Max the Giant Killer

THE DECLINE & FALL OF LLOYD GEORGE (320 pp.)--Lord Beaverbrook--Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($4.95).

There are few historians who can say: "I was there." One who can--and frequently does--is Max Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born press lord and sometime Cabinet Minister who has been passionately involved in the "Great Game" of British politics for half a century. In the third of his authoritative, astringent histories of the World War 1 era and its aftermath (the others: Politicians and the War, Men and Power), Lord Beaverbrook is himself a central figure in the narrative. Beaverbrook was a member of Lloyd George's wartime cabinet (as minister of information) but it was largely through Beaverbrook's efforts that he was summarily turned out of office in October 1922, never to return to power.

In early January 1921, when Beaver-brook's account begins, witty, flamboyant Lloyd George had been Prime Minister for four years. As the man who had led his nation to victory in World War 1 and founded the welfare state, he enjoyed greater popular support than any other British politician in more than a century. Politically, he seemed a titan, ruling over squabbling pygmies. Yet the fact was, as Beaverbrook tells the story. "Lloyd George was a Prime Minister without a party." His own Liberal Party was split into warring factions. Severe unemployment at home and violent disagreements over foreign policy had frayed the Liberals' uneasy coalition with the Conservatives. "The Big Beast of the Forest," as his ministers called the fiery Welshman, could even then have broken off the coalition, reunited the Liberals in opposition, and almost certainly returned to office within a few years. But Lloyd George was incapable of surrendering power. "He did not seem to care which way he traveled," writes Beaverbrook, "providing he was in the driver's seat."

Titles for Sale. To stay there, Lloyd George showered his supporters with promises and promotions. His aides peddled peerages to all wealthy bidders, and the Tory treasurer, an undisclosed bankrupt who was later to be rewarded with an earldom, secretly diverted to Lloyd George's own political slush fund a vast sum that the Conservatives had raised from their supporters. To appease all segments of both parties, Lloyd George by turns advocated peace in Europe and war in the Middle East; he urged rapprochement with Soviet Russia and vowed uncompromising hostility to the Bolsheviks; he paid lip service to free trade, yet at times also supported tariff protection for Empire trade.

But Max Beaverbrook knew precisely what he wanted. Both as publisher and politician, his career has been devoted to a single, quixotic goal, the creation of an Empire-wide economic union; he admits cheerfully that he bought the then bankrupt Daily Express for this "sole and only purpose." He realized that he would never convert Lloyd George to the cause of Empire free trade. So, working behind the scenes like a Machiavellian elf, Beaverbrook applied his charm, wealth and printing presses to the destruction of his old colleague.

Beaverbrook's chosen champion was melancholy Bonar Law, a fellow Canadian who as leader of the Tory Party in 1916 had helped bring Lloyd George to power, only to resign four years later. Ailing and self-effacing, Law was a reluctant matador. But by suasion and sly pressure, Beaverbrook finally maneuvered his hero into the famed Carlton Club meeting at which Law captained a revolt of Tory M.P.s that dissolved the coalition and toppled the Big Beast. Though Law won the election, he was Prime Minister for only seven months--and confounded his eminence grise by rejecting Beaverbrook's vision of imperial Utopia.

"Damn the King!" Beaverbrook has acquired the private papers of several key figures in his drama, most notably the unpublished diaries of Frances Stevenson, who was Lloyd George's secretary, later his wife, and for many years his closest confidante. Though Beaverbrook describes Miss Stevenson's diaries as "a startling political document," his discreet excerpts give no hint of Lloyd George's notorious amatory adventures.

But Beaverbrook is a born raconteur with a novelist's ear for intimate dialogue, and he peppers his chronicle with anecdotes, gibes, and Maxims that must be the despair of his gossip columnists. Of Austen Chamberlain, he writes cuttingly: "He always played the game, and always lost it."

Informed that King George V wished to see him on a Saturday, Lloyd George explodes: "Damn the King! Saturday is the only day I have to play golf." When the King suggests that Monday will do as well, his Prime Minister exclaims: "God bless His Majesty." One of Beaverbrook's best disclosures is that the old radical was willing to resign as Prime Minister if he could become editor of the conservative London Times "at a decent salary and with a decent contract."

Beaverbrook's most memorable anecdote concerns a crucial dinner party at which Chamberlain, "the most important and impressive guest," was expounding on Ireland. "Only one detail was going wrong," writes Beaverbrook. "The butler was obviously tight." Furiously, their hostess scribbled a note and handed it to the butler, who put it "on a big and beautiful salver and, walking unsteadily to Austen Chamberlain, with a deep bow presented the message." It read: "You are drunk--leave the room at once."

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