he violent mind of Sir Edward Carson. Even the gentle
John Morley was troubled by his hot insistences. "I had better go," he
said to Mr. Lloyd George; "I am getting old: I have nothing now for you
but criticism." To which the other replied, "Lord Morley, I would sooner
have your criticism than the praise of any man living"--a perfectly
sincere remark, sincere, I mean, with the emotionalism of the moment.
His schemes were disordered and crude; nevertheless the spirit that
informed them was like a new birth in the politics of the whole world. A
friend of mine told me that he had seen pictures of Mr. Lloyd George on
the walls of peasants' houses in the remotest villages of Russia.

But those days have departed and taken with them the fire of Mr. Lloyd
George's passion. The laboured peroration about the hills of his
ancestors, repeated to the point of the ridiculous, is all now left of
that fervid period. He has ceased to be a prophet. Surrounded by
second-rate people, and choosing for his intimate friends mainly the new
rich, and now thoroughly liking the game of politics for its amusing
adventure, he has retained little of his original genius except its
quickness.

His intuitions are amazing. He astonished great soldiers in the war by
his premonstrations. Lord Milner, a cool critic, would sit by the sofa
of the dying Dr. Jameson telling how Mr. Lloyd George was right again
and again when all the soldiers were wrong. Lord Rhondda, who disliked
him greatly and rather despised him, told me how often Mr. Lloyd George
put heart into a Cabinet that was really trembling on the edge of
despair. It seems true that he never once doubted ultimate victory,
and, what is much more remarkable, never once failed to read the
German's mind.

I think that the doom that has fallen upon him comes in some measure
from the amusement he takes in his mental quickness, and the reliance he
is sometimes apt to place upon it. A quick mind may easily be a
disorderly mind. Moreover quickness is not one of the great qualities.
It is indeed seldom a partner with virtue. Morality appears on the whole
to get along better without it. According to Landor, it is the talent
most open to suspicion:

Quickness is among the least of the mind's properties, and belongs
to her in almost her lowest state: nay, it doth not abandon her
when she is driven from her home, when she is wandering and insane.
The mad often retain it; the liar has it; t