He faced all these familiar troubles of modern life with a “divine discontent” new to modern men. We all knew these things; but most of us had become so familiar with them that our anger was blunted. Our reforming temper had grown tired and stale. But this Welshman approached the matter with some of the ardour of the revivalist. He would not accept the ordinary excuses; he believed these evils to be curable. Fresh from the Welsh hills, he flamed with a new surprise at the power of poverty over modern civilisation. He showed some of the ingenuous dismay of a surprised Gotama emerging from his garden. He realised that private efforts had been tried and found inadequate. What he saw with a flash was that the State alone could cope with the evils produced by the State; the Government must become the parent and no longer the stepmother of its own children.
Once he realised this idea he was eager to carry it into effect. He was passing from one great effort to another—from the Insurance Act to the Land Campaign—when the Great War burst upon him. Then the very elements of civilisation had to be defended against an even greater peril.
It is recorded that the rebuilders of the Temple had to build every one with “his sword girded by his side.”[[144]] There must have been times when they had to lay down the trowel entirely and work with the sword alone. Such a time came to Mr. Lloyd George in 1914; the trowel was only laid down. Now it is being taken up again.
What struck the observer most in his achievements during those years (1908-14) was his daring and originality. Plenty of clever English minds had been working on these problems ever since 1886. But how little had been done! How long we had had to wait for Pensions and Insurance! How strangely academic and remote were all those University and West End speculations on these problems! How quarrelsome were the philanthropists! How divided were the English Labour leaders! Then from outside came this zealous Welsh Crusader, and while all these people were still talking he proceeded to act. When the world had recovered from its surprise most of the persons concerned turned round and attacked Mr. Lloyd George. However right he might be in his aim, there was always sure to be something wrong with his methods. This attitude frankly puzzled him. “Why! they talk as if I was trespassing,” he used to say. “Is charity, then, a form of property? Is kindness a monopoly?” The attitude of the doctors especially surprised him. “I have made a discovery,” he said one day with a twinkle in his eye. “I have discovered that disease is a vested interest!”
Throughout all these struggles over social reform Mr. Lloyd George tempered his enthusiasm with a very even sense of political tactics. He knew well that, to carry England with him, he must always have a great political party at his back. There were times when this was not easy. Neither of the great political party machines in this country is exactly impassioned for new ideas. It is rather typical of the faithful party man to view a new proposal with actual dislike. “Why not leave it all alone?” is a common attitude with all parties.
Then there is the value of a grievance. There is even a type of party man who actually regrets to see his cause succeed. “If we pass the Bill we shall lose the cry!” you hear him say. “Mr. Lloyd George is passing too many Acts of Parliament,” was the common complaint of the period among the very faithful.
To this type of man the Budget of 1909-10 was rather a distracting affair. They were always trying to “dilute” it. The Insurance Bill, too, would certainly have been thrown over if Mr. Lloyd George had not staked his fortunes on it; and, as to the Land Campaign, that was viewed with open disfavour in the same quarters. For every party has its priesthood; and in politics, as in religion, all priesthoods are conservative.
But, in spite of all this trouble within the party, Mr. Lloyd George was always resolute not to quarrel with the machine. One of his fixed principles was—“Keep the party machine on your side.” He was certainly not a typical party man—far from it. He regarded the party as the instrument and the cause as the end; whereas the typical party view is that the cause is the instrument and the party the end. But he knew the power of the machine; he often quoted Mr. Chamberlain as an instance showing that in the end the machine won. “Mr. Chamberlain fought both of the machines in turn,” he used to say, “and, in the end, both combined against him and beat him.” Roosevelt was another case which impressed him deeply. “Ah!” he commented, when that great man was beaten so decisively in 1913, “Roosevelt ought not to have quarrelled with the machine.”
On these grounds he has often accepted the second best in policy.
He has often allowed himself to be convinced against his will. After the defeat of the Education Bill in 1906, for instance, he was as eager to go back to the country as Mr. Gladstone after the Lords’ rejection of Home Rule in 1893. Both these great fighters felt instinctively that a party which accepts a defeat asks to be defeated again until it is finally smashed. You cannot expect a country to vote for ever for a party that accepts defeat as its proper portion. But in this case, as in others, rather than quarrel with his party, he acquiesced in the decision to go on.