Oct. 11.
WaeN Mr. Garvin turns and rends Mr. Lloyd George, the situation would indeed seem to be desperate. But in spite of the clamour in various quarters that the Prime Minister shall resign, we read that there is no reason to think that he has the slightest inclination to do so. And notwithstanding the ''Cbserver's'' considerable circulation and the number of people who regard Mr. Garvin as an oracle, there are probably a great many more who would be extremely sorry if his denunciations took effect. If Britain's Near East policy has led to a gigantic muddle, it had led nowhere else for years before Mr. Lloyd George was born.- If the Government has irrevocably lost the great war as far as the East is concerned,"' it is at least in part because Britain, with a sense of loyalty to her Allies which has reaped a very poor recompense, deferred to their wishes in the settlement of a dispute in which by British arms and no others the victory had been won. And the Government can scarcely be blamed for the agreement independently con-eluded by France with the Kemalists, some eighteen months ago, which utterly compromised the Allies' position from the outset. The frenzied attacks on Mr. Lloyd George, no longer confined to the Radicals who cannot forgive him for becoming conservative and the Conservatives who never forget that he was once radical, are indeed an amazing phenomenon, which reveal as nothing else has done how terribly England suffered and is still suffering by the war, so that, in some minds, all other considerations are for the moment swallowed up by dread of further war, least of all to be tolerated in the Near East, the grave of 80 many hopes and so many of her wasted sons.
For Mr. Lloyd George fills the imagination as no other figure in British politics has done since the days of Pitt. He transcends even the fame of Gladstone and Disraeli, for they never attained to the leadership of a coalition that ha has held. The son of a small schoolmaster turned farmer, brought up in penury by a shoemaker uncle, he has fought his way up by magic personality and indomitable spirit to the foremost place in Europe. Elsewhere Ministers and Prime Ministers succeed each other and are forgotten. But Mr. Lloyd George remains and even those who love him least are forced to admit that they can offer the nation no other name that the nation is likely to accept. Mr. Lloyd George's charm of manner is famous. Even in the fight over the 1909-10 Budget, the days of the notorious Limehouse speech, his worst opponents admitted that it was difficult to resist his personal fascination. But other leaders have possessed charm, personality, gift of speech not inferior to his, and yet have missed the something vouchsafed to Mr. Lloyd George which -has raised him to the heights. One thing at least cannot be denied him. He has the large vision and, however much he may be accused of opportunism, jugglery, the tricks of the skilful party politician, that power has rarely dailed him at a crisis. When he took charge of the Ministry of Munitions, and the great mane-facturers of arms were demurring to his urgent request that they should pool their secrets so as to increase national output, it is recorded that Mr. Lloyd George leant forward and said in a very quiet voice, but with tears in his eyes, Gentlemen, while. we
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.