ter called attention
to the budding great man. After persistent efforts to rouse his
interest, the tourist, much nettled, said tartly:

"Suppose it is. He's not God Almighty."

"Ah," replied the porter, "remember he's young yet."

When Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Asquith no
one was surprised. It is typical of the man that he should have leaped
from the lowest to the highest place but one in the Cabinet.

As Chancellor he had at last the opportunity to fulfill his democratic
destiny. Whatever Lloyd George may be, one thing is certain: he is
essentially a man of the masses. With his famous People's Budget he
legislated sympathy into the law. It meant the whole kindling social
programme of Old Age pensions, Health and Unemployment insurance,
increased income tax and an enlarged death duty. As most people know, it
put much of the burden of English taxation on the pocketbooks of the
people who could best afford to pay. The Duke-baiting began.

Just as he had fought for a Free Wales so did he now struggle for a Free
Land. All his amazing picturesqueness of expression came into play. He
contended that Monopoly had made land so valuable in Britain that it
almost sold by the grain, like radium. In commenting on the heavy taxes
levied by the land autocrats upon commercial enterprise in London he
made his famous phrase:

"This is not business. It is blackmail!"

To democracy the Budget meant economic emancipation: the banishment of
hunger from the hearth: the solace of an old age free from want. It made
Lloyd George "The Little Brother of the Poor." To the Aristocracy it was
the gauge of battle for the bitterest class war ever waged in England:
violation of ancient privilege.

The fight for this programme made Lloyd George the best known and most
detested man in England. To hate him was one of the accomplishments of
titled folk to whom his very name was a hissing and a by-word. Massed
behind him were the common people whose champion he was: arrayed against
him were the powers of wealth and rank.

In this campaign Lloyd George used the three great weapons that he has
always brought to bear. First and foremost was the force of his
personality, for he swept England with a tidal wave of impassioned
eloquence. Second, he unloosed as never before the reservoirs of ink,
for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his
message. He even printed his creed in Gaelic, Welsh and Erse. Thi