Still, he was glad when the split with the Lords became irrevocable. It happened that I had the fortune of announcing to him the resolution of the Lords to throw out the Budget. It was down at Lord Renders beautiful house near Guildford, where Mr. Lloyd George was staying for the last time with that faithful Nestor of Welsh Liberalism. Mr. Lloyd George had been very anxious. He knew that the wiser Unionist leaders in the Lords had been in favour of accepting his Bill. He was afraid that the Lords were going to refuse battle on grounds so favourable to their assailants. When I told him the news his face shone. “The Lord,” he cried, “has delivered them into our hands!”
In the same way, he has always been very slow to take the step of resignation from high political office. How often have his friends—generally a man’s worst advisers—urged him to resign over some failure to gain his own way! But he well knows that there is nothing more difficult in politics than the art of resigning opportunely. You must have a great issue and you must have your people behind you. “You cannot be always resigning,” was one of his favourite sayings during the critical years of 1909-12. It is true that he often came near it, but he would generally compromise the matter and pass on. He was equally against Cabinets resigning in a hurry. After the second General Election of 1910 there was a meeting when the Liberal Cabinet, wearied out with a long struggle, was on the verge of resignation. Every member who spoke at this fateful meeting had favoured resignation. Mr. Lloyd George felt strongly opposed to it, but he was almost silenced by the unanimity of his colleagues. At last he scribbled a line and threw it across to Mr. Winston Churchill. “I feel strongly against resignation,” he wrote. “What do you think?” Mr. Winston Churchill scribbled below: “If you feel against it, speak against it.” Mr. Lloyd George spoke against it, and spoke so persuasively that the idea of resignation was dropped.
Even on fundamental issues he would often accept personal defeat for the time. He had to decide whether to go out into the wilderness or to work with men to whom he was attached, and with whose ideas he broadly and profoundly sympathised. When the draft of the new Home Rule Bill was before the Cabinet in 1910 he moved to exclude Protestant Ulster. He made the longest speech he had ever addressed to a Cabinet on that issue. He prophesied what was certainly coming—the resistance of Ulster; the refusal of Protestant England to join in coercing her; the hesitation of the Government to carry out their Act. He was in favour of telling the Irish Party straightaway that the Government of 1910 was not strong enough to include Ulster in the Home Rule Bill. He would have left the Irish Party to accept or reject the Bill as it would have then stood. He himself believed that in such a case Ulster would come in during the parliamentary discussions on the Bill. He was defeated in his proposal. Being defeated, he loyally stood by the Cabinet and steadily supported the Bill. It was not until long afterwards, when he himself became Prime Minister and responsible for policy, that he revealed to the world in that dramatic speech which drove the Irish Party out of the House, the fact that he had always been in favour of the exclusion of Ulster.
In literature and art Mr. Lloyd George does not pretend to be among the elect. He gives himself no airs and has no pretensions. He is just himself. He states, without parley, his own genuine opinions on books and pictures; and, as that is the rarest habit in the world, it is always interesting. Nine out of ten literary and artistic judgments are reflections or echoes—repeated at second-hand from some bolder speaker, or even vaguely salvaged from the dim abysses of memory. The most refreshing thing in the world, therefore, is an honest, fresh, and original judgment. It is characteristic of Mr. Lloyd George that he never hesitates to give that in any company.
In literature he votes with both hands for Byron, perhaps because Byron is the poet of liberty, and also because that great writer, with all his faults, has the quality of daring. But he boldly contends that the Welsh are among the greatest of modern poets; and he will recite their verses at large, even to English friends, in order to confirm his claim.
In prose, he is devoted to George Meredith.
In music, he places Handel first among his heroes. There, again, in great works like the Messiah, he seems to discover some quality of sublimity which elates and inspires him.
But there, again, his living passion is really nationalist and based on national affections. The only music that profoundly moves him—touches his soul—is the music of the old Welsh hymns and folk-songs. Not long ago he spoke up boldly for the music and literature of his own nation before all the world.[[145]] There he voiced his own deepest conviction on these matters. The music and songs of his own people strike the deepest chord in his nature.
In religion his outlook always seems to be broadly Christian rather than sectarian. Brought up in his uncle’s creed of the “Disciples of Christ,” which is really an attempt to hark back to the purity of the early Gospel teaching, he has an inherited hatred for dogmas. He is very fond of such parables as those of the Good Samaritan, which he instinctively regards as the best comment on the claims of priestcraft.
He has a profound interest in all forms of Christianity. There was a time, many years ago, when he was fond of going the round of the Churches. He would also listen in the old days with the closest interest to the discourses of the Salvationist preachers on Wandsworth Common; and he would often contribute to their collections, and talk to their officers. And yet, at the other extreme, he has always had a curious admiration for Roman Catholicism. He would sometimes argue that the Methodist discipline in Wales was founded on the Catholic model. I remember going with him into a London Catholic Church where he listened with rapt attention to the chanting of the Latin psalms. There was something in the roll of the language which penetrated and held him. But he was always a great listener. He would never complain at the length of a sermon. When at Brighton he would take his friends to listen to the preaching of a young Nonconformist minister at whose feet he sat with whole-hearted admiration. He would always argue that the standard of preaching among the Nonconformists had steadily risen and was now higher than among the Anglicans. He attributed that fact very largely to post-graduate colleges like Mansfield. He was a great admirer of Principal Fairbairn, and would listen to that great man’s hour-long discourses without moving an eyelid.