I stepped out of the taxi, and found myself in front of three old-fashioned houses. The vicinity was one of distinction; but the houses before me, dwarfed by the Privy Council Building and the Foreign Office, and hard by the Parliament Buildings, were the strays of another century. Westminster Abbey, not far away, gives them an excuse for staying. Looking up, I read, "The First Lord of the Treasury, No. 10," and knew that I was before the portals of historic "10 Downing Street," for a century and a half now, with only a few intervals, the official home of Britain's Prime Ministers, and in reality the "White House" of the United Kingdom.

I lifted the ancient knocker that for perhaps three centuries has announced guests and that for at least a century and a half has called attendants to usher in the statesmen and the politicians of the earth. The door swung open, and a quiet man dressed in a business suit took my card.

About me on the high walls of a small square hall hung the antlered heads of deer. I followed down a long and simple but impressive passage to another hall, where I ran, head on, into a well-set-up gentleman of thirty-nine,—Major Waldorf Astor,—who was coming to meet me. He was delightfully informal. Through another waiting-room one passes into the Council-Chamber of the War Cabinet. Here all the British Cabinets have met since the Prime Minister established himself at "10 Downing Street."

The room is worthy of the greatness it has treasured. There are bookshelves about its long walls, and the lighting is good. The books are scarcely visible now, for they are curtained closely with maps and charts; here the far-flung battle lines of the Empire, which have become the front of civilization, are daily traced by the fingers of the men whose hands hold Democracy's destiny. The eastern end of the chamber is flanked on each side by two chaste Corinthian columns. A great table commands the centre of the room. It is covered with green baize and well set off by heavy, formal chairs. The room was furnished with a larger cabinet in mind; but every session of the War Council is attended by those responsible for the numberless leadership tasks of the struggle, and there are seldom vacant places.

There is only one picture in the room now. Above the mantelpiece which tops the fireplace, on the southern side, and directly behind the chair of David Lloyd George it hangs, a portrait of Francis Bacon. He was Lord Chancellor once, although he is better remembered as a master of human thought.

It is said that the present Prime Minister uses the chamber as his workshop, that it is his favorite room, and that he is more often in it than anywhere else. Perhaps because of its convenience—doors open out from it into the rooms of secretaries; and then, too, it is large enough to receive special deputations without waste of energy or time. Perhaps this convenience of the place attracts the leader in whom are centred now the British Empire's hopes and fears, or is it the associations of the chamber that call him?

Here sat Pitt and his cabinets. Here, when the word came from Austerlitz, Pitt said, as he pointed to the map of Europe that hung then where it hangs now, "Roll it up; it won't be needed for another ten years!" Here they stood with ringing cheers for Trafalgar, and here broke the glory of Waterloo. Here Disraeli won the Suez Canal, and Gladstone's mighty form once filled the chair before the fire. Does the gigantic little Welshman lift his head betimes and listen for the voices of the Past? If he does (and his eyes are not the hard eyes of a man who does not dream), he never fails to hear words prophetic of triumph, for this room is a Chamber of Conquerors.

As Major Astor greeted me, we turned to the right; and there on the stairway, with his left hand resting lightly on the banister, and a smile lighting his face, stood the Prime Minister. I shall always be glad that I saw him thus. He had just returned from Versailles, where matters of vast and immediate importance to the western front were discussed and settled. England did not yet know that he had arrived. The morrow was to precipitate him into one of the crucial battles of his ministry.

As he stood there he knew of the impending struggle—and he smiled!—not a perfunctory tremor of the lips, but a warming glow that made the great hall a friendly place. The smile was not for me, but for the gentleman at my side. Mr. Astor is a member of the Prime Minister's personal staff, and by his own worth a favorite and close friend of his chief.

David Lloyd George in the moment when I saw him on the stairway answered any question that may have been in my mind as to the personal quality of his leadership; he is virile and magnetic. Square of shoulder and deep-chested, with a straight neck that gives his fine head an erect setting, he has the appearance of added height that few stocky men possess. His color is good; his long hair, which is inclined to curl at the ends, is turning rapidly now; his eyes are clear, and shine; his voice is rich, and sings. He is one of those irresistible personalities, a man who not only dominates and rules by the mastership of his soul as well as by right of his mental genius, but who binds men to himself. His is the complete opposite of the phlegmatic, judicial temperament; his keen calculations in debate, his weighing of an opponent in a political tourney, are the decisions of an almost unerring intuition, and not the conclusions of a cold casuist.

His oratory and his whole leadership are first of the heart. His enemies have assailed him at this point, but they have not found it a vulnerable one. It is the heart of the world that bleeds and fights and triumphs. Only a master of the language of the soul can speak to it and for it, can marshal its forces and inspire them to superhuman activities, can challenge it over a Calvary and lead it to victory.

Perhaps no other man in Europe has been so long familiar to the American people; certainly no other political leader of the Old World has been so popular with the masses in America as Lloyd George. When he risked his life to deliver his soul against the Boer War, the United States cried, "Bravo!" and in his battle with landlordism, his struggle with the House of Lords, his championing of the rights of labor, and his unrelenting efforts to better the conditions surrounding the poor, he had the heart of America with him.

The story of his life is a familiar one and of the kind that brings a mist to the eyes and a tightening to the throat, as do the tales of the boyhood of Lincoln and Hanly and Grant. He was born in a wee house of Manchester, this Welshman; but an uncle, whose pride and joy he never ceased to be, reared the future statesman among the hills of Wales. The childhood of Lloyd George was typical of the simple customs and the religious faith of his people. He was an active boy. His inclinations from the beginning were toward the platform and public life. In Wales, singers and poets and orators are born, not educated; an education follows, an education in which environment looms large; but a true Welshman could not, if he would, bury himself in the books of universities, the sophistries of a profession, or the formalities of a calling. He remains Nature's child.

The activities of Mr. Lloyd George in connection with the temperance reform began in his childhood when he "spoke the pieces" and participated in the programmes of the Band of Hope. The ardor of his youth fired many an audience of his townspeople with an enthusiasm for "teetotalism" and a determination to conquer the traffic in spirits. It was twenty-eight years ago that he said: "I am a simple Welsh lad, taught, ever since I learned to lisp the words of my wild tongue, that 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' This traffic, having sown destruction and death, must reap for itself a fruitful harvest of destruction and crime."

But it has been since the beginning of the war that David Lloyd George has delivered his supreme philippics against the "Trade." As Minister of Munitions and as Chancellor of the Exchequer he had denounced rum as the super-traitor of them all. It is not to be doubted that the words, "We are fighting Germany, Austria, and drink, and so far as I can see the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink," more than any other words spoken in either the Old World or the New have advanced Democracy toward total prohibition. They were the weights that turned the balance in Canada and in a dozen States of the American Union. They brought demoralization to the liquor forces. Their unequivocating charge of disloyalty against drink has been irresistible.

March 25th., 1918.

Dear Dr. Poling,

I am following with great interest the War restrictions on alcohol actually enforced and those under consideration in the United States of America.

We have ourselves not been neglectful of the necessities imposed by War. We have stopped entirely the manufacture of spirits; we have cut down the brewing of beer by more than two-thirds and the hours during which it can be sold to less than one third.

Should the exigencies of War necessitate further restrictions we shall follow with interest your campaign for the enforcement of War Prohibition in the United States of America.

Yours truly,
D. Lloyd George

We must grant that the Prime Minister has not been fortunate in some of his words used to deny the petitions of his temperance constituents; that some of his "explanations" have seemed at least to apologize for these brave declarations of another time, to discredit them because of their age. The heart of the church in Britain, where I found it less than enthusiastically friendly toward the Prime Minister, was a heart more of sorrow than of bitterness, the sorrow of a disappointment, a disappointment that was great because so much had been expected.

But I am yet to be convinced that David Lloyd George has turned away from "the God of his fathers" and the idealism of his youth; and I am able, I think, to appreciate in a small way the circumstances that have made a great man sometimes silent in order that he may have from many discordant voices the one message, "Get on with the war!"

Again it is the war! There can be but one task now. The Prime Minister, with appalling responsibility for the life of the Empire, surrounded by men of all political faiths and representatives of every class, is no longer merely a spokesman, a prophet, a minister, an executive; in him concentrate to such an extent the directing agencies of the country that he has become in fact the administration of the Government.

When I stepped away from "10 Downing Street," I had these words ringing in my ears: "The Prime Minister has not changed." I believe that the words are true. I shall continue to believe in the man about whom they were said. And, when he speaks again, I shall not be surprised.

I walked back to my hotel. On the way I lingered by the Thames, where only the swift patrol-boats were stirring. There was no moon, and a deep mist closed the sky channel to the pirate fleet. The city was in darkness and in peace. Up the Strand I walked to Nelson's monument, and in the lee of an old building across from it I stood and studied its shadowy outline. The mighty shaft was a promise from the past in which justice did not fail, in which freedom was not lost. It made me strong. The night became as the day, for in it was opened the window of hope. The sum of the experiences of the past two hours totalled the assurance of victory.