The things you find on YouTube. Of course this is David Lloyd George in 1932, long out of power and leading the shattered remnants of the once great Liberal Party. However, it does give hints of the eloquence and intellect that earned him the nickname of The Welsh Wizard. His unenviable task at the Paris Peace Conference was to attempt to bridge the differences between Wilson and Clemenceau while satisfying the lust for a harsh peace among most of the British electorate, still mourning their million dead. Privately Lloyd George viewed a draconian peace to be a mistake, and thus he had another bridge to construct between the wishes of his people and of himself.
I feel some sympathy for the Liberals. It was their misfortune to be at the helm when Hell arrived, and they were forced to be neither fish nor fowl between the Tories and the forces that became Labour. Lloyd George was a political giant with the charisma of a decade’s worth of eisteddfodau. But by 1924 he had no one to lead.
It is another example of how the First World War rent so much asunder, and destroyed so much that could never be recreated.
Hang on. I’ll fix the formatting. Fell free to delete the above comment.
The Big Fella’s reaction to DLG was perfectly understandable. He felt the same for Churchill until they met in person and Churchill broke the ice during a particularly tense moment.
“One night in late November with the negotiations stalemated Churchill invited Collins, Arthur Griffith, Lloyd George and Lord Birkinhead back to his townhouse for drinks. Griffith went upstairs with the prime minister while Collins, Churchill and Birkinhead remained on the ground floor.
And they started to drink. Cognac. Collins, always with a sweet tooth, wanted his spiked with curaçao. And they drank more. Soon the conversation turned ugly. The question of the loyalty oath to the king piqued Collins’s inner-Fenian. He suddenly turned on Churchill in such a threatening manner that Churchill, years later, wrote that ‘He was in his most difficult mood, full of reproaches and defiances, and it was very easy for everyone to lose his temper.
‘You put a £5,000 bounty on my head,’ Collins bellowed at Churchill. Birkinhead was sure blows were about to be struck. But Churchill quietly took Collins by the hand and brought him to the other end of the room. There, on the wall, was a wanted poster from the Boer War for one Winston Spencer Churchill—for £25!
‘At least I put a good amount on your head!’ said Churchill.
Collins laughed and the tension was broken. From that day onward Churchill was part of the solution in Ireland, not the problem.”
Great men often cannot get along due to the very same things that made them great. But it worth remembering how adversaries like Collins and Churchill managed to work out a modus vivendi.
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/how-michael-collins-helped-save-winston-churchills-career
The fate of the Liberals underlines the old maxim of politics that it is never good to be betwixt and between.
He felt the same for Churchill until they met in person and Churchill broke the ice during a particularly tense moment.
They were both fighters with keen senses of humor, and I think that counted for a lot when it came to mutual respect.
I believe you are right. And Churchill being a hardliner who came around to give the Irish three-quarters of a loaf and kept his part of the bargain–that had to matter, too.
Among the last words of Collins before his ambush death were: Tell Winston we couldn’t have done this without him.
Lloyd George was no friend of Poland after the Polish nation re-established itself at the end of WWI.
One of the many things that angered Germany after WWI, other than the demands for reparations from France and being forced to accept blame, was giving up her colonies – and land the Prussians took in the partition of Poland in the 18th century. the loss of Gdansk and Wielkopolska was a bitter pill to swallow – having to give up what they perceived as German land to a bunch of people the Germans had little use for. Lloyd George really didn’t want to annoy the Germans that much…..but annoyed thy were and the rest is history.