gle glass of burgundy at dinner for the obvious reason that
he enjoys it, and not because it might stimulate his activities. He has
given up the use of tobacco. Bolingbroke as a master of manoeuvres would
have had a poor chance against him. For Bolingbroke lost his nerve in
the final disaster, whereas the Prime Minister could always be trusted
to have all his wits and courage about him. Mr. Lloyd George is regarded
as a man riding the storm of politics with nerves to drive him on. No
view could be more untrue. In the very worst days of the war in 1916 he
could be discovered at the War Office taking his ten minutes' nap with
his feet up on a chair and discarded newspapers lying like the debris of
a battle-field about him. It would be charitable to suppose that he had
fallen asleep before he had read his newspapers! He even takes his golf
in very moderate doses. We are often told that he needs a prolonged
holiday, but somewhere in his youth he finds inexhaustible reserves of
power which he conserves into his middle age. In this way he has found
the secret of his temporary Empire. It is for this reason that the man
in command is never too busy to see a caller who has the urgency of
vital business at his back.

The Ex-Leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Bonar Law, however much he
may differ from the Premier in many aspects of his temperament, also
finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and caution. As a
player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in enthusiasm for tennis
what he lacks in skill. His habits are almost ascetic in their rigour.
He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be
wasted on him. A single course of the plainest food suffices his
appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with a long meal.
His pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems to draw him with a
magic attraction. As it was, his physical resources stood perhaps the
greatest strain that has been imposed on any public man in our time.
From the moment when he joined the first Coalition Government in 1915 to
the day when he laid down office in 1921 he was beset by cares and
immersed in labours which would have overwhelmed almost any other man.
Neither this nor succeeding Coalition Governments were popular with a
great section of his Conservative followers, and to the task of taking
decisions on the war was added the constant and irritating necessity of
keeping his own supporters in line with th