Lloyd George: The Man and His Story

by Frank Dilnot

It will be found from now until the treaty of peace is signed that Lloyd George will be the personal director of democratic Britain, as grim an autocrat as was Oliver Cromwell, and when the plenipotentiaries meet around a table to settle terms there will be among them the blue-eyed Welshman, pleasant of manners and with iron will, putting in some commas and taking out the clauses he doesn't like.

XIII

THE FUTURE OF LLOYD GEORGE

When this war is concluded there must be a new era for the world. Already there are signs of its approach. Generations hence there may again be awful conflicts between nations, spasms of hell in which the blood and anguish of millions will pay their tribute to the beast in man, but it will not be in our time, and in the interval, the beginning of which must be upon us very quickly, a new order of things will arise among the civilized people of the globe. Stricken humanity will insist on happier prospects for its children and its children's children. In the formulation of that new order of things I can see Lloyd George as one of the main instruments.

In the first place, Britain will be a revivified country after the war, chastened in some ways, teeming with new thoughts, pulsing with a new virility for at least a generation. Class prejudice will be lessened, perhaps in some directions will be completely wiped out. There will probably be a centralized effort after the trials which all the people have suffered together to reconstruct the social fabric so that all the people of the country, with the exception of those who are lazy or criminal, shall have the means by which they may be able to secure a decent livelihood and need have no fear of poverty-stricken old age. I foresee the disintegration of the older political parties and the building up of new ones, in which the great contending features will be the means and methods by which the new Britain shall be established. The old party shibboleths will be swept away. Mere words and windy generalities will be displaced from influence and the nation's leaders will deal with facts.

The education of the war has brought everybody in the country up against hard realities. While prejudices and so-called principles have been put in the background, there has been going on a learning of new lessons. Lloyd George will undoubtedly be the main figure in the building up of the national edifice. The war will effect political changes which a generation of Parliamentary efforts could not have brought about. Hundreds of thousands of men drawn from shops, factories, offices, who have been hardened and stimulated by their out-of-doors campaigning, will be averse from returning to their old drab conditions, and coincident with this the rich and beautiful farmlands of England will be made available in holdings for such as wish to settle on the land and to establish themselves there. Cottage dwellings and farm buildings will be put up by the thousand with the assistance of the state. The settlers from the towns will not only find health for themselves and families, but by their activities will add enormously to the food-supplies of the country through their market gardens, their dairy farms, as well as by the extra corn which will be produced by them.

Lloyd George's heart and soul will be in this project, for, country born and bred as he is, he knows not only the troubles, but also the opportunities and the personal joys of the population on the land. I regard a revolution on these lines in England as a practical certainty. It may be asked, Where is the money to come from for all this? The answer is, that loans from the state are inevitable, but they will be remunerative loans which presently will yield returns, not only in the shape of interest, but in new food-supplies and also, not less important, in the benefits of new physical strength and new happiness in life to big sections of the population. Sacrifices will be asked for from the great land-owners, but they will be sacrifices of sentiment rather than of money, because these proprietors will certainly be well recompensed financially for any land that is taken from them.

But this transformation in the countryside will be only one phase of the new Britain. Virtual revolution is certain in town life—and something like forty millions out of the fifty millions of population have their present homes in towns and cities, and not in the country. A great stimulation of production may be looked for under the lessons of war-time. Scores of inventions have been devised under the strain of the war's demands and the discoveries in chemistry, in mechanics, and in other directions will remodel certain industries and create fresh ones. Novel methods of organization have been brought into use and have greatly aided efficiency, but even these developments will be but supplementary to the changes in the methods of British industrial life. The Labor movement of Britain, which has obtained during the war a political power previously unknown in British Government, has altered its modes of procedure, subordinated its laws, and generally transfigured itself. The position can never be readjusted to the old basis. This will carry with it remarkable results. Something like three million trade-unionists constitute the effective Labor movement of Britain, and the unions, with their rights and privileges, have only been built up by half a century of struggle against prejudice, against material interests, against opposition in Parliament. In the last ten years, however, enormous progress has been made. Forty Labor men have seats in the legislature, and the combination of trade-union rules and regulations safeguarding workmen and restricting employers has become as effective as a legal charter. Hours and conditions of labor as well as wage rates in the various trades have been set up and continually strengthened with a view to prevent exploitation by employers, and though there is necessarily a running struggle with regard to isolated matters, there has come to exist, on the whole, amicable relations between the great unions, on the one side, and the great employers, on the other. Under Lloyd George's appeals during the war trade-unions have flung overboard the restrictions they had imposed, have permitted unskilled people to come in and do parts of their work, permitted women to take a hand, allowed employers to increase hours of work, and voluntarily have taken upon themselves the old burdens which they had fought so long to shake off. They have had at least this recompense that, so far as money is concerned, they have not been badly off. In important industries, notably in munition-making, piece-work—payment according to work accomplished—is the rule, with the result that large sums are earned by those who choose to work hard and to work early and late. The general result of all this has been a marvelously accelerated output of material as compared with that which would have been produced under old conditions. The unions have the promise of the Government that all their old rules shall be restored after the war if they want them. It has become inconceivable that incidental advantage secured in these abnormal times shall be thrown away when peace comes just because of a traditional adherence to principle. Employers, also, seeing the tremendously increased results, will be eager to maintain the new acceleration. Are the unions, for the sake of old prejudices, to put back the clock and throw out all the employment of the women who have entered the hitherto-reserved industries, and to abolish the overtime work? Are they, moreover, to return to the old principles of prohibiting an operative from doing more than a certain amount of work in a certain time—a practice quite defensible so far as it arose from the greed of employers who, with their men on piece-work, finding the rate of production increased, promptly put back the rate of payment so that workpeople should never earn more than a certain amount by day or by week? Is there to be a reaction in all these directions? There is not. Unions will not want all their old provisions, but they will want new ones in their places. And the arrangements which will have to be made, and which Lloyd George will undoubtedly have a large share in making, will lead to the establishment of an entirely new system which, while giving employers a wider field of labor and an immensely increased production, will, at the same time, provide working-men and women with greatly enlarged earning capacity, an earning capacity which will be largely based on their own energy, initiative, and persistence. A wide extension of what may be called co-operative payment by results may be looked for.

The good-will among classes introduced by the war will certainly help the changes. The net result to be looked for is a practical abolition of unemployment, the extension of the area of labor to great numbers of women, increased earning powers for individuals, and still more for the families as a whole, and a greater output of all kinds of products, not only manufactured articles, but also food products from the land. Accompanying all this will be higher profits for employers.