As you analyse Lloyd George’s life you find that he has always been a sort of Human Lightning Rod that attracted the bolts of abuse.  A campaign meant violent controversy, frequently physical conflict.  The reason was that he always stated his cause so violently as to arouse bitter resentment.

Into his first election he flung himself with the fury of youth and the eager passion of a zealot.  He threw conventional Liberalism to the wind and made a fight for a Free and United Wales.  He frankly believed himself to be the inspired leader of his people:  often his meetings became riots.  More than once he was warned that the Tories would kill him and on several occasions he narrowly escaped death.  Once while riding with his wife in an open carriage through the streets of Bangor he was assailed by a hooting, jeering mob.  Some one threw a blazing fire ball, dipped in paraffine, into the vehicle.  It knocked off the candidate’s hat and fell into Mrs. Lloyd George’s lap setting her afire.  Lloyd George threw off his coat, smothered the flames and after finding that the innocent victim of the assault was uninjured, calmly proceeded to the Town Hall where he spoke, accompanied by a fusillade of stones which smashed every window in the structure.

In this campaign, as in all succeeding ones, Lloyd George used the full powers of press publicity.  He made reporters his confidants.  Often he rehearsed his speeches before them, striding up and down and declaiming as passionately as if he were facing huge audiences.  In fact he acquired an interest in a group of Welsh papers.

Already Welsh chieftainship was being crystallised in the aggressive little fire-eater.  Anticipating the coming call of the Mother Country she was laying her burdens on his stalwart shoulders.  And what George was now doing for Wales he was soon to do in the larger arena of the Empire.

Once in Parliament Lloyd George was no man’s man.  He became a free lance and while sometimes he ran amuck his cause was always the cause of his people.

In those earlier Parliamentary days you find some of the traits that distinguished him later on.  For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work:  he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings.  His forte was talking.  He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports.  He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture.  His intelligence has more than once been characterised as “brilliant but hasty.”

But offsetting all this is the man’s persuasive and pleading personality which always gets him over the shallow ground of ignorance.  This is one reason why Lloyd George has always been stronger in attack than in defence.  His tactic has always been either to assault first or make a swift counterdrive.  He is a sort of Stonewall Jackson of Debate.