We all know the conclusion he reached in regard to the Boer War.[[42]] He took the view, on the facts of the case, that the war was by no means inevitable. He held strongly throughout the following years that the war was the result of bad statesmanship. He did not deny the wrongs of the Uitlanders; but he believed that the results of the war could have been achieved by the patient pursuit of peaceful diplomacy. This view has certainly been strengthened since those days by that very remarkable book, The Autobiography of Sir William Butler.[[43]]
Throughout the most bitter period of the controversy that followed Mr. Lloyd George always admitted that there were two sides to the case. He absolutely refused to join in the utter damnation of those Liberals, such as Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, who supported the war. “We take a different view of the facts,” was his way of putting it; and perhaps this view explains why he refused to make the quarrel over the Boer War a dividing issue within the Liberal Party. There were extremists on both sides who wanted to part company; and there were pro-Boers who even rejoiced when that strange creation, the Liberal League, came into being. Mr. Lloyd George was not one of these. Sir Edward Grey on the side of the war Liberals, and Mr. Lloyd George on the side of the peace Liberals, did their utmost to prevent a permanent split; and they succeeded. When the war was over the two branches of the party were able to come together, and found that they still agreed on the main issues of domestic politics.
We can now see a little more clearly why it was that Mr. Lloyd George refused to found a separate party on the basis of his opposition to the Boer War. It was not merely his practical perception that the South African War was an issue that would pass: it was also that he was in no sense a “peace at any price” man. Although he found himself in the company of the pacifists, he never wholly belonged to that faith. He has always been conscious that the ultimate support of power and freedom must be force—force guided by right, but still force.[[44]]
His passionate sympathy with wars of freedom is in itself evidence on this side. His greatest heroes abroad are men like Garibaldi, and at home those great Welsh patriots and princes who maintained the forlorn fight of his own little nation against Saxon and Norman—men like Glendwyr and Llewellyn; fighters like De Wet often reminded him of those indomitable Welsh guerillas. He used to point to the great Norman castles along the coasts of North Wales and the Welsh borders as the “block-houses” which the conquerors had to build to control his own people.
Not, indeed, that he ever maintained the view that a little nation was a law unto itself. His support of the Boer cause was not due merely to his belief in little nations.
Order has to be maintained in the world, and little nations cannot be allowed to run amuck. That was why his opposition to the war was mild at first and grew stronger as time went on. He felt that the Boers had made a grave mistake in issuing their Ultimatum. As long as the war was on our part a war of resistance to the Boer invasion his criticisms were restrained by that fact. But in his view that phase ended with the capture of Bloemfontein and the British claim to annex.
From that time forward (1900) Mr. Lloyd George opposed the war tooth and nail. It was after that date that he determined to enter upon a campaign against the war throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain. Many of his parliamentary friends refused to join; but Mr. Lloyd George went straight on and faced the music in every part of the kingdom.
Since John Bright’s great fight against the Crimean War nothing of the kind had been seen in England. It is no light thing to meet the war-passion full front.
But none of these fears held back Mr. Lloyd George at this great moment. He went everywhere and faced hostile crowds in the very heart of the war country. He faced a violent mob at Glasgow; he defied Mr. Chamberlain’s own followers at Birmingham; he narrowly escaped death in one of his own Boroughs—Bangor.
Whatever men might think of his views, no one could deny his courage. It was no easy campaign to conduct. The charge of treason was always in the air. “Do you wish the Boers to win?” shouted a heckler after one of his most eloquent defences of the Dutch Republicans. He was silent for a moment, then he said, slowly and impressively: “God defend the right!”