What was the result?  Up and down the western battle front English cannon spoke in terms of victory.  No longer was British gunner required to husband shells:  to meet crash with silence.  He hurled back steel for steel and all because England’s Hope had answered England’s Call.  Lloyd George had done it again.

I first met Lloyd George during those crowded days when he was Commander-in-Chief of the host that fed the firing line.  Under his magnetic direction British industry had been forged into a colossal munitions shop.  No man in England was busier:  not even the King was more inaccessible.  Life with him was one engagement after another.

Now came one of those swift emergencies that seems to crowd so fast upon Lloyd George’s life and with it arose my own opportunity.

The British Trade Union Congress in annual session at Bristol had expressed Labour’s dissatisfaction over its share of the munitions profits.  Lloyd George had sent them a letter explaining his proposed excess profit tax, but this apparently was not enough.  The delegates still growled.

“Then I’ll go down and speak to them in person,” said the Minister with characteristic energy.

Thus it happened that I journeyed with him to the old town, background of stirring naval history.  On the way down half a dozen department heads poured into his responsive ears the up-to-the-minute details of the work in hand.  He became a Human Sponge soaking up the waters of fact.

At Bristol in a crowded stuffy hall he faced what was at the start almost a menacing crowd.  Yet as he addressed them you would have thought that he had known every man and woman in the assembly all their lives.  The easy, intimate, frank manner of his delivery:  his immediate claim to kinship with them on the ground of a common lowly birth:  his quick and stirring appeal to their patriotism swept aside all discord and disaffection.  As he gave an eloquent account of his stewardship you could see the audience plastic under his spell.  The people who had assembled to heckle sat spellbound.  When he had finished they not only gave him an ovation but pledged themselves anew to the gospel of “More Munitions.”

It was on the train back to London that I got a glimpse of the real Lloyd George.  What Roosevelt would have called “a bully day” had left its impress upon the little man.  His long grey hair hung matted over a wilted collar:  there was a wistful sort of weariness in his eyes.  He sank into a big chair and looked for a long time in silence at the flying landscape.  Then suddenly he aroused himself and began to talk.  Like many men of his type whom you go to interview he began by interviewing the interviewer.

The first two questions that Lloyd George asked me showed what was going on in his mind, for they were: 

“What were Lincoln’s views of conscription, and did your soldiers vote during the Civil War?”

There was definite method in these queries, for already the Shadow of Conscription had begun to fall over all England.  It was Lloyd George, aided by Northcliffe, who led the fight for it.