short of victory," he wrote in Aug. 1918, " would be to compro- mise the future of mankind." He was as good as his word. Hos- tilities were closed with each of the enemy allies in succession Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Germany by what was virtually a surrender, and a surrender on terms implying severe defeat. It was in keeping with the character of a man who, a lay preacher himself, regarded the war as a sacred, reli- gious duty, that, after reading the terms of the Armistice from his place in the House of Commons on Nov. n, he should ask Parliament to come, with Chancellor and Speaker at their head, to render thanks to God at St. Margaret's.
In spite of his bitter partisan sallies in the past, Mr. Lloyd George was a great conciliator, as he showed over and over again both in his dealings with Britain's Allies, and in his interventions in Labour disputes; and therefore it is not unnatural that he should appreciate highly the value of government by Coalition. Owing to it he had the satisfaction, even during the war, of pro- moting social welfare by means of a comprehensive Education bill; and of settling on a wide basis the question of reform, in- cluding the extension of the franchise to women an extension of which he was always a warm advocate, though the militants had, in the past, unfairly flouted him as a renegade. It was his firm belief that by Coalition it would be possible to settle the Irish question. The convention which he set up in 1917 gave hope of success but its report was not sufficiently unanimous; and his vacillation in first promising, and then refusing, to in- troduce a Home Rule bill after the convention in 1918, together with his attempt to force conscription upon Ireland, contributed to the spread of Sinn Fein disaffection; though there was a plausible justification at the time for each of his actions. Coali- tion also helped towards that great constitutional development of the Imperial War Cabinet, with its corollaries of imperial preference and conservation of the essential raw materials of the Empire, for which, even apart from the war, Mr. Lloyd George's Ministry will always be honourably remembered.
Hence, when a general election, long overdue, and now ren- dered inevitable by the passage of a reform bill, was impending on the termination of hostilities, Mr. Lloyd George, with the cordial assent of Mr. Law, determined to maintain the Coalition, and to ask the country to return candidates pledged to support the Government in the negotiations of peace and in the problems of reconstruction that must immediately arise. As he wrote to Mr. Law, the Government had had a unity both in aims and in action which was very remarkable in a Coalition Government. This was, it may be pointed out, the less surprising, as the plat- form of social reform united Mr. Lloyd George and his followers among the Liberals not merely to the moderate Labour leaders but to Mr. Law and the great majority of his party, who inherited the Disraelian tradition of Sybil and of the social measures of the 1874 Government. It was a policy of this character that the joint leaders put forward in their manifesto, and they invited candidates who agreed with their aims to pledge them their support. This was surely not unreasonable, as they could not rely upon organized parties; but the Liberals who followed Mr. Asquith, and the Labour party as a whole, though they both claimed independence of the Coalition and stood practically as opposition candidates, denounced the practice as unfair, and nicknamed the pledge a " coupon." The result was an over- whelming vote of confidence in the Coalition, and the absolute rout of the pacifists, the discomfiture of Mr. Asquith and the Liberals who refused to follow Mr. Lloyd George, and the com- parative failure of an ambitious effort by the Labour party.
This enormous majority gave Mr. Lloyd George a position of exceptional strength and authority at the Peace Conference of 1919 at Paris, which he attended as the principal British pleni- potentiary. He established a new precedent by taking to the conference with him not merely some of his principal colleagues, but also the Prime Ministers and other representatives of the Dominions and of India; who, as representing peoples whose fighting strength had contributed materially to the victory, were obviously entitled to have their share in arranging terms of peace and to sign the treaty ultimately agreed upon. At the conference
he was one of three principal figures, along with President Wilson and M. Clemenceau; and his remarkable powers of conciliation were often required to harmonize the very divergent points of view of these eminent men. He strongly supported the Presi- dent's idealistic scheme of a League of Nations, having himself always regarded the war as one to end war. At the same time he sympathized with M. Clemenceau's resolve to obtain security for France, though he refused to consent to the annexation, with that object, of German populations, either to France herself or her protege, Poland. But he was ready to protect France in another fashion by signing along with President Wilson a separ- ate Treaty of Alliance with her, whereby Great Britain and the United States agreed to come to her assistance in the event of an unprovoked attack on her by Germany. The agreement with England was, however, only to come into force after the "ratifica- tion of that with the United States a ratification which was never accorded. He insisted also on German disarmament and German reparations which latter should only be limited by German ability to pay. Further, he pressed for the due trial of war criminals, and, among them, for that of the most responsible of all, the Emperor William. He signed the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, and obtained its prompt acceptance by the House of Commons. The King in Aug. conferred on Mr. Lloyd George the Order of Merit in recognition of his preeminent services, " both in carrying the war to a victorious end and in securing an honourable peace."
But the signing of the treaty with Germany, and of the treaties with the other enemy Powers, by no means settled finally the issues between the Allies and their late foes. Mr. Lloyd George had on frequent occasions in the next two years to attend meet- ings of the Supreme Council at Paris, San Remo, Spa, Lympne and occasionally in London, in order to deal with difficult ques- tions arising to take a few of the most critical points now out of the provisions relating to German reparations or disarmament, now out of those providing for the future of Silesia. In regard to some of these matters the points of view of France and Britain were so different that even Mr. Lloyd George was hard put to it to find an acceptable formula; and in regard to Silesia he dexterously managed in the summer of 1921 to avoid an open breach by referring the whole matter to the League of Nations. One pro- vision of the Treaty of Versailles, which both Mr. Lloyd George and the British public considered important namely, that which provided for the trial of Emperor William proved abortive; as the Government of the Netherlands maintained its right of asylum, and refused to surrender him to the Allies. One foreign question, indirectly connected with the treaty, occasioned Mr. Lloyd George great trouble. He strongly condemned the Soviet Government of Russia, and the principles upon which it was based; but he gradually extricated British troops from their commitments to various Russian generals who were waging civil war upon it; and, as it established its position, yielded to the desire of the Labour party for the reopening of trade with Rus- sia, but on the conditions of a release of all British prisoners and a cessation of foreign revolutionary propaganda.
The immediate prospect of the Peace Conference in Paris and the probability that international complications arising out of the war and of the peace would necessarily weigh heavily on the Prime Minister for many months, if not years, caused Mr. Lloyd George, when he made a partial reconstruction of his ministry after the general election, to continue the arrangement by which Mr. Bonar Law led the House of Commons. But, after the close of the conference, he himself was more frequently in his place in Parliament than during the last three years; and the rank and file after a while began to question whether this war arrangement should not come, with other war arrangements, to an end. On this point, however, Mr. Lloyd George remained firm; though he gratified constitutionalists by restoring, after the Treaty of Versailles, the old form of Cabinet Government, only with the addition of a permanent secretariat.
His principal domestic preoccupations during the years imme- diately following the peace were the industrial unrest, which continued with practically no intermission for two years and a
