d. The
world is indeed bad, as you say, and you are right to deplore it. But
don't you think you may have formed to yourself an exaggerated idea of
God?" An analogous reflection would not be out of place when passing
judgment on the Conference which implicitly arrogated to itself some of
the highest attributes of the Deity, and thus heightened the contrast
between promise and achievement. Certainly people expected much more
from it than it could possibly give. But it was the delegates themselves
who had aroused these expectations announcing the coming of a new epoch
at their fiat. The peoples were publicly told by Mr. Lloyd George and
several of his colleagues that the war of 1914-18 would be the last. His
"Never again" became a winged phrase, and the more buoyant optimists
expected to see over the palace of arbitration which was to be
substituted for the battlefield, the inspiring inscription: "A la
derniere des guerres, l'humanite reconnaissante."[46] Mr. Wilson's vast
project was still more attractive.

Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British
parliamentarian to need to be characterized. The splendid services he
rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved
occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten. Typifying not only the
aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to
distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the
courage to change them in a twinkling. He stirred the soul of the nation
in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.
During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for
the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been
one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.
But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter
of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation
which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater
chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world. His
antecedents were all against him. His lack of general equipment was
prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications. One need not
pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a
word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no
organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees
adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support,