There is also in him an even greater power—the power of making two conflicting parties see one another’s point of view. That is partly because they learn to see it through his eyes. It is like some arrangement of looking-glasses in which men see one another’s faces at a new and more attractive angle. There, again, he works on a theory. “Men quarrel too much,” I have heard him say. “They become slaves to words and phrases. They miss the reality.” It was such beliefs and perceptions that have so often made him persevere in peace-making when all others have given up hope. In this case of the Railway Strike of 1907 it earned him the universal applause of the nation, voiced by King Edward, who always entertained a keen and subtle admiration for good peace-making. For a few brief months Mr. Lloyd George was the hero of the nation. He seemed almost a case for the warning—“Beware when all men speak well of thee!” But in the career of this man of storm it is always fated that no peaceful interval lasts long. On November 6th he settled the railway strike; on November 30th he lost his eldest daughter Mair, the apple of his eye. While still bowed with that bitter grief, in December he was called to stop a threatened strike in the cotton trade. He is wont to say that it was the only thing that saved him. But there was clearly to be no peace for him. Then, four months later, in April 1908, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, broken by work and domestic sorrow, resigned the Premiership, and Mr. Asquith stepped into his place. Mr. John (now Lord) Morley was offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, but he refused it, and that high post was now allotted to Mr. Lloyd George. ----- [50] The Foreign Office, which still (1920) appoints them. [51] A fixed standard of food and ship accommodation, a certificated cook on board ship, a guarantee that distressed seamen should be looked after and abandoned seamen paid, a restriction on the scandalous practices of overloading and under-manning, and on the employment of foreign sailors. [52] Clause 27, Patents Act of 1907. [53] Many patents are now being worked in England which were previously worked abroad. [54] Matthew Arnold in “Rugby Chapel.” CHAPTER XII A GERMAN TOUR “In small, truckling States, a timely compromise with power has often been the means, and the only means, of drawling out their puny existence: but a great State is too much envied, too much dreaded to find safety in humiliation. To be secure, it must be respected. Power, and eminence, and consideration, are things not to be begged. They must be commanded.”—EDMUND BURKE, _Letter I on A Regicide Peace_.