on the platform.
Lloyd George would have none of his suggestion. He went to the hall,
and his appearance was a signal for a riot such as had been unknown for
a generation at a public gathering in Britain. In a frantic fight by
the Chamberlain supporters to reach the platform the sympathizers with
Lloyd George were trampled down. Furniture was broken up, windows were
smashed, several people were seriously injured, and one man was killed.
Lloyd George was smuggled out of the hall in a policeman's uniform.

England rang with the story of the happenings on that night in
Birmingham. Lloyd George was called a coward and sneered at for
allowing himself to get away in disguise, and if poisonous words could
have checked a man's career he would have been finished from that time.
A few days after the riot an M. P. met Joseph Chamberlain in the lobby
of the House of Commons and said to him, "So your people didn't manage
to kill Lloyd George the other night?" "What is everybody's business
is nobody's business," said Chamberlain as he passed on.

It is a tribute to Lloyd George's power among his own people in Wales
that when an election took place in the middle of the war he retained
his seat in Parliament. You get a touch of the kind of man in the
words he spoke to his supporters in the course of his speech after the
declaration of the poll. "While England and Scotland are drunk with
blood, the brain of Wales remains clear, and she advances with steady
step on the road to progress and liberty."

The Conservatives remained in power to the end of 1905, and in the
beginning of 1906 there was a general election which returned to power
a strong Liberal majority augmented by some thirty Labor members. A
vigorous spirit was sweeping through the Liberal ranks. New men had
sprung to the front to take the place of those who had dropped out by
death, old age, or the feeling that modern thought was too advanced for
them. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a pawky old Scotsman who became
the Liberal Prime Minister, did not confine the members of his Cabinet
to the respectable leaders of old time, but brought in new blood, among
his selections being Lloyd George. This promotion was unexpected by
the public. Lloyd George had made a big reputation in Parliament, but
it was always that of the free-lance. On vital questions of principle
he was as free from control by the Liberals as by the Conservatives.
He was known as an untamed guerrilla