his
Conservative opponent the squire of his native village, the dignitary
to whom Lloyd George as a village lad used to touch his hat. Fierce
excitement ranged throughout the election fight. In the result Lloyd
George snatched victory by just a handful of votes, his poll being one
thousand nine hundred sixty-three against the Conservative total of one
thousand nine hundred forty-five. Lloyd George was twenty-seven at the
time of this triumph and became known as "the boy politician." There
were many sneers among his opponents, who pointed out that this fluent
young demagogue had now reached the end of his tether. In the
environment of the House of Commons, among really clever men, he would
sink to the natural inconsequence from which a series of fortunate
accidents had lifted him. And indeed it was not unnatural for even the
sympathetic observer to feel that perhaps this was the end of Lloyd
George, that the ability which he undoubtedly possessed and which had
carried him a considerable distance was not the ability which could do
any more for him. He had projected himself out of the congenial
surroundings wherein his talents had proved of avail, but, like a spent
rocket, he would now rapidly come to earth.

It would have been inconceivable to many of his friends and to all of
his opponents that this twenty-seven-year-old M. P. should have
regarded himself as but on the threshold of his work, should have
looked upon what he had achieved merely as preliminaries to his rarely
serious efforts in life. They would have smiled indulgently or
ironically if they had been told at this period the story of Lloyd
George's diary entry after his first visit to the House of Commons at
seventeen. Probably no person on earth but his wife knew the steely
determination behind her husband's impetuosity.

The young M.P. took his seat in the House of Commons on April 17, 1890.
A Liberal Government was in power. Gladstone, over eighty years of
age, was at the head of it. Political giants whose reputation had
reached young Lloyd George through the newspapers were scattered along
the two front benches. He sat himself down on one of the back seats
and proceeded to look at these men in action and to weigh them up. He
formed some judgments about them. Here is what he wrote about Mr.
Asquith in the course of some work for a Welsh newspaper a little later
on: "A short, thick-set, rather round-shouldered man with a face as
clean shaven