES EDWARD, A Short History of World War One. Oxford

University Press: London, 1951.
GREY, EDWARD, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five Years, i8gs-

igi6, 2 vols. Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1925.
HART, BASIL HENRY LTODELL, The Red War igi4~igi8* Faber & Faber :

London, 1930.
MACKENZIE, EDWARD MONTAGUE GOMPTON, Athenian Memories. Chatto

& Windus: London, 1940.
MAURICE, SIR FREDERICK BARTON, K.C.M.G., Intrigues of the War.

Reprinted from the "Westminster Gazette": Loxley Bros.: Lon
don, 1922.
SMITH, FREDERICK EDWIN, Earl of Birkenhead, Turning Points in History.

Hutchinson: London, 1930.

TAYLOR, ALLAN JOHN PERCIVALE, Lloyd George : Rise and Fall. Cam
bridge University Press, 1961,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 32 1

Chapter n

CHURCHILL, RT. HON. SIR WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER, K.G., The World

Crisis, 1911-1918. Gvols. Thornton Butterworth: London, 1923-1931.
GEORGE, DAVID LLOYD, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, The Truth About

the Peace Treaties. 2 vols. Victor Gollancz:. London, 1938.
LAUSANNE, STEPHAN, Le Diable aux Teux Bleus. Paris, 1922.
NICOLSON, HON. SIR HAROLD GEORGE, K.C.V.O., King George V: His

Life and Reign. Constable: London, 1952.

Chapter 12

ALDINGTON, RICHARD, Lawrence of Arabia. A biographical enquiry.

Victor Gollancz: London, 1955.

FRY, CHARLES BURGESS, Life Worth Living. Some phases of an English
man. Eyre & Spottiswoode: London, 1939.
GEORGE, DAVID LLOYD, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. The Truth

About Reparations and War Debts. Heinemann: London, 1932.
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD, Baron Keynes, The Economic Consequences of

the Peace. Macmillan: London, 1919.
LANSING, ROBERT, The Peace Negotiations. A personal narrative.

Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston and New York, 1921.
RAYMOND, JOHN, The Baldwin Age. Edited by John Raymond, with an

essay entitled "Baldwin and the Right by R* N. W. Blake. Eyre

& Spottiswoode: London, 1960.
RIDDELL, GEORGE ALLARDICE, Baron Riddell, Lord RuldelTs Intimate

Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918-1923. Victor Gollancz:

London, 1933.
STEED, HENRY WICKHAM, Through Thirty Tears, 1892-1922. 2 vols.

Heinemann: London, 1924.
WRENCH, SIR JOHN EVELYN LESLIE, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times.

Hutchinson: London, 1955.

Chapter 13

CARR , EDWARD HALLETT, A History of Soviet Russia. The Bolshevik
Revolution 1917-1923. 3 vols. Macmillan: London, 1950-53.

COLLIER, JOHN and LANG, IAIN, Just the Other Day. An informal history
of Great Britain since the war. Hamish Hamilton: London, 1932.

DEGRAS, JANE, Third (Communist] International. The Communist Inter
national, 1919-1943* Documents selected and edited by Jane Degras.
Oxford University Press: London, 1956.

EVANS, TREVOR, Beuin. Allen & Unwin: London, 1946.

GOTTLIEB, WOLFRAM WILHELM, Studies in Secret Diplomacy during the
First World War. Allen & Unwin: London, 1957.

HANKEY, MAURICE PASCAL ALERS, Baron Hankey, Diplomacy by Con
ference. Studies in public affairs, 1920-1946. Ernest Benn: London,
1946.

322 BIBLIOGRAPHY

NIKITIN, BORIS VLADIMIROVICH, The Fatal Tears. Fresh revelations on a
chapter of underground history. Translated by D. Hastie Smith.
William Hodge & Co.: London, 1938.

THOMSON, SIR BASIL HOME, K.C.B., Queer People. Hodder & Stoughton:
London, 1922.

- The Scene Changes. Victor Gollancz: London, 1939.

Chapter 14

CROZIER, FRANK PERCY, Ireland For Ever. Jonathan Cape: London &

Toronto, 1932.
MANSERGH, PHILIP NICHOLAS SETON, Documents and Speeches on British

Commonwealth Affairs, 1931-1952. Edited by N. Mansergh. 2 vols.

Oxford University Press: London, 1953.
O CONNOR, FRANK, pseud, (i.e. MICHAEL FRANCIS O DONOVAN), The

Big Fellow: a Life of Michael Collins. T. Nelson & Sons: London,

1937-
OLIVER, FREDERICK SCOTT, Ordeal by Battle. Macmillan: London,

Chapter /j

GAUNT, SIR GUY REGINALD ARCHER, K.G.M.G., The Tield of the Years.

A story of adventure afloat and ashore. Hutchinson: London &

Melbourne, 1940.
KENNEDY, AUBREY LEO, Old Diplomacy and New . . . from Salisbury to

Lloyd George. John Murray: London, 1922.
SYMONS, JULIAN, Horatio Bottomley. A biography. Cresset Press: Lon

don, 1955.

Chapter 16

AITKEN, WILLIAM MAXWELL, Baron Beaverbrook, The Decline and Fall

of Uqyd George. Collins: London, 1963.
ASQUITH, HERBERT HENRY, Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Memories and

Reflections, 1852-1927. 2 vols. Gassell & Co.: London, 1928.
BOWLE,JOHN, Viscount Samuel. Victor Gollancz: London, 1957.
FISCHER, Louis, Oil Imperialism. The international struggle for petro

leum, Allen & Unwin: London, printed in U.S.A., 1927.
SULTAN MUHAMMED SHAH, Aga Khan, TTie Memoirs of Aga Khan.

Cassell & Co.: London, 1954.

Chapter 17

MINNEY, RUBEIGH JAMES, Viscount Addison : Leader of the Lords. Odhams

Press: London, 1958.
THOMSON, SIR BASIL HOME, K.C.B., The Allied Secret Service in Greece.

Hutchinson: London, 1931.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 323

Chapter 18

MACMILLAN, GERALD, Honours for Sale. The strange story of Maundy
Gregory. Richards Press: London, 1954.

MORISON, STANLEY, The History of The Times. 4vols. The Times Publish
ing Co.: London, 1935-1952.

Chapter ig

BURGESS, JOSEPH, Will Uoyd George Supplant Ramsay MacDonald? Joseph

Burgess: Ilford, 1926.
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD, Baron Keynes, and HENDERSON, SIR HUBERT

DOUGLAS, Can Lloyd George Do It? An examination of the Liberal

pledge (to reduce unemployment). The Nation and Athenaeum:

London, 1929.
SPENDER, JOHN ALFRED, Sir Robert Hudson. A memoir. Gassell & Go. :

London, 1930.

Chapter 20

H.R.H. DUKE OF WINDSOR, A King s Story. The memoirs of H.R.H. the
Duke of Windsor. Cassell & Co.: London, 1951.

Chapter 21

HITLER, ADOLF, Hitler s Table Talk, 1941-1944. With an introductory

essay by H. R. Trevor Roper. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1953.
HOLLIS, SIR LESLIE GHASEMORE, K.C.B., K.C.E., One Marine s TaU.

Andre Deutsch: London, 1956.
SCHMIDT, PAUL, Statist auf diphmatischer JBuehne, 1923-1945. Erlebnisse

des Chefdolmetschers im Auswartigen Amt mit den Staatsmannera

Europas. Bonn: 1949.
TABOUIS, GENEVIEVE RAPATEL, They Called Me Cassandra. Charles

Scribner s Sons: New York, 1942.

Chapter 22

BENNETT, SIR JOHN WHEELER WHEELER, King George VL His life and

reign. MacmiUan: London, 1958.
BOOTHBY, ROBERT JOHN GRAHAM, Lord Boothby, I Fight to Lwe. Victor

Gollancz: London, 1947.
CASEY, RICHARD GARDINER, Lord Casey, Personal Experiences, 1931-1946*

Constable: London, 1962.
JONG, Louis DE, De Duitse Vijtde Colonne in de tweede rvereldoorlog. Arnhem,

Amsterdam, 1953.
KEYES, ELIZABETH, Geoffrey Keyes&gt; V.C. 9 Af.C., Croix dt Guerre . . Lieut.-

Colonel nth Scottish Commando. George Newnes: London, 1956.
OGLANDER, CECIL FABER ASPINALL, Robert Kejts. Hearth Press:

London, 1951.
RJGESS, CURT, Total Espionage. G. P. Putnam s Sons: New York, 1941.

324 BIBLIOGRAPHY

SCHELLENBERG, WALTER, ScMlenberg Memoirs. Edited and translated
by Louis Hagen. Andre Deutsch: London, 1956.

Chapter 24

BANKHEAD, TALLULAH BROCKMAN, Tallulah. My autobiography.

Victor Gollancz: London, 1952.
GEORGE, DAVID LLOYD, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, The Wit and

Wisdom of IMjd George. Compiled and edited by Dan Rider. Grant

Richards: London, 1917.
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD, Baron Keynes, Essays in Biography. Mac-

millan: London, 1933.

C. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO CHAPTERS 1-24

References to books cited in Sections A and B of the Bibliography

are given by author and chapter
Chapter i

Churchill tributes to Lloyd George: speech in the House of Com
mons, 1945, on the occasion of Lloyd George s death.

Earl Lloyd George on "inaccuracies": see GEORGE, RICHARD
LLOYD, Section A.

Mr. A. J. Sylvester s comments: see SYLVESTER, ALBERT JAMES,
Section A.

Chapter 2

Thomas Charles Williams: conversation with the author.

Several background references from " Baner Cymru Ac Yr Amserau ",
"North Wales Chronicle" and "Caernarvon & Denbigh Herald", and
from mss. from the Welsh National Library.

Moses Roberts: private memoranda and letters.

Aneirin Talfan Davies: an article in the "Western Mail", 1955.

Chapters

"I come from the blackest and wickedest Tory parish in the land."
It should be noted that Lloyd George again used this phrase in a
speech at the Queen s Hall, London, in 1910, when he added: "I
believe that my old uncle was the only Liberal in the village."

Michael D. Jones reference: in a thesis on "Nonconformity s Battle
in Wales" by the Rev. Thomas Charles Williams.

Diary reference to "M.O.": see OWEN, FRANK, Section A.

Chapter 4

Edwards v. Edwards divorce action: reports in "The Times" (soth
July and 1 3th Aug. 1897), "Caernarvon & Denbigh Herald ", "Mont
gomery County Times"*

The letter from Lloyd George to the Caernarvon Liberal Association:
"The Times" (2gth Nov., 1897).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 325

D. A. Thomas (controversy over Home Rule) : told by Lady Rhondda
to the author.

Birmingham Riot: quotations from Lord Randolph Churchill and
others; also "Birmingham Post", "Birmingham Gazette".

Chamberlain s reply to Labouchere: from material compiled by
Labouchere when writing Liberalism and the Empire (1900), but not
hitherto published.

It is worth noting that Labouchere stated in Liberalism and the Empire
that the Chartered Company s chief shareholders were "able a little
later to unload them (the shares) upon the public at a very heavy
profit" and Labouchere estimated these profits as: "Mr. Rhodes
546,376; Mr, Beit 439,520; Beit and Rhodes in joint names
837,964; Rhodes and Beit in joint names 45,600; Rhodes, Rudd
and Beit 68,000."

P. C. Stonier s evidence: told to the author and also substantiated
in press interviews in "Birmingham Post" and "Birmingham Gazette"

(1954)-

Chapter 5

Lloyd George and shipowners: see THOMSON, MALCOLM, Section A.

Quotation from Sir Harold Nicolson: from an interview with Ken
neth Harris in "The Observer" (iath Nov., 1961).

Mrs. Sydney Webb on Asquith: see MASTERMAN, LUCY, Section B,
Chapter 5.

Chapter 6

Haldane and King Edward VII: see HALDANE, RICHARD BURDON,
Section B, Chapter 4.

Lloyd George on King Edward VII : see GEORGE, WILLIAM, Section A,

Lloyd George and Algerian oil: see NEUMANN, ROBERT, Section B,
Chapter 6. "As long ago as 1915 . . . Lord Murray, sent out by the
oil company, S. Pearson & Co., had tried to get an ^ oil concession
which was to include over 750,000 hectares ... in Algeria." Neumann
also gives details of Zaharoff s negotiations after the war. For further
reference, see Documents Politiques & la Guerre (Barthe, Menevte and
Tarpin).

"A classic confusion of orders": see RYAN, Section B, Chapter 6.

Asquith on "panic in the City", and Asquith on the merits of the
Servian and Austrian cases, and his comments on his Cabinet on
the eve of war, see SPENDER and ASQUTTH, Section B, Chapter 6.

Chapter 7

See also History Today (May, 1961) for an article by John Terraine
entitled "Lloyd George s Dilemma ".

" Wait and See " references : Hansard, 3rd March and 4th Apnl, 1910.

326 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas Lamont s reference to H. P. Davison is quoted in Road to
War: see MILLIS, Section B, Chapter 7.

John Buchan s comment on Lloyd George: see JONES, THOMAS,
Section A.

Also consulted: "La Follette s Magazine" and "New York Times"
(1914-1916).

Mrs. Asquith s diary notes: quoted in her Autobiography, see ASQUITH,
Section B, Chapter 5.

Naval intelligence messages : see JAMES, Section B, Chapter 7. James s
account further substantiated by Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt.

Leakages of information: see MOOREHEAD, Section B, Chapter 7;
Sir Basil Thomson to author.

Bonar Law s alleged offer of Premiership to Lloyd George: see
THOMSON, Section A.

Chapters

Kitchener s summing up of French s criticism and requests, and
Kitchener s view that he and the Prime Minister would have been
"hanged on the gallows of public opinion . . .": see SPENDER and
ASQUITH, Section B, Chapter 6.

Haldane s letter to Mrs. Asquith: see ASQUTTH, Section B, Chapter 5.

Asquith on Lloyd George s demand for control of the liquor trade:
see SPENDER and ASQUITH, Section B, Chapter 6.

Armaments industry: see also Report of Royal Commission on the
Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms (H.M.S.O., 1936).

Lloyd George s bargain with Zaharoff: from Documents Politiques de
la Guerre; cited above, Section C, Chapter 6*

Lloyd George s urging of "neutral intervention" by President
Wilson: see MILLIS, Section B, Chapter 7, and HOUSE, Section B,
Chapter 7.

Auckland Geddes s statement on the merits of conscription: see
SIMON, Section B, Chapter 6.

Chapter 9

See also Admiralty White Paper (Cmd. 2710 H.M.S.O.), "The
Times* (December 1916), "Reynolds News" (December 1916).

Asquith s diary notes on Lloyd George s declaration of loyalty: see
SPENDER and ASQUITH, Section B, Chapter 6.

John Terraine: see History Today , cited above, Section C, Chap
ter 7.

Lord Beaverbrook on Bonar Law s opinion of Lloyd George: see
ATTKEN, Section B, Chapter 9.

Events leading up to Lloyd George overthrowing Asquith: for fullest
details see ATTKEN, Section B, Chapter 9, Politicians in the War.

Asquith s letter to Bonar Law: see SPENDER, Section B, Chapter 6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 327

"Bonar Law had the resolution in his pocket, but never showed it
to Asquith": see BLAKE, Section B, Chapter 9.

Churchill on Lloyd George s seizure of power: tribute in House of
Commons on occasion of Lloyd George s death, cited above, Section
C, Chapter i.

Lyautey on Lloyd George and Haig; and Lloyd George s comments
to D Alenon: see Documents Politigues de la Guerre, cited above. Section
C, Chapters 6 and 8.

Haig on Lloyd George and the Cabinet, and Haig s correspondence
with the King and Lord Stamfordham: see HAIG, Section B, Chapter i.

Haldane on Haig: see HALDANE, Section B, Chapter 4.

Chapter 10

Balfour compared to "a powerful, graceful cat": see CHURCHILL,
Section B, Chapter 10.

Lloyd George on Rhondda: see GEORGE, Section B, Chapter 8.

Admiral Gaunt s diary entries : given to the author by Admiral Gaunt.

Reply to Lloyd George s attacks on Haig by Lord Trenchard, Sir
Noel Birch and Sir John Davidson: correspondence in "Daily Tele
graph" (1936).

Lloyd George on Haig s "gamble" at Passchendaele: see GEORGE,
Section B, Chapter 8.

Robertson s warning to Haig: see HAIG, Section B, Chapter i.

See same source for Wilson s warning to Haig that P&ain s "charity "
was "very cold".

Duke of Northumberland s letter to Maurice: published in Intrigues
of the War, as was Grigg s reply on behalf of Lloyd George : see MAURICE,
Section B, Chapter 10,

Countess Lloyd-George s letter: "Spectator" (November 1956),

Miss Maurice s statement was also quoted in the " Evening Standard "
(agth Nov., 1956),

Chapter 11

Clemenceau rehearsing his speech to Churchill: see CHURCHILL,
Section B, Chapter 10. The essay on Glemenceau mentions, "He
uttered to me in his room at the Ministry of War words he afterwards
repeated in the tribune: *I will fight in Paris ."

Gough s dismissal: see HAIG, Section B, Chapter i, and SMITH,
Section B, chapter 10. Also "Journal of the Royal United Services
Institution" (March 1936), an article by Brig.-Gen. Sir James Ed
monds. Other sources: interview with General Gough by J. P. W.
Mallalieu, M.P., in the "Evening Standard" (1956), and General
Gough to the author.

Dr. Jones on Lloyd Geoige s low courage in 1918: see JONES, THOMAS,
Section A.

328 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Derby s bet with Lloyd George: statement by Lord Derby and
Private Papers of Douglas Haig: see HAIG, Section B, Chapter i.

Churchill s statement that Lloyd George "ran the first world war
better than I ran the second": see "The Observer" (i2th Nov., 1961),
interview by Kenneth Harris with Sir Harold Nicolson.

Haig s insistence on a decision in autumn 1918: see war dispatches
and HAIG, Section B, Chapter i.

Lloyd George s peace manoeuvres in May-June 1918: see "CEN
TURION", Section B, Chapter 10, and Uqyd George and the War by In
dependent Liberal (Hutchinson 191 7). See also speech made by Arthur
Henderson (27* Nov., 1918) in which he revealed that Lloyd George
had favoured sending an envoy to the socialistic Stockholm Peace
Conference in the summer of 1917, and only drew back at the last
moment,

"Hang the Kaiser": see "Bristol Observer", "North Wales Chron
icle" (November to December 1918), and Churchill s essay on the
Kaiser in Great Contemporaries, CHURCHILL, Section B, Chapter 10.

Briand s query to Lloyd George about hanging the Kaiser: see
LAUSANNE, Section B, Chapter 1 1, and Documents Politiques . . .

F. E. Smith s statement to J. H. Morgan was disclosed by Professor
J. H. Morgan to R. Barry O Brien and quoted in the "Daily Tele
graph".

Chapter 12

Northcliffe s letter to Dawson: see WRENCH, Section B, Chapter
12.

Mme. Gauthier on LL G. and Clemenceau: told to author.

Nicolson on Lloyd George: see "The Observer" (i2th Nov., 1961),
cited above, Section G, Chapter 1 1.

Lloyd George s demand of Mosul and Iraq from Clemenceau : see
ALDINGTON, Section B, Chapter 12, LEWINSOHN, Section B, Chapter 8,
and DAVENPORT, Section B, Chapter 8.

Lloyd George at Spa Conference: see Documents of British Foreign
Policy 1919-1939.

Lloyd George and Albania: see BARNES, Section B, Chapter i.

Correspondence on offer of Albanian kingship: see Central News,
message of 2 7th Jan., 1925; "Evening Standard" (2gthNov,, 1937 and
8th April, 1939) and FRY, Section B, Chapter 12.

Gregory s letter to the unnamed peer is not available for general
inspection, and is, of course, the property of the peer.

Chapter 13

Lloyd George to Thomson on Bolsheviks: as told to author by
Thomson.

Churchill on Kolchak: see CHURCHILL, Section B, Chapter 10.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 329

Lloyd George on golf links with Briand and Bonomi: see OWEN,
Section A.

The Kuhlmann document was found in the files of the German
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is now in the custody of the British
authorities. Other documents show that the Kaiser expressed agree
ment with the contents.

Russian subsidies to " Daily Herald" and Kamenev: see Documents
of British Foreign Policy . . ., cited above, Section C, Chapter 12.

Chapter 14

King George V and Ireland: see NICOLSON, Section B, Chapter 1 1.

Ryan s statements : verbally to the author. Greenwood declined the
author s request for a comment on this. Thomson and Crozier both
concurred with the general gist of Ryan s remarks when questioned
by the author, and Crozier substantiates this in his book: see CROZIER,
Section B, Chapter 14.

For Simon quotation see SIMON, Section B, Chapter 6.

Some background information on Irish atrocities obtained from
COLLIER and LANG, Section B, Chapter 13, and from current press
reports in London and Irish papers.

Irish peace talks: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A.

Chapter 15

See also the Diplomatika Engr&phica (Greek White Book, 1920).

Hankey as "a powerful and catalytic agent": see JONES, THOMAS,
Section A.

David Davies: Frank Owen gives some interesting sidelights on
David Davies in Tempestuous Journey, giving a more vivid picture of the
man than is possible in the scope of this chapter: see OWEN, Section A.

"The Round Table" of the period portrays the views of Curtis and
Kerr on imperial development and the Commonwealth idea.

J. T. Davies: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A.

Sylvester on Lloyd George: see SYLVESTER, Section A. Sylvester also
mentions a visit by Lloyd George to Zaharoff after Lloyd George had
ceased to be P.M.

Zaharoff s statements to Rosita Forbes (Mrs. A. T. McGrath) : con
firmed in a letter from Mrs. McGrath to the author. Some of these
statements were published in the " Sunday Chronicle" (agth Nov.,

Maundy Gregory s statement to Thomson: told by Thomson to the
author.

Zaharoff s escape from capture by German submarine: see obituary
of Zaharoffin "Daily Telegraph" (s8th Nov., 1936).

Clemenceau on importance of Zaharoff s information: see Docu
ments Politiques . . . and Glemenceau in a letter to M. Rene Tarpin.

330 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mutual agreement to prevent bombing of arms plants: see Documents
Politiques . . . and BAKER, Section B, Chapter 8.

Thomson s probes into Bolshevik activities: Thomson to author.

Lloyd George s insatiable curiosity for charlatans: JONES, THOMAS,
Section A.

Bottomley s prosecution: see "Evening Standard" (2ist Aug., 1951),
"Bottomley and the Victory Bonds Swindle" by Montgomery Hyde:
"Since an M.P. was involved, the normal practice would have been
for the Grown to be represented by one of the Law Officers . . . but
such was the legend of Bottomley s invincibility that Mr. Lloyd George s
Government, which was highly nervous about the proceedings, de
clined to instruct the Attorney- or Solicitor-General for this purpose."

Chapter 16

ZaharofFs Paris meeting with Lloyd George: see DAVENPORT,
Section B, Chapter 8, LEWINSOHN, Section B, Chapter 8, NEUMANN,
Section B, Chapter 6.

Lloyd George and Zionism and Sir Charles Henry: see AITKEN,
Section B, Chapter 9, "Men and Power".

Lloyd George and Lawrence: see ALDINGTON, Section B, Chapter 12.

"Give Lawrence the maximum of publicity": Sutherland s own
quotation of his master s instructions, made at a Press Conference in
March 1919.

Lloyd George s talks with Zaharoff : ZaharofFs statements to Rosita
Forbes, and Documents Politiques . . .

Chapter ij

Lloyd George and Poincare: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A, OWEN,
Section A, THOMSON, Section A, and ALDINGTON, Section B, Chapter 12.

On the subject of Poincar^ s insistence on a military convention and
a "guarantee in writing", the following quotation from Andr
Maurois s Call Jfo Man Happy is apt: "France liked precise engage
ments. The English had a horror of them. Poincare had irritated the
English by his inflexibility."

Viscount St. David s indictment of the Greeks: "Daily Express"
(2?th Sept., 1932).

Chapter 18

LL G. and attempt to buy "The Times": see The History of The Times,
vol. iv.

Younger s strictures on the Lloyd George Fund : see NICOLSON, Section
B, Chapter 11, and BLAKE, Section B, Chapter 9.

The astonishing significance of the large sums mentioned in these
"honours deals" is the extraordinary amount of spare cash which rich
men had available in these days. The extent of this wealth may
probably never be known, but most of it was obtained by profits made

BIBLIOGRAPHY 33!

out of the war. Support for the claims that such profits reached
astronomical figures is contained in this letter of 8th Oct, 1921, from
Mr. Churchill to Lloyd George. " - . The first and greatest mistake
in my opinion was leaving the profiteers in possession of their ill-
gotten war wealth. Had prompt action been taken at the beginning
of 1919, several thousand millions of paper wealth could have been
transferred to the State and the internal debt reduced accordingly."
(See Appendix IV in Men and Power by Lord Beaverbrook.)

Mr. Archie de Bear s statements: see "Sunday Express* (November,
J 936) ; also substantiated in personal interview with the author.

Honours traffic involving Zaharoff: see Documents Politiques . . .:
statement by M. Barthe (1919) and archives of Turkish Foreign Office
(1916-1926).

Also consulted: "The Banker " (1922); "Whitehall Gazette"; and
"Morning Post" (1921-1923).

Sir John Stewart sequestration proceedings: "The Times" (sth
and 7th July, 1924).

Chapter 79

The author also had access to the private memoranda and papers of
Mr. Vivian Phillipps, and has seen My Days and Ways, a memoir by Mr.
Phillipps which was privately printed for him and is not available for
general inspection.

Lloyd George in America: see OWEN, Section A, and THOMSON,
Section A.

Lloyd George Fund: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A, and OWEN,
Section A.

Lord St. Davids and alleged destruction of papers relating to Lloyd
George Fund: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A. It is perhaps worth
noting that the present Lord St. Davids has "no knowledge" of this.

Chapter 20

Lloyd George and Maxton: Maxton to author.

Lloyd George as "King s champion" against "Baldwin and Co.":
Wickham Steed in letter to author.

Lord Beaverbrook s comments on suppression of letters by Dawson:
broadcast review of The History of The Times (May 1952).

Chapter 21

Visit to Hitler: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A, and current press
reports.

Heinz Hinge s statements: see The Private Life of Adolf Hitler by Heinz
Linge, "News of the World" (Dec.-Jan., 1955-56).

Letter to Conwell-Evans (27th Dec., 1937): see OWEN, Section A.

Ribbentrop s comments on Lloyd George and King Edward: sec

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Documents of German Foreign Policy, and for further background on wish
ful German thinking, see War Diaries of Abwehr II (Sabotage and Sub
version), at present in the Munich Institute of Contemporary History.
The latter is incomplete and contains only extracts of the Diaries.

Helga Stultz s information: obtained from Helga Stultz to author
and from Wythe Williams, American war correspondent and editor
of "Greenwich Times" (U.S.A.)*

Chapter 22

Nicolson on the possibility of King George VI sending for Lloyd
George: see "Observer" (i2th Dec., 1961).

A. J. Sylvester s statement: see SYLVESTER, Section A.

Garvin s talk with Lloyd George: see JONES, THOMAS, Section A.

Fraulein Bumke s statement: confirmed by Robert E. Sherwood and
Otto Kruger (Tangier, 1946).

Kingsley Martin: see "New Statesman" (27th Nov., 1954).

Lloyd George on difference between himself and Churchill: see
;&lt; News Review" (26th Feb., 1942).

Lloyd George to Keyes: told by Keyes to author. Keyes comment
was: " Lloyd George was still brimful of ideas and astonishingly up-
to-date in his outlook. When he was actually propounding his plans
and some of them were very sound he seemed forceful enough to
deserve a place in the Cabinet. The tragedy was that he saw too
closely the more sombre side of the war picture and this damped down
his enthusiasm so that within a few minutes it was as though one was
talking to a different person."

Hollis on Keyes: see HOLLIS, Section B, Chapter 21.

Roosevelt s reaction to proposal to make Lloyd George U.S. Am
bassador: Robert Berle, Jnr.

Helga Stultz and Fraulein Bumke: Wythe Williams, Otto Kruger
(Tangier), Lt-CoL W. F. Ellis and Helga Stultz in personal interviews
with author. Regarding these sources it should be stated that Col. Ellis
held an important post in British Intelligence circles and was press
attache at the British Consulate-General in Tangier during World
War II, when the then international zone of Morocco was one of the
chief espionage centres of the world. Wythe Williams, after establish
ing a reputation as a foreign correspondent of the "New York Times",
launched a newspaper, "Greenwich Times", from Greenwich, Con
necticut. Lowell Thomas has paid this tribute to him: "For several
yeans Wythe Williams had most of us guessing. By * us I mean those
whose occupation it is to deal with the news . . . Wythe proceeded to
pull one news rabbit after another out of the hat. He had us ... not
only guessing, but more than slightly sceptical. How could one man,
we asked, dig up information not available to the great American wire
services, to say nothing of the great newspapers who had their own

BIBLIOGRAPHY 333

news-gathering machinery in addition? But, by jingo, history began
to vindicate and corroborate Mm." The secret of Williams war scoops
and how he always seemed to know in advance what the enemy were
planning is revealed in part in his book Secret Sources (Ziff-Davis Pub
lishing Co., 1943): he had as informants pro- Allied members of
Hitler s and Ribbentrop s staffs, and listening posts inside Germany
and other enemy territory as well as obtaining the wave lengths which
the German General Staff used for field communications for which he
had a special radio receiver built. Prior to the U.S. entry into the
war Williams published his scoops in " Greenwich Times " and broadcast
many others. In 1942 he wrote: "Because of the transmission expenses
connected with our exclusive reports from overseas I had always been
faced with a considerable overhead. This in turn could be met only
by a commercial sponsor, as the radio stations themselves carry no
provision for such expenses. Without a sponsor willing to cany the
cost, I had to abandon broadcasting over a nation-wide network.
Immediately after Pearl Harbour I offered my services on a non
profit basis and they were accepted by an independent New York
station. This activity I maintained for fourteen months, whereupon
conditions compelled me to suspend it. After Hitler s declaration of
war against the U.S., we did not hear from our German friends for a
long time ... By the very nature of things all such information was
turned over to the United States authorities and only the data made
available for such a purpose were presented in my broadcasts."

For Nazi War Plan for Wales: see also "Western Mail" scries bear
ing this tide (25th March-2nd April, 1957).

Adam von Trott: von Trott, a former Rhodes scholar at Oxford,
tried in June, 1939, to awaken Chamberlain and Halifax to the
possibilities of opposition to Hitler inside Germany. British Foreign
Office opinion was sceptical of and even hostile to von Trott Eden,
when asked by Stafford Gripps to consider any smuggled communica
tions from von Trott as bonafide, replied that the dossier against Trott
was so formidable that he could not concur. Trott was executed for
his part in the plot of 2Oth July, 1944, to assassinate Hitler. See
Documents of German Foreign Policy for a somewhat incomplete and un
deniably biased picture of Trott s activities in Britain.

Chapter 23

Lloyd George and his peerage: see SYLVESTER, Section A, and
GEORGE, Section A.

Lloyd George " talking like a Catholic": this was simply a personal
impression given to the author in an interview, but it is interesting
in view of Owen s statement in Tempestuous Journey: "One afternoon,
when his wife thought he was asleep, he suddenly opened his eyes and
called out: The Sign of the Cross! The Sign of the Cross! "

334 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter 24

Robertson Nicol ("The man who made Lloyd George ") : see TAYLOR,
Section B, Chapter 10.

George Becker : in a letter to the author.

T. P. O Connor: "Lloyds Weekly News" (4* Feb., 1917),

Statement by Earl Lloyd-Geoige: see "Sunday Dispatch" (gth
Nov., 1958), in an interview with D. E. H. Dinsley.

Lloyd George and letter writing: see OWEN, Section A, and JONES,
THOICAS, Section A.

VoronofTs statements: Voronoff to author. Lloyd George had the
wool from his sheep made into coats which he sent to friends abroad.

INDEX

The abbreviation q. has been used throughout when a quotation from the work or person has bem used,
and the abbreviation f. when an iUustration faces the page number.

Abraham, William, "Mabon", 42-3

Abwehr, 279, 288, 295-6

Addison, Dr. C. (Lord), 126, 229, 260

Aga Khan, Memoirs, q.219, 220

Agricultural experiments, 312

Alanbrooke, Lord, 297

Albania, 169

Albanian Monarchy, 169-71

Alcoholism, 65

Algerian oil, 77

Allen of Hurtwood, Lord, 273

Allenby, Lord, 134

Allies Conference in Rome, 117

Alness, Lord, q.3i2

American Marconi Company, 232
Anglo-American relations, 246-7, 249
Anglo-Arabian relations, 216-19
Anglo-French relations, 162-8, 214, 223-4,

220

Anglo-Greek relations, 212-21
Anglo-Russian relations, 172-84
Anglo-Turkish relations, 220-21, 226-9
Appledore, 74
Arabian oil, 77
Armaments scare, 202
Arms and ammunition: set Munitions
Army strength dispute, 138-42
Arnim, General Sixt von, 97
Arthur, Sir George, 106
Asia Minor, 230

Asquith, H. H. (Lord Oxford and Asquith},
21, 56-7, 63-4, 7^-3, 81-2, 85, 87, 89,
q.gi, 92, 96, 106, 108-9, 1J Q, m-12,
113-14, 156, 158, 187-8, 232, 247, 251,

Asquith, H. H. (Lord Oxford and Asquith),
Memories and Reflections, q,iX3, 215

Asquith, Margot (Lady Oxford), 92, q.io8

Asquith, Margot (Lady Oxford), Autobio
graphy, q.ios

Asquith, Margot (Lady Oxford), Diary,
q.103

Asquith, Raymond, q.235, 310

Astor, Lord, 236

Ataturk, Kemal, 218, 225-6, 228

Atholl, Dvke of, 170

Attlee, dement, 160

Austin, Alfred, 50

Autobiography, Margot Asquith, q.ios

Bacon, Francis, &lt;

Balbriggan, 189

Baldwin, Stanley (Lord}, q.i5, q.159,
246-7, 252-3, 258-9, 268-70

Baldwin, Stanley (Lord), A Afemear, 3.247

Baldwin Age, The, Blake, q.i6o

Balfour, A, J. (Lord), 55-6, 70-72, 103,
126-7, 180, 219

Ballot Act (1872), 35

Bandon, County Cork, 188

Boner Cymru founded, 27

Bangor, 51

Bank of England, 80

Banker, The, q.239

Bankhead, Tallulah, q.si x

Baring, Sir Godfrey, 139

Barnes, J. S., 169

Barnes, J. S., Haifa Li/e Left, q.i7i

Bartfae, M*ns ., 206

Beatty, Admiral, 128

Beaufort, Duke of, 67

Beaverbrook, Lord, 91, 227, 238, q.*7o

Beavcrbrook, Lord, Tin Deds* **d Pdl *f

Lloyd George q.i62

Beaverbrook, Lord, MenemdPmoer, q.iai
Becker, George, q-so6
Bedaux, d ., 278
Behne, Otto, 288
Bdfest, 194
Benn, Wedgwood, 231
Berchteagaden, 274
Bergfaof archives, 278-9
Berie, A. A,&gt;er, q.294
Bevan, Ancurin, q.55, 307
Bevin, Ernest, 182, q-3oy
Birch, Sir Nod, 130
Birkenhead, Lord, Turning P**s of History,

Birmingham, 524

Birrell, Augustine, 71

Black and Tans, 186-7, 188-90

Blaenau Pfeatiniog Convxaitioo, 29

Blake, Robert, q.i?

Biake, Robert, The BeMrin Age, q.i6o

Blake, Robert, The Unkmam Prime Mvdstor,

q.236

Blatchford, Robert, q.144
BJoch, Rmilj 97
Boer War, 47-50, 65

335

336 INDEX

Bolshevik activities, 173-4, 208
Bonham-Carter, Sir Maurice, 106
Boothby, Robert (Lord), 262
Boothby, Robert (Lord), I Fight to Live,

q.2O2

Bottomley, Horatio, 126, 210-1 1

Bowen (Secret Service agent), igo

Brains trust, 196-9

Breesc, Jones and Casson, solicitors, 35

Briand, Aristide, 120, 129, 158, 181-2

Briey, 205-7

Bristol, 157

Britain, invasion of, 287

British Union of Fascists, 269

British Weekly, q.62

Bron-y-de, Churt, 314

Broodbank, Sir Joseph, q.6o

Brown, Ernest, 268

Brugha, Cathal, 194

Brusiloff, General, no

"Brutus", 18

Buchan, John, q.8?

Bumke, Fraulein, 294

Bundling, 31-2, 33

Burke, Edmund, q.ig7

Burns, John, 66, 83

Butler, Sir William, 49

Byron, Lord, q.2i2

Bystander libel action, 310

Cabinet Munitions Committee, 96

Cabinet Secretariat, 116

Caernarvon, 30-31, 36, 57, 62, 265-6, 271

Caernarvon Boroughs, 41, 52

Caernarvon Boroughs election (1900), 52

Caernarvon Liberal Association, 46

Calvinistic Methodist Church, 25

Cambon, Paul, q.2O4

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H,, 51, 55-6, 64

Can Lloyd George Do It?, Keynes and Hender
son, 257

Canaris, Admiral, 289, 295

Cannes Conference, 167, 178

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 270

Cardiff, 20, 130

Carey, General, 139

Carnegie, Andrew, 233

Carson, Sir Edward, 103, 188, q.24i

Cam Gwely, 31-2

Casey, Lord, Personal Experience: /$/o-^
q.294

Cawdor, Lord, 71

Chamberlain, Austen, 71

Chamberlain, Joseph, 48-9, 51-3

Chamberlain, Neville, 273, 281-2, 284-5

Chantilly plan, 117, 122

Chaplin, Henry, q.68

Childers, Erskine, 194-5

Christian World, q.5i

Church of Wales, 33-7

Church of Wales, Disestablishment, 42, 72

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 52, 63

Churchill, Sir W. S., q.i5~i6, 57, 83, 87, 89,
133. 135, 149, 157, 176, 178-9, 180,
232* 252, 257-8, 266, q.273, 284-6,
291-2, 294-7, 299, 303

Churchill, Sir W. S., World Crisis, q.i8i, 191

Churt, Surrey, 289, 314

Civil Service, 234, 306-7

Clarke, Sir George, 229

Clemenceau, Georges, 143, 162-7, J 77&gt;
209, 275

Clontarf, Dublin, 189

Clynes, j. R., 241, 253

Coal mines, 253

Coalition Government, 72, 158, 222-30,
306-7

Coalition Unionists, 159

Collins, Michael, 189-90, 194-5, 224

Commonwealth tour by Prince of Wales,
266-7

Communism, 173-84, 208

Conscription, 72, 103, 114, 123

Conscription in Ireland, 185-6

Constantine, King of Greece, 226-7

Constitutional question conference, 71

Convoy system, 127-9

Conway, 36

ConweU-Evans, Professor, 274

Cook,A.J. s 254

Corruption of electors, 34-5

Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruc
tion, 262, 282

Coupon Election, 156

Crewe, Lord, 71

Criccieth, 35, 41

Cripps, Sir Stafford, 307

Croft, Lord Page, q.2O

Crozier, Brigadier-General Frank, 187,
q.i9&lt;&gt;, 190-91

Cunliffe, Sir Walter, 79-81

Curragh mutiny, 78

Curtis, Lionel, 162, 199-200, 234

Curzon, Lord, 162, 174, 194, 215, 218, 286

Cymru Fydd, 47

Cyprus, 220-21

Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, 105, 175

Czechoslovakia, 280

Daily Chronicle, 77, 233, q.25i

Daily Express, q.277

Daily Herald, q.iSs

Daily Mail, q.iga, q.2og

D Alencpn, Colonel, 120

Dalton, Hugh, 63-4

Dame Margaret, R. L. George, q.23

Dardanelles, 92-5, 215

Darlington, 75

David Lloyd George, Thomson, q.i i x

Davidson, Sir John, 130

INDEX

Davies, Sir Alfred, 310

Davies, Anuirin R., q.3o

Davies, Clement, 269

Davies, Major David (Lord Davies), 198, 234

Davies, J. T., 162, 199-200, q.215

Davison, H.P., 86

Dawson, Geoffrey, 270

Decline and Fall, Waugh, q.22, q.24

Decline and Fall of Lloyd George, Beaverbrook,

q.i62
Dejong, Dr. L., The German Fifth Column,

q.288

Demobilisation, 172
Denham aircraft factory fire, 288
Derby, Earl of, 145
De Valcra, 194-5

Diable aux Teux Bleus, Le, Lauzanne, q.157
Dickens, Charles, q.55
Dilke, Sir Charles, 305
Divorce Act, 45
Docks, 60
Doctanents of German Foreign Policy:

vol. viii, q.289; vol. x, q.2ox&gt;
Documents politiques de la guerre, q.g3
Domville, Admiral Sir Barry, 289
Donald, Sir Robert, 233
Donovan, Col. William, 294
Doullens conierence, 149
Drummond, Eric, 162
Dryden, John, q.7o, 107
Dwyfer, Rxoer, 13, 20, f.289, 301
Dublin, 189, 224

Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes,

168

Eden, Sir Anthony, 224
Edinburgh Evening News, 233
Edmonds, Brigadier-General Sir James, q.i47
Edward, Priace of Wales, tour, 266-7
Edward VII, King, 70-71
Edward VIII, King, abdication, 268-72
Edward, VIII, King: see also Windsor,

Dvkeof

Edwards, Mrs. Catherine, 44-5
Edwards, Dr. D., Bishop of St. Asaph, 44,

265

Election campaign, 154-6
Election expenses, 255
Elections:

1906, 56

19x0, 68

1918, 154-8

1923, 246-9

WW, 258

193** 259

Electoral Reform Act, 154
Elias, Evan, 299
Ellis, Clough Williams, 14
Ellis, Tom, 43
English Marconi Company, 231

337

Evans, Caradoc, 315
Evening Standard, q.193, 254

Fabian Society, 63

Farquhar, Lord, 236

Federation of British Industries, 219

Fifth Army retreat scapegoat, 143-7

Fisher, Admiral Lord, 92-4

Foch, Marshal, 129, 149, 151, 209

Fontainebleau Memorandum, 166

Food rationing, 127

France, 223, 249

Free Trade, 247

French, Sir John, 98, 138

French education, 217-18

French General Staff, 97

Future, 209

Galician oilfields, 76

GaUipoli, Moorchead, 295

Gallipoli Campaign, 94

Garbctt, Dr. C. F., 188

"Garden Suburb", 197, 200

Gardiner, A. G., q.63

Garvin, J. L., q.252, q.287

Gauleiter of Britain, 288

Gaunt, Admiral Sir Guy, 93, 128, q.154

Gauthier, Mme, q.i63

Geddes, Sir Auckland, 104

Geddes, Sir Eric, 1 19

Gee, Thomas, 27

General Elections;

/Q/O, 68

19x8, 154-8

19*3, 246-9

1939, 258

/0/, 259

Genoa Conference, 183, 225
Geoffrey Kejes, KC,, Keyes, q.293
George V, King, q.2i, 71, 192-4, 237,

q-239, 240, 259, 264, 266
George VI, King, 286

George, David Uoyd (Earl Lloyd-George of
Dwyfor and Visttuat Gwyaedd)

accepts Earldom, 300

advocates Commandos, 284

Algeria visited, 77

America visited, 246

amorous escapades, 30^-1 o, 311

architect of social security, 62

articled, 35

aspirations to be Prime Minister, 109-13

at Caernarvon, 41, 283

attack on House of Lords, 62

attempt to buy The Times, 233-4

baptism, 28

belief in phrenology, 118
birthplace, 64

338 INDEX

George, David Lloyd continued
bundling, 31
burial site, 301
camping, f.isS
cancer, 299

Carnegie endowment, 233
champions Edward VIII, 267-73
Chancellor of Exchequer, 64, 85-7
character, 200
Christmas greetings cable to Duke of

Windsor, 270

code-named Mr. Hindhead, 289
condemns Chamberlain, 285
condemns war, 48
contemporary assessments, 14-21
courage, 148-9
courting, 38-9
courts press, 9*

criticism of Caiurchill Government, 291
criticism of Holy ComrrmrtiOtt, 29
critkisni of Admiral Sir D. Pound, 293
death, 301
dishonesty, 58
early days, 13
early memories, 35
election tactics, 56
estate at Churt, Surrey, 289
farming policy, 314
feud with Liberal Party, 254
financial interests, 232-3
foreign policy, 164
Gauleiter of Wales, 280
Germany visited, 73
grave, 14, 289
Hitler visited, 273-81
holiday in Algeria, 77
home in Llanystumdwy, 64
honeymoon, 40
house at Walton Heath, 233
humour, 312
Ireland visited, 106
joined Volunteers, 36
Law Society examination passed, 35
Leader of Liberal Party, 256
legal triumph, 36
Madhiavcilij 1 -p *n*T&gt; 3 21
maiden speech, 42
marriage, first, 40

second, 298

Me* endPoaxr: 1917-18, q.i6i
Minister of Munitions, 97-9, 102
motto, 300
nominated as President of Board of Trade,

obituary, 16
operation, 258
opposes Boer War, 48-52
opposes Tithes Rent Charge Bill, 47
oratorical pose, 225
oratory, 18, 309

parentage, 22-3

Paris visited, 129, 280

Parliamentary candidate for Caernarvon
Boroughs, 41

photograph as a young man, 65

photograph with Briand, .129

photograph with Clemenceau, 209

photograph with Foch, f.i29, 209

photograph with Hankey, .129

photograph with Hitler f.288

phrenology, 118

portrait as young M.P., f.8o

President of Board of Trade, 55-7, 61-2

private intelligence service, 74

private life criticised, 44

proposed visit to Russia, 105-6

pseudonym "Brutus", 19

raconteur, 19

rejuvenation, 31112

religious background, 28-32

Prime Minister, 109-230

returns to Llanystumdwy, 299

secret negotiations with Balfour, 73

security risk, 294

singing lessons, 33

tonsillitis, 55

travel interest, 311

The Truth About ike Peace Treaties, q.i57

U-boats campaign, 128

"Unknown adulterer* , 45

War Memoirs, q.io6, 130, 146

War Minister, 107, 124

will contested, 302

writing War Memoirs, 313

youth, 29-32

George, Gwilym Lloyd, 260
George, Mair Eilund, 313
George, Dame Margaret Lloyd, 51, f.8i,

128, q.i42, 296, 314
George, Megan Lloyd, q.38, 260
George, Richard Lloyd, q.x6, 302, q-3Q9
George, Richard Lloyd, Dame Margaret,

q-23
German Breaches of the Laws of War

Inquiry, 157-8

German Fifth Column, The, Dejong, q.288
German General Staff, 97
German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1 79
German Secret Service, 279, 288, 295-6
German-Soviet Pact, 281
Germany, 277-8
"Ghent system", 66
Giraklus Cambrensis, q.24
Gladstone, William Ewart, 34
Glasgow, 173

Godley, Sir Alexander, q.i3O
Goldsmith, Oliver, q.246
Gough, General, 143-7
Greece, 212-21, 293, 297
Greek-Turkish conflict, 228-30

INDEX

Greenwood, Sir Hamar, 187, -
Gregory, Arthur J. P. Maundy, 170, 202,

f.2o8, 234-5, 237, 244-5
Grey, Sir E., 56, 88, 103, 215
Griffith, Arthur, 194-5
Grigg, Sir Edward, 198-9
"Grow More Food at Home" campaign 120
Guest, Capt. F. E., 243 J-W "9

Haig, Field-Marshal Sir Douglas, q.i 14, 1 19,
121-2, 127, 129-36, 144, 145, 14^-50,
-

Haldane, Lord, q, 5 o, 57, 70, q.oo, q.i2i-2,
305

Haifa Life Left, Barnes, 0.171

Halifax, Lord, 286

Hall, Admiral, 93-4, 128, 154

Hamilton, Sir Charles W., 171

Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 94

Hankey, Sir Maurice, 1 16

Hampshire, H.M.S., 106-7

Hankey, Colonel Sir Maurice, later Lord, 101,
116, f.129, 138,281

Hankey, Colonel Sir Maurice, later Lord, The
Supreme Command 1914-18, q.i i x

Harington, Sir Charles, 131, 228

Harris, Howell, 25

Headley, Lord, 171

Health, Ministry of, 127

Hearst, William Randolph, 268

Henderson, Arthur, 113, q.242, 259

Henderson, Sir Hubert D., 256

Henry, Sir Charles, 215-16

Herbert, Lieut.-CoL Aubrey, q.227

Hess, Rudolf 295-6

Hesse, Dr. Fritz, 288

Hindenburg, Field-Marshal, 114

Hindenburg Line, 151

"Hindhead, Mr.", 294-5

History of England: 1718-83, q.235

History of The Times, The, 270

Hitler, Adolf, 273-7, 282, 287-8, 288,

295

Hitler s Table Talk, Trevor-Roper, q.27 5
Hobhouse, Sir Charles, 255
Hollis, General Sir Leslie, 280, q.293
Home Rule for Ireland, 19, 43, 49, 185, 188
Honours Act, 245

Honours, Commission of Inquiry, 244-5
Honours for Sale, MacMillan, q.245
Honours, sale of, 170, 235-45
Horwood, Brig.-Gen. Sir W. T. F., 207
House, Colonel (U.S. Ambassador), 103
Housing, 67

Housing and Town Planning Act, 229
Hudson, Sir Robert, q.249
Hughes, Hugh Price, 28
Hughes, Stephen, 25
Hutchinson, Sir Robert, 256
Hyndman, H. M^ 59

/ Fight to Use, R. Boothby, q.2O2

Illustrated Smdaj Herald, 144

Imperial Defence, 280

Imperial War Cabinet, 115-17

Imperialism, 305

Inchcape, Lord&gt; 171

Income tax, 65

Inflation, 86

Insanity Fair, Reed, q.278

Iraq, 165, 217

Irish Home Rule, 19, 43, 49, ,85, ,88

Insh Mission, 106

Irish question, 185-96

Irish rebellion, 224

Irish Treaty signed, 195

Isaacs, Sir Rufus, 232, 310

339

"Jack the Ripper", 310

James, Julia, 31 1

Jameson Raid, 53

Jameson s Ride, 50

Jellicoe, Admiral Lord, 127-8

Jenkins, Roy, Mr. Batfmr s

Jones, Gwyn, q.gis

Jones, Jack, The Mm David, 303

Jones, Michael D., 36

Jones, & Thomas, q.i6, q.^ 105,

q-i66, 195* 198, q-229, q,24

q.27 7 , q.28 7
Journal of the foyd United Services Itu&ntim,
T 47
Jouvencl, Henri de, Le

Kameaev, Lev, 183

Kennedy, Lord John, 91

Kerensky s government, 175

Kerr, Philip (Lord Lothian), .145, 162, 198-

9, 200; see also Lothian, Lord
Keyes, EH^beth, Getgrej JT W K.C., q.^
Keyes, A dmaral Sir Roger, 264-5, 292-3, 297
Kcynes, John Maynard, 86, 168, 224, 256,

Keynes, John Maynard, Ecomntit, Cm-

sequences of the Peace, 168
Keynes, John Maynard, and Heademm, COM

Llojrd Georgt Do h?, 257
"Khaki Election", 52
King George V; His Lift and Btign, Nicohoo,

q.239-40

King s Civil List, 271
King s Party, 269-72
King s Stop, A, Windsor, q.ai 5
Kinmel Camp mutiny, 172
Kipling, Rudyard, q.xas, q.i72
Kitchener, FM Martial Lird, 87-^,

94-100, 103-5, 107
Kofchak, Admiral, 176, 180
Kruger, Paul, 49-50
Kynochs, 52

340

INDEX

La Follcttis Magazine, q.8g

La Lamiere, q.2O3

Laboucherc, A., 44

Lachat, Emil, 0^245

Lahausen, Major General* 288-9

Land and Nation League, 251

Land nationalisation, 251

Land policy, 250

Land taxation, 67, 258

Lang, Cosmo Gordon: see Canterbury,

Archbishop of

Lansdowne, Lord, q.6s, 71, q-7i "3
Lansing, Robert, The Peace Negotiations,

q.i6i

Lauzanne, S., Le Diable aux Teux Bleits, q-i$7
Laval, Pierre, 278
Law, Andrew Bonar, 59, 94, 103, 108, 112-

J4, *33 156, 174, 180, 184, 223, 230
Lawrence, T. E., 216-17
Layton, ^Walter, 256
League of Nations, 166-7, 185
Leipzige Neueste Nachrichten, q.2o6
Lewis, Sir Herbert, q.35, 43
Ley, Dr. Robert, 278^
Liberal Federations, 156
Liberal Party funds, 261
Liberal programme (1929), 257
Liberal Shadow Cabinet, 253
Liberal-Unionist Press, 52
Licensing Bill, 65
Limehouse, 67
Lincoln, Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch, 74-6

78-80, f.i45
Link, The, 289, 295
Liquor trade, 101
Lisbon rendezvous, 295
Llanfrothcn Burial Case, 36-7
Llanystumdwy, 13-145 23, 28-30, 33-4,

289, 299

Llanystumdwy, Lloyd George s home, 1.04
Lloyd George, David (Earl Lloyd-George of
Dwyfor and Viscount Gwynedd): see
George, David Lloyd (Earl Lloyd-
George of Dwyfor and Viscount
Gwynedd)
Lloyd George, Gwilym: see George, Gwilym

Lloyd
Lloyd George, Dame Margaret: see George,

Dame Margaret Lloyd
Lloyd George, Richard : see George, Richard

Lloyd
Lloyd George Fund, 210, 231, 233-4,

242-3, 247-8, 258, 260-62
Lloyd George Fund Inquiry, 261
Lloyd George Museum, 13
Lloyd George Personal Fund: see Lloyd

George Fund
Lloyd, Richard (Uncle Richard), 23, 28-9,

33~5 38
Lloyd s Sunday News, 233

Locker-Lampson, Godfrey, 240

London Stock Exchange, 232

Lords, House of, 71

Lothian, Lord, 273-4, 2 92; see also Kerr,

Philip

Ludendorff, General, q.i66
Lyautey, L. H., 123

"Mabon", Le. William Abraham, 42-3

McCurdy, Charles, 241-2

McCurtain, Thomas, 189

MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 252-3, 258-9

Maclean, Donald, 248

MacLean, John, 174

MacMillan, Gerald, Honours for Sale, q.245

Macmillan, Harold, 262

Macpherson, Ian, 186-7

Mallet, Charles, q.86

Malone, Lieut-Col. C. L. E., 174-5* 241

Man David, The, Jones, 303

Manchester Guardian, q.297

Manchester Reform Club, 109

Mansergh, Dr. Nicholas, Survey of British

Commonwealth Affairs, q.ig6
Marconi Company, 231
Margiad, 39-40
Marrakesh, 313
Martin, Kingsley, q.2gi
Massingham, W. H., q.3O5
Massy, Arnaud, q-3i3
Master and Brother, Murray, q.83
Masterman, C. F. G., 57, 66, q-3i3
Maurice, General Sir Frederick, 115, 129,

i36-7 139-42
Maurice, Nancy, q.i42
Maxim-Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition

Co., 202

Mazzina, Peter, 245
Memoir, A, S, Baldwin, q.247
Memoirs, Aga Khan, q.2 19-20
Memorandum on Resignation, Morley, q.8o
Memories and Reflections, H. H. Asquith,

q.ii 3 , q.2i5

Men and Power, q.i2i, q.i6i
Mensdorff, Count, 82
Merchant seamen, 58
Merchant Shipping Bill, 57-9
Methodist Revival, 25
"Me-Tooism", 303
Middle East, 164

Military conscription, 72, 103, 114, 123
Military Service Act amended, 123
"Million Fund", 249-51
Milner, Sir A., 218
Milton, John, q.282, q.299
Mines nationalisation, 252
Ministry of Food, 127
Mr. Balfour s Poodle, Jenkins, q.?2
Montagu, Edwin, 113, 219-20
Moorehead, Alan, Gallipoli, q-95

INDEX

34*

Morgan, J. H., 157

Morgan, J, P., and Co., 90

Morgenthau, Henry, 296

Morley, Lord, 51, 83

Morley, Lord, Memorandum on Resignation,

q.8o

Morning Post, q.243, 256
Mosley, Sir Oswald, 269
Mosul, 165, 215, 217
Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis, 293
Munitions, 96103, 201
Munitions Investigation Commission,

Washington, 203
Munitions Ministry, 102
Murdoch, Sir Keith, 95
Murray, A. C., Master and Brother, q.83
Murray, A. M., 193
Mussolini, 273* 278
Mustapha Kemal, 218, 225-6, 228
My Days and Ways, Phillipps, q.248
Mynydd Ednyfed, 38

National Debt, 63

National Government, 259-60

National Health Insurance in Germany, 66

National Liberal Political Fund, 260

Nationalisation: Bank of England, 80

Land, 251

Mines, 252
Naval Intelligence Department, 93-4, 128,

154
Neumann, Robert, ^aharof: the Armaments

King, q.2i4
Nevin, 32

New Statesman and Nation, q.29i
New York Journal, q.284
New York Times, q.23, 192-3
New York World, 193-4
Nicholas II, Czar of Russia, 105, 175
Nicoll, Robertson, q.62, 305
Nicolson, Sir Harold, 68, 148, 163, 175, 236,

286
Nicolson, Sir Harold, King George V: His

Life and Reign, q.239, 240
Nitikine, B. V., 1 79
Nivelle, General, 117-20, 122-3, J 3 2
Nordenfelt (Anglo-Swedish arms firm), 201
Norman, Montagu, 273
North Briton, M.S., 58-9
North Wales Liberal Federation, 41, 271
Northcliffe, Lord, 85, 91, q.i6o, 193, 238
Northumberland, Duke of, q.238, 241
Norway debacle, 285
Nuremberg, 275

O.B.E. created, 237
Observer, q.68, q.252
Old Age Pensions, 63-4
Old people, 66
Ordnance Department, 99

O Shea, Kitty, 46
Owen, Frank, 313

Owen, Frank, Tempestuous Journey, q.26o
Owen, Goronwy, 260
Owen, Maggie, 38-40
Oxford, Lord: see Asquith, H. H. (Lord
Oxford and Asquith)

Page, Dr. Walter, 185

Painleve", M&lt;ms., 115

Palestine, 165, 215, 217

Palmer, H. E. q.96

Pantcllaria, 292-4, 297

Parnell, G. S., 46

Parliament Bill, 68, 70, 73

Passchendaele, 130-32

Patents and Designs (Amendments) Bill, 59

Peace Conference, 154, 161-2, 164, 168

Peace Negotiations, The, Lansing, q.i6i

Peace plans, 148

Peace Society, 27

Peace with Ireland Council, 188

Pearson s M&g&zine, 79

Peckham by-election, 65

Penmachno, 35

Pentecostan dances, 31

Penymaes, 28, 33, 35

People s Budget" (1909), 66-7

Personal Experience: 1939-46, Casey, q.294

P6tain, Marshal, 135

Phillipps, Vivian, 248-9, 250-51, 255-6,

260

Philiipps, Vivian, My Da?s and Wsp, q.248
Plimsoll line, 57

Poincar, Raymond, 168, 222-3
Poland, 182-3, aS 3
Police discontent, 207
Police Union, 172, 207
Porritt, Arthur, q.5i
Port facilities, 60
Port of London, 60-61
Port of London Authority, 60-6 1
Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley, 293
Praoda, q.i?9
Prendergast, Cafi., 189

Quai d Orsay, 244
Queen s Hall, 86

Railway strike, 61

Rapallo Conference, 129

Rationing, 127

Reading, Lord, 91

Rebeccaite movement, 26

Reed, Douglas, Insanity Fair, q.2?8

Rcpington, Colonel, 135

Reynolds News, q.i 12

Rhodes, Cecil, 49, 53

Rhodesia, 53

Rhondda, Laaj, 47

34 2 INDEX

Rhondda, Lord, 127; see also Thomas, D. A.

Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 274, 281, 295

Richard, Henry, 27

Ritter, Nikolaus, q.288

Roberts, Field Marshal Lord, 97

Roberts, Isaac, 74, 76

Roberts, John, 299

Roberts, Moses, 29, q-3i, 37-9, q.52

Robertson, Leslie, 106

Robertson, General Sir William, 108, q.iog,

115, 127, 132-4
Robinson, Sir Joseph B., 240
Roosevelt, F. D., 294
Rosebery, Lord, 44, q.249, 305
Rosse, Mrs., 244
Rothermere, Lord, 227
Round Table, The 199
Rowland, Daniel, 25
Rowntree, Seebohm, 75
Royal Commission on Arms Manufacture,

101, 104, 263

Royal Commission on Honours, 242, 244
Royal Commission on Mines, 253
Royal Commission on Wales, 26-7
Ruhr occupation, 167
Rumania, no n
Runciman, Lord, 83, 251
Russell, Herbert, q.isi
Russia, 104-5, 225, 283-4, 295
Russo-German pact, 283
Ryan, Frank, 186

St. Davids, Lord, 226, 256, 260

Salonika, 116

Samuel, Sir Herbert, 216, 231, 253

Sankey Coal Commission, 252

Sauvigny, Major Bertier de, 119

Savinkov, Boris, 176-7, 181

Scene Changes, The, Thomson, q.2o8

Schellenberg, Walter, 290

Schmidt, Dr. Paul, 275

Scott, C. P., 305

Secret Service, 178

Selborne, Lard, 235

Senghenydd Mine disaster, 61

Sexual orgies, 31

Shadow Foreign Office, 162

Shell shortage, 96-7

Sherwood, Robert E., 294, 305

Shipping Act, 58-9

Shortt, Edward, 208

Simon, Sir John, 20, 73, q.i87, 258

Simon, Lord, Retrospect, q.ii6

Simpson, Mrs. Wallis, 218-19

Sinn Feiners, 186-7, 194

Sixte of Bourbon, Prince, 203-4

Smith, F. E., 56, 73, 77, 15?, 310; see also

Birkenhead, Lord

Smuts, Field-Marshal Jan, q.i6, q.i95
Smyrna, 221, 226

Snowden, Philip, 253, 260

Social security, 62

Socie"t&lt; d Etude et Recherche du Petrole,

Soermus, Edward, 172
Soir, q.22

Somme campaign, 109-11, 122
Sonnino, Baron, 49
South African War, 47-50, 65
South Wales Liberal Association, 47
Spears, Sir Edward, 88
Special Police Branch, 173
Spectator, The, q.i42
Spender, J. A,, q.io8
Stanhope, P. H., History of England: 1713-

&3&gt; q-235

Stanfordham, Lord, 193-4
Stamp, Josiah, 273
Statist auf Diplomatischer Buchne, 275
Steed, Wickham, 192, 269
Steed, Wickham, Through Thirty Tears, q.i63
Stevenson, Frances Louise, 298
Stewart, John H., 243
Stohrer, von, q.ago
Stonier, James, 54
Strikes, 61

Stuke, General, 1926, 252-4
Stultz, Helga, 278-9, 294-5
Submarine warfare, 127-8
Sunday Express, q.234
Sunday Worker^ 254
Supreme Command, 1914-18, The, Hankey,

q.m

Supreme War Council, 8-9, 129, 134
Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs,

Mansergh, q.igjS
Sutherland, Sir William, 155, 162, 170,

f.2o8, 209-10, 234-5, 237
Sykes-Picot Agreement, 214-15
Sylvester, A. J., q.2i, q.2OO, q.2&7, q.soo,

q.3&lt;&gt;8
Syria, 217-18

Tanganyika, 295

Tangier, 294-5

Taylor, A. J. P., q.i4-i5, q.i62

Temperance Society, 35

Tempestuous Journey, Owen, q.26o

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, q.264

Terraine, John, q.88, q.iO9

Third International, 174

Thomas, Albert, 205-6, q.2o6

Thomas, D. A., 46-7, 62, 127

Thomas, D. A.: see also Rhondda, Lord

Thomas, Dylan, q.3O5

Thomas, Evan, q.23

Thomas, J. H., 254

Thomson, Sir Basil, 95, q.i72, 173-4, 187,

207-8
Thomson, Sir B., The Scene Changes, q.2o8

INDEX

343

Thomson, (George) Malcolm, q.57, q.

q.ioS, q.iii, q.223, q.22g, ^269-70,

q.274
Thomson, (George) Malcolm, David Lloyd

George, q. 1 1 1

Through Thirty Tears, Steed, q.iSs
Ticket-Holders Government, 159-71
"The Tiger": see Clemenceau
The Times, q.i6, q.27, q.72, q.iO7, 192-4,

233-4. 239, q-243&gt; q-soi

Tirpitz, Admiral von, q.i 14

Tithes Rent Change Bill, 47

Titles, sale of, 170, 235-45

Trade disputes, 61

Trade Union Bill, 258

Treasury, 90

Treaty of Amiens, 288

Treaty of Sevres, 226

Treaty of Versailles, 222, 224-5

Trebitsch, Ignaz (Timothy Lincoln), 74-6,

78-80, 145
Trcnchard, Lord, 130
Tresinwen, 22
Trevor, w.J.W.,q.32
Trevor-Roper, H. R., Hitler s Table Talk,

q-275

Trust Law, 261
Truth About the Peace Treaties, The, D. Lloyd

George, q.i57
Tudor, General, 191
Turkey, 227-30
Turkish army, 226

Turning Points of History, Birkenhead, 146
Ty Newydd farm, 299

U-boats, 127-8
Unemployment, 256-7
Unemployment in Wales, 268
Unemployment insurance hi Belgium, 66
United Cold Storage Company, 239
United Kingdom Alliance, 35
Unknown Prime Minister, The, R. Blake, q.236
Ubter rebels, 76

Venizelos, 213-14, 226

Verbindungsstab, q.289, 295

Verdun campaign, ioo/~io

Versailles Committee, 137

Versailles Conference, 154, 161-2, 164, 168

Versailles Treaty, 276

Vestey, Sir William, 239

Vickers Company, 102-3, 202

Vimy Ridge, 123

Von Donop, General, 99

Voronoff, Dr. Serge, 311-12

Wales, Commission of Enquiry, 26-7

Wales, invasion of, 288

Wales, Prmce of, investiture revived, 265-6

War Cabinet, 115-17

War disabled, 152

War Memoirs, Lloyd George, q.io6, q.iso,

q.i46, 3*3
War Office, 98-9
Waterhouse, Thomas, q.27i
Waugh, Evelyn, Decline and Fall, 22, 24
Wavell, Field Marshal Lord, 293
Webb, Sir Montague, q.243
Wedgwood, Josiah, q.254
Welfare State, 68
Wells, Robert, 241
Welsh Bible history, 24-5
Welsh Home Rule, 46, 264-5
Welsh language, 25-7, 33-4
Welsh National Church, 25
Welsh Nationalist Party, 288
Welsh Nationalists, 27, 43
Welsh Parliamentary Party, 40
Welsh quillings, 289
Welsh religious history, 28, 32
Welsh saboteurs, 288
Wemyss, Admiral Wester, 153-4
Wcmyss, Lady Wester, 153
"Whale" project, 289
Wheder-Bennctt, John, 286
Whips, 307

White Russians, 176-7, 181
Whitehall Ga&tU, q.244
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 157-8
Wilson, Edward, 45
Wilson, Field Marshal Sir H., 189, 194, 120,

129, 131, 134* *5*&gt; l8 9-9A 194
Wilson, President Woodrow, 154, 1516, 162-3
Windsor, Dvke of, 270, 278, 289-91, 296
Windsor, Dvke of, A King s Story, q-215
Windsor, Duke of: see also Edward VIII,

Kiag

Woolwich Arsenal, 99
Workhouse, 66

World Crisis, Churchill, q.i8i, 191
World War II, 282-97

Torkshire Evening News, 233
Younger, Sir George, 156-7, 236
Yr Amscran, 27

Zaharoff, Sir Basil, 77, 102, 163-4, 201-5,
208, 213-14, 219-20, 227-8, 234, 239,

244,3"
Zog, King of Albania, 171

(Continued from front flap)

people in many countries, and has
made the task of research as
fascinating as an Eric Ambler thriller.
"It has led me to places more suitable
for a writer of a detective story than
for a political biographer," he writes.
This is not surprising. Of one of
Mr. McCormick s previous biographies
about Premier Mendes-France a
critic said: This book is as difficult
to put down as the most gripping
of thrillers."

Donald McCormick is a British
historian and journalist who is
currently foreign news manager of the
SUNDAY TIMES in London. Although
he has written biographies of Pierre
Mendes-France, Kitchener, Arthur
McMorrough Kavanagh among others,
this is his first book to be published in
the United States.

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
383 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10017

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