ld say. Was he to make a half-and-half
defense of the Cabinet war policy? Was he to try to explain why he had
not resigned? He was always a master of the unexpected. What had he
in store for us now? Speaking in the midst of a dramatic silence he
said these words, slowly, almost conversationally: "There is no man who
has always regarded the prospect of engaging in a great war with
greater reluctance and greater repugnance than I have done through all
my political life. There is no man more convinced that we could not
have avoided it without national dishonor." That was the beginning of
the most effective war speech since the start of hostilities. With
scorn and logic and invective he raked the German position, and in a
thrilling outburst invoked all that was honest, loyal, and strong in
the British people to strike hard and deep on behalf of outraged
Belgium. That was the first war speech of his life. The second was
not long in following. It was made at the City Temple, a famous
Nonconformist church in the heart of London. There it was that he said
the same reason that made him a "Pro-Boer" made him an advocate of this
war by Britain. He referred to the riotous Birmingham meeting. "It
was a meeting convened to support exactly the same principle of
opposition to the idea that great and powerful empires ought to have
the right to crush small nationalities. We might have been right, we
might have been wrong, but the principle that drove me to resist even
our own country is the one that has brought me here to-night to support
my country."

All through his life from boyhood onward Lloyd George had been a
magnetic figure, one round whom action eddied in emergency. In any
movement in which he was associated he automatically became the central
personage, the individual looked to for inspiration and for motive
power. Thus it was after his active entry into the patriotic campaign.
The silent Kitchener at the War Office, the clear-headed Mr. Asquith at
the head of the Government, were, by virtue of their positions, in the
forefront, but within a week or two the newspapers and the public were
calling attention to Lloyd George's services on behalf of the nation.
His work as Chancellor of the Exchequer was indeed important; his
personality made him even more important.

The shock of war had dislocated the financial system of the world and
London, as the center of the financial system, was in the throes.
Imagine Lloy