But this conflict did not end with emotion. All his life Contrast, sometimes grotesque but always dramatic, has marked him for its own. You behold the Apostle of Peace who once espoused the Boer, translated into the flaming Disciple and Maker of War through the Rape of Belgium. You see the fiery Radical, jeered and despised by the Aristocracy, become the Protector of Peers. No wonder he stands to-day as the most picturesque, compelling and challenging figure of the English speaking race. Only one other man--Theodore Roosevelt--vies with him for this many-sided distinction. The son of a village schoolmaster who died when he was scarcely three: the ward of a shoe-maker who was also inspired lay-preacher: the political protege of a Militant Nationalist whose heart bled at the oppression of the Welsh, Lloyd George early looked out upon a life smarting with grievance and clamouring to be free. Knowing this, you can understand that the dominant characteristic of this man is to rebel against established order. Swaddled in Democracy, he became its Embodiment and its Voice. The world knows about the Lloyd George childhood spent amidst poverty in a Welsh village. The big-eyed boy ate, thought and dreamed in Welsh, "the language that meant a daily fare of barley bread." When he learned English it was like acquiring a foreign tongue. He grew up amid a great revival of Welsh art, letters and religion that stirred his soul. He missed the pulpit by a narrow margin, yet he has never lost the evangelistic fervour which is one of the secrets of his control and command of people. With the alphabet Lloyd George absorbed the wrongs of his people and they were many. The Welsh had a double bondage: the grasp of the Landlord and the Thrall of the Church. All about him quivered the aspiration for a free land, a free people and a free religion. In those days Wales was like another Ireland with all the hardship that Eviction imposes. The call to leadership came early. As a boy in school he led his mates in rebellion against the drastic dictates of a Church which prescribed liberty of religious thoughts and speech. He became the Apostle of Nonconformity and for it waged some of his fiercest battles. Always the gift of oratory was his. He preached temperance almost with his advent into his teens: he was a convincing speaker before most boys talked straight.