The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1910-01-20

the noble lords were panic-stricken
until the speaker, in his awful earnest
ness, came out from the concealing
shadow and shadOwed his deformity.
When his noble auditors saw his grim
ace they recovered themselves, burst
into laughter, berated and abused the
speaker and adjourned in confusion.
"Lloyd. George is not deformed. He
is not of the peers. But his voice
reaches them when raised in the COM
mons, in print or on the hustings He
is voice from the people. He is tell
ing the lords to beware. His words
have not the wild vehemence, the tenn
pestuous righteousness of the words
put into the mouths of the ex-mounte-
bank by the great dramatic novelist,
but they are meaningful and ominous.
They also are terrible arraignment of
privilege.
"Lloyd- George speaks with ancient
authority. He is sturdy Welchman
and the Welch are pure Celts-more
Celtic than the Irish, the Scotch, the
Walloons of Belgium, the Manxman
or any other people. They have all
the romance, the poetry, the fire and
fighting qualities of the Celt. When
the invaders came the aborigines were
killed off or driven into the mountains
of Wales and in these fastnesses they
were not molested. Here they have
remained without infiltration OF ad-
mixture of other blood. They are the
same people that the lsgions of Caesar
found and which the monks of Angus
tin converted. They are autochthOnous
of the soil, to the manor born. They
are deformed by hereditary subservien-
cy, but they have a voice, clear, bold,
ringing voice in Lloyd-George that is
being heard far beyond the islands lit
toral. He has returned from the noun
tains- where his forefathers found sane
tuary to challenge the invaders and
wrest from them misused power and
abused privilege.
ain the forensic conflict now going
on the lords are at great disadvantage.
Lloyd George and his followers can
speak in fiery vernacular much as do
our own campaigners. The lords,
while they have many able men and
great orators among them, dare not de-
scend to the level of the rabble-rouser.
They must preserve the illusion that
they are superior breed. Their austere
loneliness will not permit them to in
dulge in heart to heart talks or familiar
appeals to the people. Their dignity
is rigid and can not bend, and their
oracular deliverances on hustings are
mere monotenous dronings of soporific
sesquipedalianisms that move no one.
"What will be the outcome? can
not say. Gwynpaine, the mountebank
peer, watched the blind girl, DeO, who
loved him, while she died, calling on
him to follow her, saying that without
him she would be unhappy in heaven
Then he plunged into the enveloping
water while the wolf looked over the
side of the vessel in vain to see him
rise.
"Lloyd- George may be overwhelmed,
also, and, again, he may become the
modern Man Who Laughs, and have
the laugh on the peers without the ne
cessity of surgical operation.
"Victor Hugo's presence enabled him
to see what was coming forty-one years
before it reached here, which goes to
show that the days of the prophets
have not passed. Coming events still
adumbrate themselves before clarified
visions. At all events we are winess-
ing one of the greatest political strug-
giles of history. On the one side is
privilege, strongly entrenched; on the
other, the people, just awakening. -
T M. w. Connolly in the Nashville
American.
n a