Oct, 23.
The London Letter yesterday referred briefly to the awful story of Mr, Lloyd George's barber's lapse. For years the com ative ex-Premier has been a joy to cartoonists and an easy mark for sight-seers hanging round the House of Commons by reason of his luxuriant locks. The colour has gone from tawny to the purest silver since the war years, But the jauntiness of the crop on the head of the short thick-set, ill-dressed Welshman has never diminished. When enemies are attacking in their most deadly form and when—a far more frequent occurence—reputed followers are showing the most sinister signs of indiscipline, Mr, Lloyd-George has. managed by the toss of his head and the shaking of his locks to indicate his supreme confidence in himself and his highly diverted conviction of his opponents' pathetic ignorance. Whether he is on his best behaviour and reverting to the vein of lofty statesmanship, or whether he is mischievously dabbling in the oratory of his Limehouse days veintoreed by palpable ignorance of every conceivable relevant fact, the white mane of his blameless life stands him in good stead to-crown his wisdom or condone his folly.
By a barber's error that has all disappeared. The head of Mr. Lloyd George is as close-cropped as that of any of those soldiers of whose intellects he used to be so playfully doubtful in his war-premiership days. He has ceased to be a personality' and the handful of M.P.s who respond to his leadership in the House of Commons must feel that they have been deprived of a vital ornament. It is not surprising therefore to learn that Mr, Lloyd-George proposes to re-_ pair the error by the simple process of letting his hair grow again and watching his barber more closely on the next occa sion. No report appears to have been spread of the discovery of a plot. Yet is it not] barely possible that, somewhere among his opponents, the wick-eelness of Delilah may have been repeated in this XXth Century?. The prompt decision to undo the mischief as soon as the eflluxion. of time permits shows that the victim himself feels that strength has gone him. The strength is that' which accrues in these days of publicity from the possession a well-known label, or trade mark by which the public can recognize the brand it-hates or desires.
Politicians have long been aware of the importance of this personal item in their equipment. the great "W.E.G. was not entirely innocent. of this method of retaining public interest. He specialized on collars and the axes with which he tackled his. favourite pastime.
His quondam disciple and eventual critic, Joseph Chamberlain brought the monocle and orchid into the game. His less famous son carried on the tradition more pompously but with the loss of that prestige attaching to an original idea, In later days Mr. Baldwin has discover ed the pipe—like General Dawes of the United States Embassy London—and Bir. Winston Churchill has developed his inividuality in hats, with ocean sional digressions on the brick. laying trade. Mr. J. H, Thomas experiments in the deliberate lect of aspirates and the wearing of the dress clothes of the uncomfortable night-bird. It would not be fair to impute to these great minds the weakness of the superstitious; they simply realize that the public deserves to be helped to remember them and, above all that cartoonists should not be double-crossed. The man who, after: emerging into the limelight and inning the suffrage of the nimble pencil, callously cuts off his moustache or submits a well-pronounced nose to the tentions of a beauty-doctor deserves the execration of all right-thinking members of the community. The cartoonist of course rightly ignores the base mancuvre—and continues to caricature the criminal as before. Mr. Lloyd George evidently appreciates that point of. view—hence his swift decision to remove at the earliest possible moment all traces of his. barber's lamentable solecism.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.