Lloyd George Quotes

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!" Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am not going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!" A colored yeti in a clip-on uniform swooped. "Wassa bovver?" "This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," said the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window." I couldn't believe I was hearing this.

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.

Lucidity of speech is unquestionably one of the surest tests of mental precision...In my experience a confused talker is never a clear thinker.

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.

The only competition for the Welsh vote, after the decline of the Liberal Party led by the Welsh Prime Minister of Britain, David Lloyd George, was the Communist Party.

Yes, but bad language is bound to make in addition bad government, whereas good language is not bound to make bad government. That again is clear Confucius: if the orders aren’t clear they can’t be carried out. Lloyd George’s laws were such a mess, the lawyers never knew what they meant. And Talleyrand proclaimed that they changed the meaning of words between one conference and another. The means of communication breaks down, and that of course is what we are suffering now. We are enduring the drive to work on the subconscious without appealing to the reason. They repeat a trade name with the music a few times, and then repeat the music without it so that the music will give you the name. I think of the assault. We suffer from the use of language to conceal thought and to withhold all vital and direct answers. There is the definite use of propaganda, forensic language, merely to conceal and mislead.

David Lloyd George had been to Germany, and been so dazzled by the Führer that he compared him to George Washington. Hitler was a ‘born leader’, declared the befuddled former British Prime Minister. He wished that Britain had ‘a man of his supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today’. This from the hero of the First World War! The man who had led Britain to victory over the Kaiser!

It turned out to be fortunate that Churchill did not meet Hitler, as the encounter proved an embarrassment to several of those Britons, such as Lloyd George, the Duke of Windsor and Churchill’s cousin Lord Londonderry, who did.

(jak to chmurně zhodnotil britský premiér Lloyd George) „množství malých států, mnohdy složených z lidí, kteří si nikdy předtím neustavili stabilní vládu, avšak bez výjimky zahrnujících velké množství Němců, kteří se halasně domáhají znovusjednocení s rodnou zemí“.

people who were polite to his mistress. Lloyd George spoke to the group. “That German ship delivered the guns to Mexico after all. It simply went to another port and quietly unloaded. So nineteen American troops died for nothing. It’s a terrible humiliation for Woodrow Wilson.

Churchill did not of course mention Lloyd George’s visit to Hitler or, even more disreputably, his opposition to Britain fighting on in 1940. Two days later, he decided to have lunch in bed, but poured vinegar into his glass and whisky on to his sardines. ‘I must be going dotty,’ he said, as Sawyers dealt with

It was stupid, but people needed someone to hate, and the newspapers were always ready to supply that need. Maud knew the proprietor of the Mail, Lord Northcliffe. Like all great press men, he really believed the drivel he published. His talent was to express his readers’ most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper. She also knew that Lloyd George had recently snubbed Northcliffe personally. The self-important press lord had proposed himself as a member of the British delegation at the upcoming peace conference, and had been offended when the Prime Minister turned him down. Maud was worried. In politics, despicable people sometimes had to be pandered to, but Lloyd George seemed to have forgotten that. She wondered anxiously how much effect the Mail’s malevolent propaganda would have on the election. A few days later she found out. She went to an election meeting in a municipal hall in the East End of

There is no greater mistake than to try to leap an abyss in two jumps.

A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two dreadnoughts, and Dukes are just as great a terror, and they last longer.

Nothing in all history,” William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot box.”92 Grant termed it “the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.”93 George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that “its ratification was due, probably, to his advice . . . Had he advised its rejection, or had he been indifferent to its fate, the amendment would have failed.

The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a republic than as a monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a Council of Regency.

For fifteen years they exerted pressure, at first without violence, marching with banners, invading meetings, getting arrested, putting on hunger strikes, marching on Parliament..In 1912 more violent tactics were adopted: they burned houses, slashed pictures, trampled flowerbeds, threw stones at police, overwhelmed Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey with repeated delegations, interrupted public speeches.

I carry all before me. In those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George—what are they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But the world—who cares about the world?

More important than British motivations for issuing the Balfour Declaration is what this undertaking meant in practice for the crystal-clear aims of the Zionist movement—sovereignty and complete control of Palestine. With Britain’s unstinting support, these aims suddenly became plausible. Some leading British politicians extended backing to Zionism that went well beyond the carefully phrased text of the declaration. At a dinner at Balfour’s home in 1922, three of the most prominent British statesmen of the era—Lloyd George, Balfour, and Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill—assured Weizmann that by the term “Jewish national home” they “always meant an eventual Jewish state.” Lloyd George convinced the Zionist leader that for this reason Britain would never allow representative government in Palestine. Nor did it.25

Before securing British backing, the Zionist movement had been a colonizing project in search of a great-power patron. Having failed to find a sponsor in the Ottoman Empire, in Wilhelmine Germany, and elsewhere, Theodor Herzl’s successor Chaim Weizmann and his colleagues finally met with success in their approach to the wartime British cabinet led by David Lloyd George, acquiring the support of the greatest power of the age.

All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief  (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigour in both leaders of the British Coalition Government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems in Mr. Baldwin, the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality, the failure and worse than failure of Mr. Lloyd George, the erstwhile great war-time leader, to address himself to the continuity of his work, the whole supported by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Parliament: all these constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which, even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience.

In September 1936, Britain's former prime minister, David Lloyd George, spent two weeks in Germany as his guest. He admiringly wrote in the Daily Express how Hitler had united Catholic and Protestant, employer and artisan, rich and poor into one people – Ein Volk, in fact. (The British press magnate Cecil King wrote in his diary four years later, ‘Lloyd George mentioned meeting Hitler and spoke of him as the greatest figure in Europe since Napoleon and possibly greater than him. He said we had not had to deal with an austere ascetic like Hitler since the days of Attila and his Huns.’)

We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history the conduct not only of the British National and mainly Conservative Government, but of the Labour-Socialist and Liberal Parties, both in and out of office, during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigour in both leaders of the British Coalition Government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems in Mr. Baldwin, the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality, the failure and worse than failure of Mr. Lloyd George,

But now, at just after four o’clock, it was his turn to speak. He exuded energy and confidence, as well as pugnacious good cheer. He held the House “from the very first moment,” wrote Harold Nicolson in his diary: “very amusing…very frank.” He was also merciless. He directed his opening salvo at Lloyd George. “If there were any speech which I felt was not particularly exhilarating,” he said, “it was the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs.” Churchill condemned it as being unhelpful during a time that Lloyd George himself had described as discouraging and disheartening. “It was not the sort of speech which one would have expected from the great war leader of former days, who was accustomed to brush aside despondency and alarm, and push on irresistibly towards the final goal,” Churchill said. “It was the sort of speech with which, I imagine, the illustrious and venerable Marshal Pétain might well have enlivened the closing days of M. Reynaud’s Cabinet.

CAST OF THE FIRST PRODUCTION AT THE DUKE OF YORK’S THEATRE, FEBRUARY 21, 1910 James How MR. SYDNEY VALENTINE Walter How MR. CHARLES MAUDE Cokeson MR. EDMUND GWENN Falder MR. DENNIS EADIE The Office-boy MR. GEORGE HERSEE The Detective MR. LESLIE CARTER The Cashier MR. C. E. VERNON The Judge MR. DION BOUCICAULT The Old Advocate MR. OSCAR ADYE The Young Advocate MR. CHARLES BRYANT The Prison Governor MR. GRENDON BENTLEY The Prison Chaplain MR. HUBERT HARBEN The Prison Doctor MR. LEWIS CASSON Wooder MR. FREDERICK LLOYD Moaney MR. ROBERT PATEMAN Clipton MR. O. P. HEGGIE O’Cleary MR. WHITFORD KANE Ruth Honeywill Miss EDYTH OLIVE

Philip Conwell-Evans, who three years earlier had witnessed the book burning at Königsberg University with such equanimity. Choosing to operate discretely behind the scenes, Conwell-Evans had been instrumental in bringing together a number of influential British figures with leading Nazis. It was he, for instance who in December 1934, had been the driving force behind the first major dinner party Hitler ever hosted for foreigners and at which Lord Rothermere had been guest of honour. And it was now Conwell-Evans, in harness with his close friend Ribbentrop, who was masterminding the Lloyd-George expedition. 'He is so blind to the blemishes of the Germans,' Dr Jones wrote of his fellow Welshman in his diary,' as to make one see the virtues of the French.

These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

Thirty-five years later Stanley Baldwin was to attack some left-wing members of the Tory Party, such as Harold Macmillan and Robert Boothby, when they were associating rather closely with Lloyd George, for ‘hunting with packs other than their own’. The Hooligans could have been attacked on similar grounds. Such records as survive seem to suggest that they spent far more of their time with the right wing of the Liberal Party than they did with their Tory colleagues.

A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.” —David Lloyd George

The Treaty of Guarantee was signed accordingly by Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peace-making, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution.

David Lloyd, the Welsh leader of the anti-proprietary party, and Joseph Wilcox, another leader, became very skillful in drafting these profoundly respectful but deeply cutting replies.

This man is dangerous,’ said Lloyd George. ‘He doesn’t want anything.

the radical right sought victory without compromise; ironically, their bête noire, the left-wing Lloyd George, seemed the only man likely to achieve this. The Unionists backed Lloyd George’s coalition government, but in the continuing stalemate of 1917-18, the right became restless, and campaigned for Lloyd George’s removal.

Beamish had seen the government as dominated by Jews, with Rufus Isaacs, Sir Alfred Mond and Edwin Montagu as Lloyd George’s advisors; Britain was now ruled by a ‘Jewalition’ and Jews were responsible for a quarter of the war’s casualties.

21 Temmuz 1920'de, Lloyd George Avam Kamarası'nda yaptığı konuşmada, "Türkiye tamamıyla parçalanmalıdır. Bundan üzüntü duymak için hiçbir sebep yoktur. İngiltere Hükümeti en uygun hareket olarak Yunan birliklerinin istihdamını görüyor. Bu birlikler büyük şevk ile dövüştü. Görevi on günde tamamladı. Fransızların da yardımlarını elde ettik. Sayfa :349

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charles Darwin.

it was largely by military means that Lloyd George sought to proceed: nasty means at that. The British too had their ‘squads’. Each side used the other’s terminology: ‘murder gangs’.

We return a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England; Lord French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Ian MacPherson, late Chief Secretary of Ireland; Acting Inspector General Smith of the RIC, Divisional Inspector Clayton of the RIC; DI Swanzy and some unknown members of the RIC.8

Lloyd George never felt secure enough to adopt such a policy and place the various forces in Ireland under a unified command as both the generals and the revamped Irish Executive demanded.

We have clearly demonstrated our willingness to have peace on honourable terms. Lloyd George insists on capitulation. Between these two there is no mean; and it is only a waste of time continuing.30

Lloyd George’s main interest seemed to lie in meeting the amazing escapologist ‘Mick’ as he always referred to him. He took a mischievous delight in the rage of ‘the Castle contingent’ at their inability to lay hands on Collins when the Archbishop could apparently see him at will.

Many historians still cite Lloyd George's previously quoted comment that the European nations 'stumbled into war' as evidence that no nation was entirely free of guilt for the conflict, but a careful analysis of German plans and ambitions in the pre-war years by the German historian Fritz Fischer confirms the popular opinion that the root causes of the Great War were German militarism and political ambition - and that these roots had been established for some time.

Lloyd George’s Budget of 1909 was the fuse, deliberately lit, of one of the great quarrels which made the Liberal era, in the words of a participant, “so unprecedentedly cantankerous and uncomfortable.” With Liberal prestige sinking, party leaders were aware that without a popular issue they might not win the next election. People were already beginning to calculate, Gardiner wrote, “when the election would come and by how much the Liberals would lose.” As Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George had to provide £16,000,000 of additional revenue for 1909, one-third toward the eight Dreadnoughts to which the Government had agreed, and two-thirds for implementing the Old Age Pensions Act.

Christian abolitionists “declared slavery a sin against God and man that demanded immediate action.”17 To Garrison abolition was a matter of faith in which compromise of any kind, including gradual abolition, was unacceptable. In the words of George Rable, “William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow abolitionists believed the nation faced a clear choice between damnation and salvation.”18 Garrison wrote, “Our program of immediate emancipation and assimilation, I maintained, was the only panacea, the only Christian solution, to an unbearable program.”19 Abolitionists like Garrison identified “their cause with the cause of freedom, and with the interests of large and relatively unorganized special groups such as laborers and immigrants, the abolitionists considered themselves to be, and convinced many others that they were, the sole remaining protectors of civil rights.

Churchill. His epic career intersected with the Middle East at several key points (and remember that he is credited with pioneering the very term Middle East); but the most important was his role as Colonial Secretary. He was a little surprised to be offered the post, at the end of 1920; but it is easy to see why Lloyd George thought he was the right man for the job. He had shown immense energy and dynamism as Minister for Munitions—equipping Britain with the tanks, planes and other technology that helped win the war. As Secretary of State for War he had been masterly in his demobilisation strategy: quelling mutinies by ensuring that those who had served the longest were the first to be reunited with their families. He had shown his gifts of charm and persuasion in the pre-war Ulster talks—and those gifts would be needed in spades. The First World War had left some snortingly difficult problems, and especially in the Middle East. — THE POST OF Colonial Secretary might sound less grand than that of Foreign Secretary—a role still occupied by that most superior person, George Nathaniel Curzon. But that is to forget the scale of the British Empire in 1921. The First World War was not meant to be an acquisitive conflict;

The root of evil is that the Paris writ does not run- Lloyd George

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry Nik Smotrov, Natalya’s husband Yevgeny Filipov, aide to Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky Vera Pletner, Dimka’s secretary Valentin, Dimka’s friend Marshal Mikhail Pushnoy REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister under Khrushchev Rodion Malinovsky, defense minister under Khrushchev Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers Leonid Brezhnev, Khrushchev’s successor Yuri Andropov, successor to Brezhnev Konstantin Chernenko, successor to Andropov Mikhail Gorbachev, successor to Chernenko Other Nations Paz Oliva, Cuban general Frederik Bíró, Hungarian politician Enok Andersen, Danish accountant

Unhorsing capitalism was never the New Deal’s intent anyway. Especially since the outset of the war, the regime had largely come to agreeable terms with big business interests. It shed most programmatic overtures to universalize the welfare state and extend it into areas like health and housing. Structural reconfigurations of power relations in the economy, long-term economic planning, and state ownership or management of capital investments (commonplace during the war) were all offensive to the new centers of the postwar policy making, what soon enough would be widely referred to as the Establishment. Moreover, the “welfare state,” for all the tears now shed over its near death, was in its origins in late-nineteenth-century Europe a creature of conservative elitists like Bismarck or David Lloyd George, and had been opposed by the left as a means of defusing working-class power and independence, a program installed without altering the basic configurations of wealth and political control. As the center of gravity shifted away from the Keynesian commonwealth toward what one historian has called “commercial Keynesianism” and another “the corporate commonwealth,” labor and its many allies among middle-class progressives and minorities found themselves fighting on less friendly terrain. If they could no longer hope to win in the political arena measures that would benefit all working people—like universal health insurance, for example—trade unions could pursue those objectives for their own members where they were most muscular, especially in core American industries like auto and steel. So the labor movement increasingly chose to create mini private welfare states.

The Treaty is already vindicating itself. The English Die-hards said to Mr. Lloyd George and his Cabinet: ‘You have surrendered’. Our own Die-hards said to us: ‘You have surrendered’. There is a simple test. Those who are left in possession of the battlefield have won.

Atatürk'ün en büyük endişesi dışa bağımlı olmak; fakat yüzde yüz nispette de dışa bağımlı olmaktan kurtulmanın mümkün olamayacağını da biliyor. Yani Amerika'nın, İngiltere'nin dahi bağımsız olmadığını biliyor. Mesela pratikte İngiltere dahi dışa bağımlı durumdadır. Kurtuluş Savaşı devam ederken Lloyd George kolonilerinden asker göndermelerini istiyor, ama çağrısına karşılık bulamıyor. Kimse asker göndermiyor. Bunun için de Anadolu'ya asker sevk edemiyorlar. Atatürk bunu biliyor ama "tam bağımsız olalım" demek mühim. Dolayısıyla Atatürk'ün sanayi hamlesi oldukça mühimdir. Türkiye, Avrupa ülkelerinin on sekizinci yüzyıl sonunda, on dokuzuncu yüzyılın başında yaptığını 1930'larda yapabilmiştir. Ama yapmıştır.

Biraz da İstanbul havasına dönelim: Beyoğlu’nda İngiliz karargâhına uğrıyalım, Yüzbaşı Armstrong’la bir defa daha görüşelim. Armstrong der ki: “Londra’da iken Türkiye’deki yanılmalarımızın sebebini anlamak istedim. Fakat boşuna uğraştım. Londra’da sanılıyordu ki Türkiye’ye ait kararlar İstanbul’da verilmektedir, İstanbul’da ise bunun aksi sanılmakta idi. Asıl mesele harp ruhunun sönmüş olmasında idi. Hiçbir sınıfta kuvvet kullanmak hevesi yoktu. ‘Kızıl bayrak’ tahrikleriyle çalkalanan İngiliz adalarının yanı başında İrlanda ateş içinde idi. Hükûmet dış politika ile uğraşmaya vakit bulamıyordu. Yakınşark’a önem verilmiyordu. Yeni bir Türkiye’nin doğduğu, müttefikler karşısında dayanabilecek bir kuvvet meydana geldiği anlaşılmıyordu. Şark işlerini bilmeyen Lloyd George’u güden duygu ve düşünce, Gladston’kârî Türk düşmanlığı idi. Yunanistan büyümeli ve İngiltere ile yeni büyük Yunanistan’ın menfaatleri birleştirilmeliydi. Lloyd George’un bilgisi, eski Yunanistan’ın şairleri ve filozofları olmuş olmasından ibaretti. Bir defa Clemenceau demişti ki: ‘Lloyd George’un okumak bildiğini biliyorum, fakat okuduğundan şüphe ediyorum.’ Venizelos’un sihrine kapılan Lloyd George’a göre Yunanistan, Avrupa ve Anadolu’da eski şan ve şerefine kavuşacak, Boğazlar’ı Avrupa’ya açık tutacak, Akdeniz’de İngiltere ile beraber yürüyecekti. Yunanistan oyun bozanlığa kalkarsa, İngiltere donanması onu uslandırmaya yeterdi. Lloyd George’un aldandığı nokta, Yunanlıların kendilerine verilen görevi başarabilecek güçte olmadığı idi.

On 2 November 1917, five weeks before Allenby walked through the Jaffa Gate, the government in London had issued a document that was to have a fateful and lasting impact on the Holy Land, the Middle East and the world. The foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, wrote to Lord Rothschild, representing the World Zionist Organization, to inform him that: His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The sixty-seven typewritten words of the Balfour Declaration combined considerations of imperial planning, wartime propaganda, biblical resonances and a colonial mindset, as well as evident sympathy for the Zionist idea. With them, as the writer Arthur Koestler was to quip memorably – neatly encapsulating the attendant and continuing controversy – ‘one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third’.8 Lloyd George highlighted sympathy for the Jews as his principal motivation. But the decisive calculations were political, primarily the wish to outsmart the French in post-war arrangements in the Levant9 and the impulse to use Palestine’s strategic location – its ‘fatal geography’ – to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India.10 Other judgements have placed greater emphasis on the need to mobilize Jewish public opinion behind the then flagging Allied war effort. As Balfour told the war cabinet at its final discussion of the issue on 31 October: ‘If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal [Zionism], we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and in America.’11 Historians have spent decades debating the connections and contradictions between Balfour’s public pledge to the Zionists, the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement between Britain, France and Russia about post-war spheres of influence in the Middle East, and pledges about Arab independence made by the British in 1915 to encourage Sharif Hussein of Mecca to launch his ‘revolt in the desert’ against the Turks. The truth, buried in imprecise definitions, misunderstandings and duplicity, remains elusive.

The Irish, he told Lloyd George, were “like nothing so much as a lot of frightened children who dread being thrashed.

On eut le grand tort, par la suite, de considérer les revendications roumaines entièrement satisfaites et les traités de 1919 et de 1920 comme leur expression définitive. Leurs dispositions n'étaient en réalité que le résultat d'un compromis, entre des aspirations ethniques plus étendues et la pression des Grandes Puissances, qui en marchandèrent longuement la reconnaissance. Le véritable fondement de l'unité roumaine n'a été établi ni à Saint-Germain, ni à Trianon ; il est constitué par l'existence même du peuple roumain, énigme et miracle de l'histoire du Sud-Est de l'Europe, et par la mission qui lui est dévolue par sa situation géographique. À ce point de vue, les événements de 1919 comportent une conclusion qui n'est pas négligeable : s'il n'y avait pas eu alors, du Dniestr à la Theiss élément organisé et conscient de résistance et de réaction qu'était l'armée romaine, le spectre de l'armée rouge universelle sur les bords du Rhin, qui hantait comme un cauchemar les nuits de Lloyd George, serait devenu facilement une terrible réalité. Entre la Russie bolcheviste et l'Allemagne spartakiste, la constitution d'une Pologne indépendante eût été impossible, et le général Weygand aurait tenté en vain de s'opposer, sous les murs de Varsovie, à l'offensive de Tukatchevsky. Combien le cours des événements en Europe Centrale eût été différent ! (p. 324-325)

But the new century brought a ‘New Liberalism’, which saw social improvement as something which the state should deliberately direct. The President of the Board of Trade took this up with the zeal of a convert, proposing a minimum wage, creating labour exchanges to find work for the unemployed, suppressing ‘sweat shops’ – small garment factories where men, and often women, many of them immigrants, worked very long hours for very low wages – and then helping Lloyd George, who had been promoted as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to introduce National Insurance and an old age pension.

I remember that we had a discussion in the war about unity of command, and that Mr. Lloyd George said, "It is not a question of one general being better than another, but of one general being better than two.

Lloyd George’s advice to his Governor of Jerusalem, Storrs, who was being savagely criticized by both Jews and Arabs: ‘Well, if either one side stops complaining, you’ll be dismissed.

In both World Wars Britain had powerful and self-willed Prime Ministers in Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill. It is to their credit that they selected equally powerful and capable Army Chiefs in Generals Robertson and Lord Alanbrooke. Alanbrooke is the beau-ideal of a great Chief of Staff and is the type of man and officer required to shield the Army from any misuse of the temporary power bestowed on the political head, or to resist the imposition of impossible military tasks. Churchill and Alanbrooke worked that most misused term Civil Supremacy in the correct and healthy way, although their personal relations were not always cordial. They led Britain from the despondency of Dunkirk in 1940 to the final Allied victories in 1945.

having been prime minister before the war and foreign secretary under Lloyd George.

Lloyd George will have to sit by the French military leader on one side and the President of the United States on the other, and he said it was like sitting between Napoleon on one side, and that was the french leader and Jesus on the other. That was Woodrow Wilson. ― Dan Carlin, Blueprint for Armageddon

Hasta mediados de 1915, las animosas multitudes de voluntarios habían excedido en mucho a nuestra capacidad para equiparlos y organizarlos. Habían acudido ya libremente más de tres millones de hombres que representaban lo que había de mejor y más fuerte en el patriotismo de la nación británica. Pero, hacia el verano de 1915, las salidas fueron ya superiores a las entradas y resultó evidente que no podría mantenerse en campaña en 1916 un ejército de 70 divisiones y menos aún de 100, sin adoptar medidas completamente nuevas. La escuela liberal pura, capitaneada por el primer ministro, era partidaria de hacer nuevos esfuerzos con la reclutación voluntaria, pero la mayor parte de los ministros conservadores, apoyados por mister Lloyd George, y también por mí hasta mi salida del Gobierno, estaban convencidos de que era inevitable el servicio obligatorio inmediato. Por entonces, lord Kitchener, orgulloso con razón de la admirable respuesta que habían encontrado sus sucesivos llamamientos de voluntarios, se inclinaba en aquella época del lado de mister Asquith y hacía pesar la balanza contra la adopción del servido militar obligatorio. Pero la guerra seguía su curso sin compasión y, ya en enero de 1916, bajo la fuerza imperiosa de las circunstancias, la crisis del Gabinete sobre el asunto del reclutamiento se renovó violentamente, siendo entonces reforzada la cruel necesidad de los hechos por un movimiento de opinión de carácter moral que excitó el apasionamiento de grandes masas de la población. Habían partido voluntariamente tres millones y medio, pero no eran bastantes. ¿Habían de volver al frente en virtud de su compromiso voluntario, cualquiera que fuese el número de veces que resultaran heridos? ¿Habían de empujarse a la lucha voluntarios maduros, debilitados y quebrantados, mientras cientos de miles de jóvenes robustos vivían en lo posible su vida ordinaria? ¿Había de obligarse a continuar a los ciudadanos del ejército territorial y a los soldados del ejército regular, cuyos compromisos habían expirado, mientras otros que no habían hecho ningún sacrificio no eran obligados siquiera a iniciarlos? De tres millones y medio de familias cuyo amado sostén, cuyo héroe, lo estaba sacrificando todo libremente para la causa de su país, familias que representaban los elementos más sanos sobre los que descansaba la vida entera de la nación, surgió la petición de que no se dilatara la victoria ni se prolongara la matanza porque otros rehusaran cumplir con su deber. Al fin, a fines de enero, lord Kitchener cambió de bando y mister Asquith tuvo que ceder. Solo un ministro, sir John Simon, dimitió de su cargo, y la ley de reclutamiento fue presentada al Parlamento y aprobada rápidamente por una mayoría aplastante.

Esta facultad de vivir en el presente y de empezar de nuevo cada mañana como el primer día, producía una segunda y valiosa aptitud: mister Lloyd George parecía tener en esta época un poder especial de extraer de la desgracia misma los medios de su éxito futuro. De las devastaciones de la guerra submarina sacó el sistema de los convoyes; del desastre de Caporetto sacó el Consejo Supremo de la Guerra, y de la catástrofe del 21 de marzo sacó el mando único y el inmenso refuerzo americano.

En el año 1895 tuve el privilegio, como joven oficial, de ser invitado a un lunch con sir William Harcourt. En el curso de una conversación en la que tomé parte, pregunté, temo que no con mucha modestia: «¿Qué sucederá?». El viejo estadista victoriano replicó: «Mi querido Winston, las experiencias de mi larga vida me han convencido de que nunca sucede nada». Desde aquel momento, tal como me parece a mí, nada ha dejado de ocurrir. El aumento por doquier de grandes antagonismos vino acompañado por la agravación progresiva de la contienda política del país. La magnitud que han adquirido por sí mismos los acontecimientos ha empequeñecido los episodios de la época victoriana: sus pequeñas guerras entre grandes naciones, sus disputas de buena fe sobre asuntos superficiales, el alto y agudo intelecto de sus personajes, los límites de acción sobrios, frugales y estrechos, todo esto pertenece a un período desaparecido. Los ríos suaves por los que navegábamos, con sus pequeños remolinos y ondas, parecen inconcebiblemente remotos de la catarata a que hemos sido arrastrados y de las corrientes en cuya turbulencia estamos ahora luchando. Yo cifro el comienzo de estos tiempos violentos en nuestro país desde la incursión de Jameson, en el año 1896. Este fue el heraldo, si no el progenitor, de la guerra sudafricana. De la guerra sudafricana nacieron la elección caqui, el movimiento proteccionista, la campaña sobre la mano de obra china y la consiguiente reacción liberal y su triunfo del 1906. A partir de aquí, se produjeron las violentas incursiones de la Cámara de los Lores sobre el Gobierno popular, que, hacia fines del 1908, había reducido la inmensa mayoría liberal a una virtual impotencia, de cuya condición fue rescatada por la Ley de Presupuestos de Lloyd George en 1909. A su vez, esta medida fue, por ambas partes, la causa de aun mayores provocaciones, y su rechazo por la Cámara de los Lores fue un ultraje constitucional y un desatino político sin parangón. Ello condujo directamente a las elecciones generales de 1910, a la ley o estatuto parlamentario y a la lucha de Irlanda, en la que nuestro país estuvo en el umbral de la guerra civil. De este modo se produjo una sucesión de acciones de partido que continuaron, sin interrupción, cerca de veinte años: cada injuria era devuelta con creces, cada oscilación era más violenta, cada peligro más grave, hasta parecer que tendría que suplicarse la intervención del sable para enfriar la sangre y calmar las pasiones exaltadas.

In fact, this was not a new lesson: by 1914, it was apparent to governments across Europe that the management of public opinion was an inescapable element of large-scale wars. On the Western Front, six correspondents had been ‘embedded’ within the British Army; they produced what some believe to be the worst reporting of any war, before or since, and all were knighted for their services.79 Their editors knew that these correspondents were concealing the horrors of trench warfare: the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, told C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: ‘If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship would not pass the truth.

election were held in the forthcoming three to four months, under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, ‘there would be a general boycott, at the point of a pistol, on the word of Michael Collins’. To which Lloyd George replied feelingly that if Michael Collins could stop three million people using their vote, it did not say much for the success of the policy they were pursuing.

I was pleased to keep Britain in Europe and to prevent the Conservative Party from splitting. To do so I took a lot of criticism that the old pro-European Harold Macmillan would have understood. Selwyn Lloyd, once Macmillan’s foreign secretary, recalled him saying on his sickbed in 1963 that ‘Balfour had been bitterly criticised for not having a view on Protection and Free Trade. Balfour had said the important thing was to preserve the unity of the Conservative Party. He had been abused for that. But who argues now about protection and free trade? When was the last time the conventional arguments were exchanged? 1923? Whereas the preservation of great national institutions had been the right policy. Lloyd George might have been clear-cut on policy, but he destroyed the Liberal Party.’ The day may come when a similar judgement is made on the single currency.

Mr. Lloyd-George said that he agreed with everything Mr. Churchill had said "both relevant and irrelevant." He made the amazing assertion that the Conciliation Committee that had drafted the bill was a "committee of women meeting outside the House." And that this committee said to the House of Commons not only that they must vote for a women's suffrage bill but "You must vote for the particular form upon which we agree, and we will not even allow you to deliberate upon any other form.

I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within. Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape— more than human but also less, they were quite aware, the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never. As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges Clemenceau Adolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not follow so straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian), and, burning under their masters, they proclaimed the world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives rise to the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today, little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands. The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies, and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost, remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning, is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical concepts as freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way— I believe I believe.

The journal openly ridiculed writers who failed to use "scientific" formats for their ideas when offering heretical points of view on mass communication issues. Two examples of this can be found in Avery Leiserson's scathing review of George Seldes' The People Don't Know and Lloyd Barenblatt's commentary on Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders. Both Seldes and Packard argued that the mass media in the United States presented a monolithic, ideologically charged version of "reality" that had succeeded in shaping popular consciousness to a much greater degree than was generally recognized; POQ presented both authors to its readers as irresponsible crackpots.

every shell fired at the Boers, Lloyd George thundered, carried away with it an old-age pension.

Many years afterward, Lloyd George described the Balfour Declaration as a prize awarded by a generous and benevolent ruler to his court Jew.

Lloyd George . . . does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it would be an outrage to let the Christian Holy Places – Bethlehem, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem &c – pass into the possession of “Agnostic Atheistic France”!’49 The morning after

The Economic Consequences of the Peace denounced the folly of the peacemakers in trying to extort from Germany an indemnity it could not possibly pay. He foresaw that attempts to make it pay would destroy the economic mechanisms on which the pre-war prosperity of Continental Europe had depended. He predicted a war of vengeance by Germany. There were memorable portraits of the leading peacemakers, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson, though he left out the sketch of Lloyd George on Asquith’s advice.

Mister Lloyd George, el poderoso político cuya influencia había obligado a formar la coalición, se encontraba al día siguiente de su triunfo en una situación singularmente débil: había cedido el Tesoro a mister McKenna y encontraba en el nuevo ministerio, que tanto había contribuido a crear, una serie de jefes conservadores que consideraban su pasado político con la mayor aversión. Mister Bonar Law, el jefe del Partido Conservador en la Cámara de los Comunes, podía muy bien haber aspirado a este cargo y, aunque él personalmente no tenía intereses especiales, sus amigos políticos habían quedado descontentos. En tanto que todos los asuntos importantes referentes a la guerra habían sido en el Gobierno anterior tratados entre solo cuatro o cinco ministros, a partir de este momento tenían que ser consultadas al menos una docena de personalidades poderosas, capaces y distinguidas. Por esta razón, la resolución de los asuntos se hizo larga y penosa en grado extremo, y aunque todos estos males se paliaban por un patriotismo y lealtad evidentes, el resultado general era forzosamente lamentable: los que conocían los asuntos tenían un pasado que defender, y los que estaban libres de compromisos carecían de la experiencia de la guerra. En cada cuestión importante no prevalecían menos de cinco o seis opiniones diferentes, y toda resolución a adoptar se lograba solo a fuerza de discusiones prolongadas y fatigosas. Las más de las veces se llegaba, después de largas dilaciones, solo a soluciones eclécticas y defectuosas. Y, entretanto, la guerra continuaba impertérrita su trabajo de destrucción.

The first thing that impressed itself on me as I gave him the once-over was his air of respectability. I had always supposed that poachers were tough-looking eggs who wore whatever they could borrow from the nearest scarecrow and shaved only once a week. He, to the contrary, was neatly clad in formfitting tweeds and was shaven to the bone. His eyes were frank and blue, his hair a becoming grey. I have seen more raffish Cabinet ministers. He looked like someone who might have sung in the sainted Briscoe's church choir, as I was informed later he did, being the possessor of a musical tenor voice which came in handy for the anthem and when they were doing those 'miserable sinner' bits in the Litany. He was about the height and tonnage of Fred Astaire, and he had the lissomness which is such an asset in his chosen profession. One could readily imagine him flitting silently through the undergrowth with a couple of rabbits in his grasp, always two jumps ahead of the gamekeepers who were trying to locate him. The old ancestor had compared him to the Scarlet Pimpernel, and a glance was enough to tell me that the tribute was well deserved. I thought how wise Jeeves had been in suggesting that I entrust to him the delicate mission which I had in mind. When it comes to returning cats that have been snitched from their lawful homes, you need a specialist. Where Lloyd George or Winston Churchill would have failed, this Graham, I knew would succeed.

Contemplating provisions that Balfour, the leader of the Opposition, deplored as ‘vindictive, inequitable [and] based on no principle’26, the Lords embarked upon a counter-offensive. First into the fray were the dukes, the most senior-ranking peers, whose prestige was inextricably bound up with their great estates. To the Duke of Rutland, the Liberals were nothing but ‘a crew of piratical tatterdemalions’. The Duke of Beaufort expressed his desire to see Lloyd George set upon by ‘twenty couple of dog-hounds’. In anticipation of the state of poverty into which the Budget would throw him, the Duke of Buccleuch stopped his guinea subscription to the Dumfriesshire Football Club. The Duke of Somerset withdrew all his charitable subscriptions and sacked a number of his workers. Really, remarked an incredulous Margot Asquith, ‘the speeches of our Dukes have given us a very unfair advantage’.

The mind of a dying man is either an open book or a fluttering of pages turned so fast that the words cannot be read.