nation and
his intermediate without difficulty. Then while he progressed further
he had to have experience in a solicitor's office--which ran away with
more money. At twenty-one, however, he was finished, and was admitted
a solicitor. All that had been gone through for him to reach this goal
is shown by the fact that, having been formally enrolled as a lawyer,
he and his family at that time could not raise the three guineas
necessary to purchase the official robe without which he could not
practise in the local courts. He at once went out and worked in an
office and earned that three guineas.

He was now launched in the world. The great adventure of life began
almost immediately for him.

II

HOW LLOYD GEORGE BECAME FAMOUS AT TWENTY-FIVE

The personalities of history flash across our vision like
shooting-stars in the sky, emerging from hidden origins, making for
their unknown goal with a speed and brilliance at once spectacular and
mysterious. They are incalculable forces; we can only look at them and
wonder at them. It is futile and quite useless to try to define the
secret motive power of these personalities by puny analyses of moral
influences and by a catalogue of their feelings and surroundings. They
follow their destined course and raise our admiration or our fears and
all the while they give us no real clue to the powers within their
souls or the end they serve.

There had been many endeavors to link up Lloyd George with certain sets
of beliefs; sincere persons have associated his prominence with his
Liberalism, with his Nonconformity, with his passion for the interests
of the poor, and in these later days with his fervor for national and
patriotic effort. As a matter of fact, the framing of his dogmas has
had little or nothing to do with the power of the man. He is one of
those persons whom nature has made of dynamite; who would have blasted
a way for himself in any kind of conditions. It is neither to his
credit nor to his discredit that Heaven has given him an individuality
which has taken him throughout life to distinction and high
achievement. He has always swung to his tasks like a needle to the
Pole.

It so happened that by the surroundings of his youth--the piety and
pride and modest circumstances of his uncle and his mother--he was
early thrown into certain spheres of activity. But these spheres were
merely the medium for his powers. A wider survey than that of the
enthusiast