feeling the tension; so much was
obvious. I remember wondering if he had reached the limit of his
strength, whether he was really big enough in spirit for the ordeal that
lay before him.

Within ten minutes the formal business of the day was over, and the
chairman, standing up on his dais, announced, "Mr. Chancellor of the
Exchequer." Lloyd George rose to the table. He seemed almost an
insignificant figure in the midst of the crowded assembly. Members were
filling all the seats, some squatting on the steps of the Speaker's
chair, others standing together in the space below the bar at the farther
end of the House. The galleries banked overhead were occupied by
distinguished visitors, foreign ambassadors, members of the House of
Lords, ladies of title, distinguished men of thought and action. It was
such an audience as is given to but few men in a lifetime.

In low voice and conversational phrase Lloyd George began his speech. He
told of the money that had to be raised, but he did not stop at the
narrative of what may be called ordinary expenditure. He told how the
primary duty of a rich nation was to help those who had been exhausted,
to give a chance to the downtrodden. He related some of the things he
had in his mind--the insurance of workmen against illness and
unemployment, the payment of pensions for persons over a certain age. He
told of how unemployment might be largely eliminated by developments in
the countryside, through new methods of agriculture, through light
railways, through afforestation, through stock-breeding, through the
reclamation of land. Efforts in these directions would not only help a
great many of the population at the present time, but would provide
enormously increased opportunities for coming generations. He proposed
that part of the money of the year should be taken up with these projects.

Very soon he swept into the explanation of how new money was to be
raised. It was necessary to set up a system which would, year by year,
produce an increasing supply of money. When Lloyd George came to the
point of his actual proposals you could have heard the slightest rustle
of an order paper, so keen were the silent Commons. He was going to
raise the income tax, he said, the existing impost on incomes of 160
pounds a year and over. He was going to put a super tax on rich people,
those who had 5,000 pounds a year or more. He was going to make big
additions to the duty charged on grea