Mr. Lloyd George
by . New York; George H. Doran Co. 1922. 8vo. 367 pp. $3.00.
‘A PRIME minister,’ says Bagehot, ’must be a man of business long trained in great affairs; he must be, if not a great orator, a great explainer— he must be able to expound with perspicuity, to a mixed assembly, complicated measures and involved transactions; he must be a great party leader, and have the knowledge of men, the easy use of men, and the miscellaneous sagacity which such eminence necessarily implies; he must be a ready man, a managing man, and an intelligible man.’
It is perhaps too much to say that this description of a prime minister, written more than sixty years ago, was made to order for the distinguished gentleman who has just retired from that great office, and whose characteristics are enumerated and interpreted in this entertaining and instructive book from the exceedingly adroit pen of Mr. E. T. Raymond, a British journalist whose writings are familiar to readers of the Atlantic. These characteristics are not, perhaps, the sum of all his qualities, whether we regard the eulogies of his friends or the less favorable criticisms ofhis opponents. But they are enough. The great question is how such qualities are to be attained. In Bagehot’s view they are the peculiar product of the British parliamentary system. They were once, apparently, confined to the members of what were known as the ‘ruling classes,’ But it is evident that with Mr. George’s accession to place and power the boundaries of that select group have somehow been widened— or even, as Mr. Raymond suggests, obliterated forever.
It is to this development of qualities and this alteration of the political situation which made Lloyd George prime minister that Mr. Raymond has addressed himself. For them he has adduced an explanation—if not a formula — for the evolution not merely of his subject but, indirectly, of the situation which made the eminence of that subject possible. He has written an interpretation not only of Lloyd George but of present-day British politics: an explanation of extraordinary readability, of undeniable cleverness, of great insight, and, no doubt, of much truth. It is not precisely a biography, yet it is more than an ‘appreciation.’ It is, perhaps, rather an attempt to ‘explain’ Mr. Lloyd George, that amazing modern phenomenon among prime ministers; and the explanation involves not only much biography but no inconsiderable amount of history, or at least history in the making.
The result is an interesting and important contribution both to our knowledge and to our enjoyment. And though we may not accept in its entirety any such account written at this moment without that mass of documented material which makes for our knowledge of action and motive, we cannot deny that Mr. Raymond has added not only to the gayety but to the instruction of nations—even beyond those which inhabit the British Isles.
WILBUR C. ABBOTT.