The English [he says] have pushed their fortunes, never by the aid of Government, but on the contrary almost always in the teeth of Government opposition.  There is no man so lacking in imagination as a Government official, and no man, unless it is a banker, so wanting in courage as a Cabinet Minister.  The wealth of England is the creation of her industrial population.  The brains, the faith, the energy of the capitalist, and the brains, the loyalty, the strength of labour, these have made us the first nation of the world.  There has been only one real obstacle in our path.  Not foreign competition, for that is an incentive, but the cowardice and stupidity of Governments.  We possess an empire unrivalled in its opportunities for trade and commerce, an empire which, you would surely think, could not fail to inspire a statesman with great ideas.  But what happens?  We have a Government which thinks it has exhausted statesmanship by crippling industry at home in order to pay off our war debt as quickly as possible.  Instead of setting itself to create more wealth, with the wealth of the world lying at its feet, it sets itself to dry up the sources of wealth at the centre of the empire.  But it is no use talking.  One thing a Government in this country cannot stand is imagination; and another is courage.  The British Empire is in the hands of a lot of clerks—­and timid clerks at that.  We must do our best to get along without statesmanship at the head.

The reader may not remember that some years before Mr. Lloyd George plunged into a disordered series of social reforms, Lord Leverhulme, sitting in the House of Commons, introduced Bills of a reasonable and connected character to ensure workmen against unemployment and to set up a system of old age pensions.  He did not enter Parliament for his own glorification.  He had nothing to gain, but much to lose, by devoting himself to the business of Westminster.  But he believed that he could benefit the State as a legislator, and he entered Parliament with the definite intention of introducing order into what was self-evidently a condition of dangerous chaos.  He had a remedy for slums, a remedy for unemployment, a remedy for the poverty of the workman in old age, and a remedy for the educational deadlock.  Further, he cherished the hope that he might do something towards developing the wealth and power of the British Empire, without impairing the spirit of individualism which, in his faith, is the driving power of British fortune.

How many men who entered the House of Commons with no ideas at all have been taken to the friendly bosom of that assembly?  Moreover, can the reader name with confidence one Cabinet Minister in the past twenty years who can fairly be compared in creative genius with this remarkable man to whom the House of Commons refused the least of its rewards?