Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-07-24
THE
BRITISH
CRISIS
Special Correspondence of the Star.

| SpecidI correspondence VI tue
LONDON. July 10, 1910.
"He is" said great British journal
list of David Lloyd-George, 1.-The symbol
of a new age; the herald of a new
time; the outward and visible sign that
the common people are coming into
their own. It is difficult to place
Lloyd-George We have had nothing
like him in British politics before. Per-
haps he comes nearest to Abraham
Lincoln of any of the latter day lead
ers of the democracy"
| Unlike Jefferson, unlike Gladstone,
LloydrGeorge is like Lincoln in that
he is a democrat through and through.
Being of the plain people, he knows
the plain people, he loves the plain
people and he always is the champion
of the plain people, believing with the
great American emancipation that God
must have loved the plain people, for
he made SO many OF them" Like
Lincoln, he is abhorred of the classes
and adOred of the masses. There has
| been nothing like him in all the his
| tory of British politics. He is the head
and front Of the revolution in Britain,
and such he is the most hated and
the most loved man in all the realm OF
| George V.
| That such man holds the high Office
of chancellor of the exchequer, that
such a man is the leader of the party
in power in Great Britain, that such
a man seems destined to rule over the
British empire as the prime minister
Of the crown, that such man has
power to sway a British cabinet and
command a British parliament is, in
the estimation Of the ruling classes
who have governed England for a
thousand years, an outrage and desc
Grafton.
That such a man has been able to
| reach this high position and to WELD
this great power is, to the struggling
and starving masses of average men
dawning of new and better day
day in which the man who works
shall he equal before the law and in
political power with the man who
shirks.
The story of Lloyd George is a story
that might seem commonplace in Ameri-
can political an
UNIQUE in nails, but it is
English History. recedented
among the tales of British political sue
Welshman of Welshmen, was not born
|
Manchester, January II, 1853, and Is
therefore not yet forty-eight years old.
His father, William George, came of
Welsh yeoman stock. but had engaged
in the business of teaching school, and
as such was living in England. The
mother of the chancellor of the exchequer
was Elizabeth Lloyd, daughter of the
Rev. David Lloyd, Baptist minister.
Soon after young David was born his
father and mother returned to Wales,
and before the boy was three years old
his father died. The home was broken
up, and the first thing David Lloyd
George can remember is the sale of his
widowed mothers furniture to satisfy a
debt owed to an absent and impersonal
landlord. The widow could not take care
of all the children, and David was given
to her brother, Richard Lloyd. Richard
Lloyd was a shoemaker in the village of
Llanystundwy for six days in the week,
and on the other he was pastor of an
impoverished congregation of Campbellite
Baptists. Lloyd's cobbler shop was. the
village forum. and in it every day gath
cred the village worthless to discuss
politics and religion and to hear from
the lips of the educated Richard Lloyd
translations of the news from the Liver
lage most of the people spoke only Welsh.
The shoemaker was also a sort Of poor
mans lawyer, who gave advice without
charge to the tenants and laborers of
the community.
In this shoemaker's shop the young
David's heart was set on fire with zeal
for the cause of his people. Tales of
landlords oppression. stories of starva-
ton, living witnesses of the hopelessness
of a peasants life, came into his con-
seriousness along with the epics OF his
own Welsh nation. His uncle sacrificed
the meager savings of his lifetime to
give the boy the best available education
to fit him for the life of a lawyer. At the
age of fourteen he had passed the law
preliminary examination, and at sixteen
he was articled to a firm of solicitors.
=
At twenty -one he qualified as solicit
tor and in the first year of his practice
took a case which
Co;nad Nationa1 gained him a national
reputation. A poor
panufofinn -,