[61] It is a strange fact that nothing worse was ever distinctly charged against him by his worst foes, although much was insinuated.
CHAPTER XIV
A WAR MAN
“O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole.”
Tennyson.
From the moment that war was declared (August 4th, 1914), Mr. Lloyd George put aside all his doubts and hesitations. The perplexities of the previous week passed away like so many clouds from a summer sky. He became from that instant a war man, intent on nothing but achieving victory.
“I can understand a man opposing a war,” he used to say, “but I cannot understand his waging a war with half a heart.” In regard to the attitude of various friends in political life, he would always express a certain whimsical tenderness for those who were entirely opposed to the war. “Ah,” he would say, “I was in that position once myself, and I know how difficult it is!” Wholly wrong as he thought them, dangerous as he thought their activities to the country, he could not shake off a certain admiration for their courage. But the men for whom he had no tolerance were those who waged the war with a backward glance over their shoulder all the time at the lost vision of peace. That seemed to him a confusing and weakening attitude. Peace was to be achieved, of course; that must always be the very aim of war; but once war began peace could only be retrieved across the gulf of war itself. That being the situation, he saw nothing for it but to bend the whole energies of the State to the sole purpose of conducting the war with the utmost power.
He realised at once that Great Britain was up against the most terrible danger that had ever faced it in the whole course of its existence. He knew Germany; he had a thorough understanding of German efficiency. Especially did he grasp the full strength and power given to the German Government by the patriotism of the German people. In entering upon this mighty enterprise, he approached the matter with the utmost gravity and seriousness. I never saw him so grave-minded as he was during those first months of the war. We rallied him one morning at breakfast for refusing to laugh at some jest. “The times are very serious,” he said, and once more he seemed lost in his own thoughts again. He used to describe the moment when the Western world paused from peace to war as the most solemn and awful in his whole life. “We sat waiting for Big Ben to strike the hour when the ultimatum expired. We all fell quite silent. As the great blows of the hammer sounded on the bell we seemed to be passing into another world.”