Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British parliamentarian to need to be characterized.  The splendid services he rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten.  Typifying not only the aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the courage to change them in a twinkling.  He stirred the soul of the nation in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.  During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.  But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world.  His antecedents were all against him.  His lack of general equipment was prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications.  One need not pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity, but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows.  But judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.

Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of the possible.  But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness, and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep on the right side of it.  At the Conference his conduct appeared to careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as these were various and changing the result was a zigzag.  One day he would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.  Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean.  Mr. Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his impression of the first British delegate.  “Mr. Lloyd George,” he said, “has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude, but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance of, the larger affairs of nations.”  In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the war-making power was invested in Congress.  “What!” exclaimed the Premier, “you mean to tell me that the President of the United States cannot declare war?  I never heard that before.”  Later, when questions of national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, “What is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?” meaning Transylvania.[47]