Search -
The Big Four and others of the Peace Conference
The Big Four and others of the Peace Conference Author:Robert Lansing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill LLOYD GEORGE In Mr. Lloyd George, who, in my judgment, was third in prominence and influence among the Big Four, one finds a very different type of man... more » from either of the two who have been considered. While M. Clemenceau and Mr. Wilson entered upon the negotiations with general objects to be attained, the one national and material, the other international and ideal, Mr. Lloyd George, if he had a prepared programme, which I assume he did from my acquaintance with his learned and able advisers, did not follow it persistently. His course was erratic, and he so often shifted his ground that one felt that he had abandoned his plan, or at least that he did not care to follow it rigidly, preferring to depend on his own sagacity to take advantage of a situation. As questions arose, particularly those affected by changing political and military conditions, he decided the British attitude with characteristic quickness of judgment and with a positiveness which impressed one with the alertness rather than the depth of his mind, and with the confidence whichhe felt in his own ability to grasp a subject and decide it in the most expedient way, even though he had not given it the study and thought which other men felt were necessary for a wise decision. Ready as Mr. Lloyd George was to declare a position on any subject, he seemed to be equally ready to change that position on obtaining further information or on the advice of his expert counselors. He did this with an avowal that he had not previously been in possession of the facts or else with an explanation intended to show that his new attitude was not contradictory of the former one. His explanations were always clever and well presented, but they were not always convincing. The British Premier thus put aside that which had gone be...« less