The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-12-07
LLOYD GEORGE, ENCLANO'S NEW PRIME MINISTER, THE IDOL OF
 DEMOCRACY IN WHOLE NATION

David Lloyd George. the new Brit lsh premier, is the idol of British dem. ocracy. His extreme radicalism made him at times lone of the most hated men in England," particularly among the aristocracy, but on more numer- , ous occasions he loomed up as "the man of the hour" and his personality sometimes overshadoWed the whole Asquith ministry.
 He is pre-eminently the British governments man of "push and go, energetic, determined and fearless Though 8 little man, almost frail in physique, he is such a successful fight CT that he scarcely knows the meaning of defeat.
 As Chancellor of the Exchequer he was the author of budget reforms which opened a new era in the fiscal history of the United Kingdom, and which, by putting new levies of taxa ton on the propertied classes, led to the great Constitutional conflict be- tween the Commons and the Lords. and the curbing of the legislative ve- to power of the peers. This political revolution, and other great causes in which he figured as the popular leader, notably his successful fight for the h. surance Act for protecting the work ing classes against illness and unem- ployment, and his Old Age pension scheme, made him a dominant figure in the Liberal government.
 When, with the sudden outbreak of the European war in 1914, internal 1or nd oo- trance into the war, Chancellor Lloyd George was sl1ouldered with the chief responsibility of financing the Elm pires part in the great conflict. Though he had been one of the chief obstruc- tionists to great military expenditures on the part of Great Britain, in peace times, face to face with the war he tackled the problem of raising money with his whole strength. and set in mo- ton the first of the great loans which were fioated to meet Britain's war cost-estimated at ten billion dollars a year.
 In the midst of these financial prob lems, Lloyd George was called to as- surne new role, as Minister of Mu- nitions, when in May, 1915, a coali- tion cabinet was formed and when it was charged that Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, had failed to supply the army with sufficient guns and ammunition It was agreed that the occasion called for one of the strongest men in England to awaken the country to the paramount neces- huge scale. s"The battle of Neuve Cha
 r q, stunned more ammunition than was used in the whole Boer war;
 The manner in which Lloyd George tackled this new problem was typical of his. energetic career. He hurried the passage through Parliament of a special munitions bill which gave the government broad powers of control over all factories that were making or capablefof making war munitions. The bill made strikes and lickbuts illegal, gave power to fine "slackers;" limited the profits of employers, and provided for a volunteer army of workers who should pledge themselves to go wher- ever the government required them to work in the factories.
 Exasperated by the slowness with which workers rallied to the factories, Lloyd George gave the labor leaders just seven days in which to make good their promise of getting sufficient men to man the plants for maximum production. During the week the newspapers all over the United king dom were flooded with full page ad- vertisements, and the labor leaders turned town halls throughout the country into recruiting offices with the result that women as we'll as men workers enlisted in even greater num- bers were necessary, and the muni- tions problem was soon solved.
 Lloyd George was one of those who found intoxication to be a serious ham, dicap in maintaining efficiency at the munitions plants, and it was through his vigorous handling of the situation that new legislative restrictions on i- quor sale were put into effect.
 In strange contrast to Lloyd Georges leadership in the prosecution of the European War, is the fact that his first political prominence came through his attacks on the pro-war party during the South African cam paign of 1899-90. He carried his op- pOSlIIOA LO IIldI Wd1 SO lcA tA1dI AC even refused to vote for the supplies necessary to maintain the army. His cement of the British cause was so unpopular, however, that he put his life in Jeopardy by expounding his views. At Birmingham, for one in- stance, his life was sought by riot ous mob which the police were unable to handle and Lloyd George was able to escape from their hands only by disgusting himself. in a policeman's uniform. In later years he was the .ob- ject of physical violence on the part of the suffragettes, who hurled mis- sles at him on several occasions, and who, in February 1913, destroyed his country house with dynamite.
 Lloyd George was born in Manches- ter, Eng, Jan. IT, 1863, but his pa rents were Welsh, and throughout his life Lloyd George, whose bringing up was in Wales, was a champion of Welsh nationalism, and had such a grip on the affections of his admirers in that country that they called him sometimes ''The Prince of Wales." The son of a schoolmaster, who died while Lloyd George. was an infant, the fu- ture chancellor knew the extremes of poverty as youth. He hardly tast- ed fresh meat and his greatest luxury in those days, he said once in a public speech, was an egg which he had to 1oa1ve with his brother on Sundays He