13 March 1915 - intimations of December 1916

On 13th March 1915 Sir George Riddell recorded golfing and lunching with David Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading, the Lord Chief Justice). Isaacs had spent the weekend at Walmer with the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, and told Riddell that Asquith's great responsibilities sat lightly on him "except for two hours dealing with business ... he barely mentioned the war". 

Riddell asked Lloyd George if he thought the war was being prosecuted with sufficient energy, and was Asquith too easy going. LlG replied "Things are very unsatisfactory in that respect. Winston [Churchill] said to me the other day, 'We ought to make you a sort of Government Whiteley [the great department store], charged with the duty of providing each department with all the difficult and odd things it requires'". Isaacs replied "They should make you something more than that. A general supervisor and stimulator is badly needed".

All this was two months before Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions in response the the Shell Crisis, and a year and nine months before he was to replace Asquith as Prime Minister. 

Lloyd George's reading

One of the criticisms of David Lloyd George made by his enemies was that he "did not read". It was, of course, a nonsense. In Lord Riddell's War Diary on the 29th July 1918 Riddell notes Lloyd George reading from and discussing the speeches of John Bright, the letters of Byron, and Macaulay's Essays - "a favourite book of his. He reads well and his comments are fresh and interesting". Lloyd George said of Macaulay "His first object was to be interesting, his second to hit hard". 

Lloyd George Knew Her Husband*

My pursuit of the writings of David Lloyd George has turned up Then and Now - Economic Problems after the War a Hundred Years Ago by Mrs H. A. L. Fisher, with an introduction by Lloyd George. Fisher compares the economic disruption following the Napoleonic Wars with that following the First World War. Lettice Fisher was an economist and historian, and chaired the executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

During the Great War she was a welfare worker amongst the munitionettes of Sheffield. The hardships she saw suffered by unmarried mothers led her to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, providing practical support to single mothers, as well as campaigning for reform of the Bastardy Acts. It is now Gingerbread.

Her husband, the historian H. A. L. Fisher, was appointed President of the Board of Education by Lloyd George in 1916. He raised the school-leaving age to 14, established the Burnham Scales for teachers' pay, and introduced a national pension scheme for teachers. His underwear played an important role in the Second World War, but that, oh best beloved, is another story.

My copy was withdrawn from John Ryland's Library. I'll be posting some thoughts on library disposals another day.

* Sorry about the title, I couldn't resist it.