The son of a village schoolmaster who died when he was scarcely three:  the ward of a shoe-maker who was also inspired lay-preacher:  the political protege of a Militant Nationalist whose heart bled at the oppression of the Welsh, Lloyd George early looked out upon a life smarting with grievance and clamouring to be free.  Knowing this, you can understand that the dominant characteristic of this man is to rebel against established order.  Swaddled in Democracy, he became its Embodiment and its Voice.

The world knows about the Lloyd George childhood spent amidst poverty in a Welsh village.  The big-eyed boy ate, thought and dreamed in Welsh, “the language that meant a daily fare of barley bread.”  When he learned English it was like acquiring a foreign tongue.  He grew up amid a great revival of Welsh art, letters and religion that stirred his soul.  He missed the pulpit by a narrow margin, yet he has never lost the evangelistic fervour which is one of the secrets of his control and command of people.

With the alphabet Lloyd George absorbed the wrongs of his people and they were many.  The Welsh had a double bondage:  the grasp of the Landlord and the Thrall of the Church.  All about him quivered the aspiration for a free land, a free people and a free religion.  In those days Wales was like another Ireland with all the hardship that Eviction imposes.

The call to leadership came early.  As a boy in school he led his mates in rebellion against the drastic dictates of a Church which prescribed liberty of religious thoughts and speech.  He became the Apostle of Nonconformity and for it waged some of his fiercest battles.

Always the gift of oratory was his.  He preached temperance almost with his advent into his teens:  he was a convincing speaker before most boys talked straight.

In due time Lloyd George became a solicitor but it was merely the step into public life.  To plead is instinct with him and with advocacy of a case in court he was always urging some reform for his little country.  Politics was meat and drink to him and he stood for Parliament.  An ardent Home Ruler, he swayed his followers with such intensity that what came to be known as Lloyd George’s Battle Song sprang into being.  Sung to the American tune of “Marching Through Georgia” it was hailed as the fighting hymn of Welsh Nationalism.  Two lines show where the young Welsh lawyer stood in his early twenties:  they also point his whole future: 

     “The Grand Young Man will triumph,
     Lloyd George will win the day——­”

There is something Lincoln-like in the spectacle of his first struggle.  This lowly lad fought the forces of “Squirearchy and Hierarchy.”  The Tories hurled at him the anathema that he “had been born in a cottage.”

“Ah,” replied Lloyd George, when he heard of it:  “the Tories have not realised that the day of the cottage-bred man has dawned.”

Before he got through he was destined to show, that so far as opportunity was concerned, the Cottage in Great Britain was to be on a par with a Palace.