It was also that Mr. Lloyd George, in his great munitions campaign, took so many ideas from the French and realised in a moment, across the gulf of language, the extraordinary swiftness and power of the French mind, their amazing courage and capacity in enterprise and organisation. We have seen how, early in the war, he sat at the feet of the French Socialist Minister, M. Albert Thomas; and how, at the Boulogne Conference of June, 1915, he learned from the French gunners. It would be foolish to pretend that Mr. Lloyd George talks French very well. But he has learnt to understand their spoken language when it is uttered by masters like M. Briand and M. Thomas. But it was not till 1916 that Mr. Lloyd George stood out to the French with a bright, particular light of his own. Amid the doubts and hesitations of their own politicians they caught a glimpse of a man across the Channel who dared to lead—who ventured to tell the people the unpleasant truths, and to direct them to unpleasant duties. “A speaker full of free and generous inspiration,” says M. Georges Leygues in the _Evènement_ of July 7th, 1916, greeting his appointment to the Ministry of War, “he never fails in his perception of realities, and he goes straight to the fact. Passionate interpreter of the soul of his people, which he knows so well in all its phases—living incarnation of the ardent Welsh race, he enjoys a real ascendency over the masses. He can make them understand and accept the length of the effort necessary to shake that which most offends the proud people of the West—that boastful and brutal barrack-yard spirit under which the German military caste designed to bring the free mind of the world.” In December, 1916, during the great ministerial crisis which led to the Lloyd George Premiership, these French writers saw far more clearly than the journalists of London what was at stake. In London, on both sides, the writers and politicians were too much absorbed in the personal and party issue—they regarded it too much as a conflict of newspaper “combines.” In France, on the other hand, the journalists all realised that the difference turned round great issues—great questions of method in the conduct of the war. Here is what that great journal, _Le Temps_, wrote on December 7th, 1917: