Lloyd George and Churchill as War Ministers

Extract

In March 1915, when the Dardanelles campaign was at its crisis, F. S. Oliver, the author of The Endless Adventure, who had long known many of the leading political figures and the background to politics of his day, wrote to his brother in Canada: ‘The only two men who really seem to understand that we are at war are Winston and Lloyd George. Both have faults which disgust one peculiarly at the present time, but there is a reality about them and they are in earnest, which the others aren't.’ This affinity was recognized by the two men themselves. Churchill's admiration and affection for Lloyd George are well known. ‘There could be no doubt…’, he has written, referring of all years to 1940, ‘that he was our foremost citizen’; and his final verdict on Lloyd George's death was ‘The greatest Welshmanhellip; since the age of the Tudors’. Lloyd George returned the affection to the full, and the admiration to a great, though not to the full, extent. ‘Men with such gifts’, he once remarked of Churchill, ‘are rare—very rare. In an emergency they ought to be utilized to the full, and if you keep a vigilant eye on their activities, they are a greater asset than a legion of the conventional sort.