He has often been severely criticised both then and since for consenting to put on a constable’s coat and uniform in order to escape from the Town Hall at Birmingham. An armed mob had possession of the hall itself. They had pinned him and his friends into a back room: they threatened and partly intended to achieve both his death and theirs. It is contended that he was to wait meekly for his doom.
Such criticism is surely the very extravagance of blame. If an unarmed public man faced with a mob so organised cannot resort to a “ruse of war” to save both his friends and himself, then surely the bully will rule the world. As a matter of fact, the Chief Constable of Birmingham found it difficult enough to persuade Mr. Lloyd George to put on the uniform; and it was only when he had convinced him that his friends too were in danger that he reluctantly assented. But if he had actually himself asked for the uniform he would surely have been fully justified.
To achieve an honourable peace—that was the object of his great campaign in 1901 and 1902; and undoubtedly he played a great part in an achievement which saved British South Africa. It is true he had beside him that brave and honest man, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who helped as far as it was possible for the official chief of a party deeply divided by the issue. It is also fair to say that Lord Rosebery played a great and honourable part in the final settlement. But all the risk was taken by Mr. Lloyd George—at the time when every phrase and word meant danger.
It is a curious fact that, when the Boers finally agreed to peace, Mr. Lloyd George seemed for the moment to lose his interest in them. He afterwards met and made great friends with General Botha and General Smuts; and he has since taken General Smuts into his War Cabinet. But I think he had at the time a sentimental sympathy with General De Wet in his “no surrender” policy. His reason was with General Botha; but his heart was with the men in the Back Veldt.
His interest did not revive until that occasion when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman persuaded the Cabinet of 1906 to make the “clean cut” by giving self-government to the annexed States. Of the speech which “C. B.” then made to the Cabinet, Mr. Lloyd George always afterwards spoke with a sincere and passionate admiration. He felt that it was the undoing of a great wrong.
All through the time of the Boer War (1899-1902), Mr. Lloyd George would spend his Sundays in that simple little house by the side of Wandsworth Common—2, Routh Road. There he could escape from the tumult and turmoil. On those Sunday afternoons he would often walk over Wandsworth and Chapham Commons, and he would play and sing with his children as if no great shadow overhung the country. He was especially fond of singing hymns on those Sunday afternoons. He would always join with tremendous gusto; and although his voice was untrained, he was certainly a very hearty singer. But his greatest joy was when the children brought a book of Welsh hymns and Welsh folk-songs. He would sing these with a thrilling delight which made him really for the moment a singer of power.
Then he would come back to discuss the situation; for he was never tired of discussion. He would talk over every detail of the war; he would follow it out with the greatest precision on large-scale maps. He developed a most uncanny military skill; and he would prophesy with the most remarkable astuteness the next move of the Generals on either side. He knew every battle and skirmish; and, though he had never been to South Africa, he seemed even to know the lie of the ground. He appeared to know to what spot a column was going to move before it got there. He had the same instinctive military perception with which Botha himself was gifted. I remember De Wet once saying in conversation, “The only military training I ever had was the same as that of Mr. Lloyd George—parliamentary tactics.” May it not be that there is some intimate relation between the tactics of Parliament and the battle-field? Cromwell was a Member of Parliament before he was a soldier; is it not possible that, if opportunity had afforded, Mr. Lloyd George might have become a successful leader of armies?[[45]]
One afternoon especially comes back to my mind—hot summer afternoon when we sat in the garden of the Wandsworth house and listened to Miss Emily Hobhouse as she read to us her diary of her life in the concentration camps. She had come hot-foot from South Africa with these bare daily records of her experiences; and her idea was to work them up into a book. Mr. Lloyd George gave an instant opinion: “No, publish it as it stands!” was his pronouncement; and so the diary was published with its fearful record of daily horror. Simultaneously with its publication Mr. Lloyd George arranged to move the adjournment of the House of Commons, and the double event blew up the whole policy of the concentration camps.
Thus did he ultimately redeem the British name from the charge of barbarism.