eorge asked me showed what was going
on in his mind, for they were:

"What were Lincoln's views of conscription, and did your soldiers vote
during the Civil War?"

There was definite method in these queries, for already the Shadow of
Conscription had begun to fall over all England. It was Lloyd George,
aided by Northcliffe, who led the fight for it.

The talk always went back to the great war. When I spoke of his speech
at Bristol his face kindled and he said:

"Have you stopped to realise that this war is not so much a war of human
mass against human mass as it is a war of machine against machine? It is
a duel between the English and German workman."

You cannot talk long with Lloyd George without touching on democracy.
This is his chosen ground. I shall never forget the fervour with which
he said:

"The European struggle is a struggle for world liberty. It will mean in
the end a victory for all democracy in its fight for equality."

When I asked him to write an inscription for a friend of mine and
express the hope that lay closest to his heart, he took a card from his
pocket, gazed for a moment at the rushing country now shot through with
the first evening lights, and then wrote: "Let Freedom win."

A few days later Lloyd George made still another appearance in his now
familiar role of England's Deliverer. The South Wales coal miners,
2,000,000 in number, went on strike at a time when Coal meant Life to
the Empire. There is no need of asking the name of the man who went to
calm this storm. Only one was eligible and he lost no time.

Lloyd George did not call a conference at Cardiff: he went straight to
Wales and spoke to the workers at the mouth of the pit. What arbitration
and conciliation had failed to do, his hypnotic oratory achieved. The
men went back to the mines with a cheer.

A week later at the London Opera House he made a notable speech to the
Conference of Representatives of the Miners of Great Britain. To have
heard that speech was to get a liberal education in the art of
phraseology and to carry always in memory the magic of the man's voice.
In this speech he said:

"In war and peace King Coal is the paramount industry. Every pit is
a trench: every workshop a rampart: every yard that can turn out
munitions of war is a fortress.... Coal is the most terrible of
enemies and the most potent of friends.... When you see the seas
clear and the British flag flying with impu