He reached Birmingham ahead of schedule time and got to the home of his host in safety.  All day long sandwich men paraded the highways bearing placards calling upon the citizenry to assemble at the Town Hall where Lloyd George was to speak “To defend the King, the Government and Mr. Chamberlain.”

Night came, the streets were howling mobs, every constable was on duty.  The hall was stormed and when Lloyd George appeared on the platform he faced turmoil.  Hundreds of men carried sticks, clubs and bricks covered with rags and fastened to barbed wire.  When he rose to speak Bedlam let loose.  Jeers, catcalls and frightful epithets rained on him and with them rocks and vegetables.  He removed his overcoat and stood calm and smiling.  When he raised his voice, however, the grand assault was made.  Only a double cordon of constables massed around the stage kept him from being overwhelmed.  In the free-for-all fight that followed one man was killed and many injured.

Anything like a speech was hopeless:  the main task was to save the speaker’s life, for outside in the streets a bloodthirsty rabble waited for its prey.  Lloyd George started to face them single-handed and it was only when he was told that such procedure would not only foolishly endanger his life but the lives of his party which included several women, he consented to escape through a side door, wearing a policeman’s helmet and coat.

Fourteen years later Lloyd George returned to Birmingham acclaimed as a Saviour of Empire.  Such have been the contrasts in this career of careers.

Fortunately England, like the rest of the world, forgets.  The mists of unpopularity that hung about the little Welshman vanished under the sheer brilliancy of the man.  When the Conservative Government fell after the Boer War he was not only a Cabinet possibility but a necessity.  The Government had to have him.  From that time on they needed him in their business.

Lloyd George drew the dullest and dustiest of all portfolios—­the Board of Trade.  He found the post lifeless and academic; he vivified and galvanised it and made it a vital branch of party life and dispute.  It is the Lloyd George way.

Here you find the first big evidence of one of the great Lloyd George qualities that has stood him in such good stead these recent turbulent years.  He became, like Henry Clay, the Great Conciliator.  The whole widespread labour and industrial fabric of Great Britain was geared up to his desk.  It shook with unrest and was studded with strife.  Much of this clash subsided when Lloyd George came into office because he had the peculiar knack of bringing groups of contending interests together.  Men learned then, as they found out later, that when they went into conference with Lloyd George they might as well leave their convictions outside the door with their hats and umbrellas.

To this policy of readjustment he also brought the laurel of constructive legislation.  To him England owes the famous Patents Bill which gives English labour a share in the English manufacture of all foreign invention; the Merchant Shipping Bill which safeguards the interest of English sailor and shipper; and the Port of London Bill which made the British metropolis immune from foreign ship menace.