ars. If Northcliffe attempts any action of the
kind indicated he will find that he has gone out for a walk with a
tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith to deal with now. If
Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in
Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war,
Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought.
Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when
Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the
publication of the _Daily Mail_ and the _Times_, wrecking a million
pounds' worth of private property at least, and ruining Northcliffe on
the way, will be twenty minutes' cheery work for Lloyd George in his
present mood, if he thinks the interests of Britain demand it.

It will be found from now until the treaty of peace is signed that
Lloyd George will be the personal director of democratic Britain, as
grim an autocrat as was Oliver Cromwell, and when the plenipotentiaries
meet around a table to settle terms there will be among them the
blue-eyed Welshman, pleasant of manners and with iron will, putting in
some commas and taking out the clauses he doesn't like.

XIII

THE FUTURE OF LLOYD GEORGE

When this war is concluded there must be a new era for the world.
Already there are signs of its approach. Generations hence there may
again be awful conflicts between nations, spasms of hell in which the
blood and anguish of millions will pay their tribute to the beast in
man, but it will not be in our time, and in the interval, the beginning
of which must be upon us very quickly, a new order of things will arise
among the civilized people of the globe. Stricken humanity will insist
on happier prospects for its children and its children's children. In
the formulation of that new order of things I can see Lloyd George as
one of the main instruments.

In the first place, Britain will be a revivified country after the war,
chastened in some ways, teeming with new thoughts, pulsing with a new
virility for at least a generation. Class prejudice will be lessened,
perhaps in some directions will be completely wiped out. There will
probably be a centralized effort after the trials which all the people
have suffered together to reconstruct the social fabric so that all the
people of the country, with the exception of those who are lazy or
criminal, shall have the means by which they may be able to secure a
dece