As to the abuse he encountered, he counted that as a political gain. He was fond of the story of the workman who had heard a political agent expressing terror at the fury of a certain class. “Bless my heart!” said the workman, “we never thinks you mean business until they squeals.” So it was with the avalanches of calumny which fell upon Mr. Lloyd George between 1911 and 1914. He knew that it was the penalty of challenging the powers in high places. It showed that his proposals really “meant business.” “Their abuse,” says Sir Fretful Plagiary in _The Critic_, “is the best panegyric.” So Mr. Lloyd George ploughed the road to fame through the abuse of those years. Yet all the time he suffered. He has a heart very sensitive to the affections of the people. He was puzzled at the way men hated him. It was not the danger of it he minded; for he would scarcely allow the Scotland Yard men to protect him. It was the pain of it. He frankly hates dislike; his nature craves the sun; he is at his best among friends. “I cannot imagine why they detest me so,” he said one day during that time. “I seem to be the best hated man in England.” The reply was obvious. “If one half of England hates you too much, then surely the other half loves you too absurdly.” He was instantly all smiles. “That is perfectly true,” he cried—and put the melancholy thoughts aside. During the struggle over the Licensing Bill of 1908 he received numerous postcards written in what was intended to be blood, but looked suspiciously like red ink. These documents generally threatened him with instant death, probably combined with torture—“something lingering, with boiling oil.” They came, or professed to come, from enraged publicans fearful for their livelihood. These postcards got curiously on his nerves. “I don’t mind so much being killed,” he said one day, “but I should hate being killed by a publican.” There seemed to him something curiously unsatisfactory in such a way of going out.