elf tells the story of how he was
introduced at that meeting by the chairman, a leading deacon of the
village. "We have suffered much of late from misrepresentations," he
said. "The Bishop of St. Asaph has been speaking against us and we all
know that he is a very great liar. Thank God we have a match for him
here to-night in Mr. Lloyd George." In later years when Lloyd George
and the bishop became good friends in spite of their differences of
opinion, it was hard to decide which of them enjoyed this story most.

Lloyd George began to speak everywhere, at street corners, in
conventicles, in the market-places, at mass-meetings in the public
buildings, and his peculiar oratory secured him larger and larger
audiences and aroused attention, sympathetic or hostile, all over the
constituency. Many who were lukewarm and went to hear him out of
curiosity were swung by his personality into being supporters. He had
always his own natural style of talk. Possessing a musical and clear
voice, he never strained for effect, rarely used a rotund sentence, but
talked to his audiences in a red-hot conversational kind of way, his
heightened feelings finding expression in a sibilance which always
touched the nerves of his hearers. He seldom interrupted interrupters,
finding it more effective to let them speak and then to deal with them
in his own special manner when they had finished. There were
occasionally exceptions to this, however. In the course of one of his
speeches he exclaimed, "What do my opponents really want?" A husky,
hostile voice from the crowd broke in, "What I want is a change of
government." "No," said Lloyd George; "what you really want is a
change of drink." Another time he had begun a sentence with the words
"I am here," when an opponent in the crowd shouted, "So am I." "Yes,"
said Lloyd George, "but you are not all there." One of his best
retorts in his early days was to a Conservative who came to a Liberal
meeting determined to stand no nonsense. "We must give home rule,"
declared Lloyd George, "not only to Ireland, but to Scotland as well,
and to Wales." "And home rule for hell," shouted a man in the
audience. "Quite right," said Lloyd George; "let every person stick up
for his own country."

A hard-working young professional man, Lloyd George was in for a heavy
fight and, in the opinion of many, a hopeless fight, when the election
came two years later. It was a dramatic chance that selected for