The story of his life is a familiar one and of the kind that brings a mist to the eyes and a tightening to the throat, as do the tales of the boyhood of Lincoln and Hanly and Grant. He was born in a wee house of Manchester, this Welshman; but an uncle, whose pride and joy he never ceased to be, reared the future statesman among the hills of Wales. The childhood of Lloyd George was typical of the simple customs and the religious faith of his people. He was an active boy. His inclinations from the beginning were toward the platform and public life. In Wales, singers and poets and orators are born, not educated; an education follows, an education in which environment looms large; but a true Welshman could not, if he would, bury _himself_ in the books of universities, the sophistries of a profession, or the formalities of a calling. He remains Nature's child. The activities of Mr. Lloyd George in connection with the temperance reform began in his childhood when he "spoke the pieces" and participated in the programmes of the Band of Hope. The ardor of his youth fired many an audience of his townspeople with an enthusiasm for "teetotalism" and a determination to conquer the traffic in spirits. It was twenty-eight years ago that he said: "I am a simple Welsh lad, taught, ever since I learned to lisp the words of my wild tongue, that 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' This traffic, having sown destruction and death, must reap for itself a fruitful harvest of destruction and crime." But it has been since the beginning of the war that David Lloyd George has delivered his supreme philippics against the "Trade." As Minister of Munitions and as Chancellor of the Exchequer he had denounced rum as the super-traitor of them all. It is not to be doubted that the words, "_We are fighting Germany, Austria, and drink, and so far as I can see the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink_," more than any other words spoken in either the Old World or the New have advanced Democracy toward total prohibition. They were the weights that turned the balance in Canada and in a dozen States of the American Union. They brought demoralization to the liquor forces. Their unequivocating charge of disloyalty against drink has been irresistible. [Illustration: A LETTER FROM LLOYD GEORGE TO THE AUTHOR, INDICATING HIS CONTINUED INTEREST IN THE CAMPAIGN FOR PROHIBITION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.] March 25th., 1918. Dear Dr. Poling, I am following with great interest the War restrictions on alcohol actually enforced and those under consideration in the United States of America. We have ourselves not been neglectful of the necessities imposed by War. We have stopped entirely the manufacture of spirits; we have cut down the brewing of beer by more than two-thirds and the hours during which it can be sold to less than one third.