who lacks the
moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity,
but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide
which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But
judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a
prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.

Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of
the possible. But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness,
and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep
on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to
careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as
these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he
would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and
before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and
maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.
Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he
was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr.
Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his
impression of the first British delegate. "Mr. Lloyd George," he said,
"has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude,
but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance
of, the larger affairs of nations." In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd
George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the
war-making power was invested in Congress. "What!" exclaimed the
Premier, "you mean to tell me that the President of the United States
cannot declare war? I never heard that before." Later, when questions of
national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, "What
is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?" meaning Transylvania.[47]

The stories current of his praiseworthy curiosity about the places
which he was busy distributing to the peoples whose destinies he was
forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private
individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the
representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity
of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably
diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor
of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd