At one time he took a great interest in the organisation of the Civil Service. On first becoming a Minister, he was astonished to discover the rigidity of the division between the First and Second Classes of the Civil Service. He wished the system to be more fluid. Once he was struck by the ability of a certain civil servant, and he wished to place him in a position of trust. “It is impossible!” was the reply; “he is only a second division clerk.” Mr. Lloyd George looked up with a flash of whimsical indignation. “Why!” he replied, “I am only a second division clerk myself!” Whenever one tries to discover the secret of his power over men, one comes back to that supreme gift of his—the gift of the silver tongue—the power of public speech. That is, after all, the thing that has made him supreme over men. To hear him at his best one must hear him on a public platform, addressing a great public audience. There are few fireworks, no shouting, no declaiming. He opens easily, in a soft, quiet voice: he always works up to his effects. There are “purple patches” now and again; but the bulk of it seems almost conversational, and is often broken by colloquial phases—“Can you hear at the back there?” “Ah! well, you must listen if you want me to speak to you.” He is almost always very soon on good terms with his audience; it is only by shouting him down that his enemies can prevent that. He is never angry on a public platform; he seems always quite at home, as if it was his real natural element. He can be scathing at times—withering, scornful, contemptuous. But that mood rarely lasts long. He generally returns swiftly to his gentler moods—persuasion, appeal, emotion. He almost always prepares a careful peroration, generally a memorised piece of prose poetry, very often drawn from some great phase of nature—from the hills or the sea. Then his speeches end on the high note; and his audiences go home with a sense of having been uplifted. There they are right—for it is precisely his power as a speaker to uplift the hearts of men. He has his own moods. But from those he carefully selects the very best, and gives them to the world. No public man can do more. [Illustration: MRS. LLOYD GEORGE] [Illustration: DAVID LLOYD GEORGE AS A YOUNG MAN] CHAPTER XXVI HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS “Jog, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.” Autolycus in SHAKESPEARE’S _The Winter’s Tale_, Act IV, Sc. ii. BUT, on the whole, it is the future rather than the past that rules the mind of David Lloyd George.