David Lloyd George Quotes

All taxation must be a tax upon industry.

Take Article 12 of this Covenant: "The Members of the League"—which means the nations of the earth—"agree that if there should arise between them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, they will submit the matter either to arbitration or to inquiry." ... Supposing that had been in existence in 1914, it would have been difficult for Germany and Austria to have gone to War. They could not have done it, and, if they had, America would have been in on the first day, not three years afterwards, which would have...made all the difference. You could not have had the War in 1914 had the League of Nations been in existence. With this machinery I am not going to say you will never have war. Man is a savage animal. ... If it avert one war, the League of Nations will have justified itself. If you let one generation pass without the blood of millions being spilt, and without the agony which fills so many homes, the League of Nations will have been justified. I beg no one to sneer at the League of Nations. Let us try it. I believe it will succeed in stopping something. It may not stop everything. The world has gone from war to war, until at last we have despaired of stopping it. But society with all its organisations has not stopped every crime. What it does is that it makes crime difficult or unsuccessful, and that is what the League of Nations will do. Therefore I look to it with hope and with confidence.

Landlords have no nationality; their characteristics are cosmopolitan.

When one recalls the lessons of 1814, 1870 and 1914-18 it is not to be wondered at that those who dwell within daily sight of the scars due to the tearing wounds inflicted by Teutonic hands on their living land should have a natural apprehension lest the same calamities should befall again. Stripped of some of its richest provinces, Germany has still a population 50 per cent above that of France. The German is industrious, intelligent and resourceful, and although he is poor to-day such qualities soon make riches. He will therefore, so Frenchmen realise, once more become a formidable menace. The Teuton is on the French nerves. This accounts for the anxiety to keep him chained by Treaties, impoverished by levies, and overawed by armaments.

Who is the landlord? The Landlord is a gentleman … who does not earn his wealth. He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks that receive it for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride is stately consumption of wealth produced by others.

I felt that the fatal error which had been committed in the present war had been continually to attack where the enemy was strongest. Surely, it was a mistake to deliberately aim our spear against the thickest part of the enemy's armour.

It was a dire alternative for a country to have a choice between tariff reform, which destroyed its industries, and Socialism and Communism, which destroyed the whole fabric upon which prosperity was based... It amounted to a choice of which they were going to cut—the carotid artery of foreign trade or the jugular vein of capital.

Even if Germany ever had any idea of challenging our supremacy at sea, the exigencies of the military situation must necessarily put it completely out of her head. Under these circumstances it seems to me that we can afford just quietly to maintain the superiority we possess at present, without making feverish efforts to increase it any further. The Navy is now, according to all impartial testimony, at the height of its efficiency. If we maintain that standard no one can complain, but if we went on spending and swelling its strength, we should wantonly provoke other nations.

The Turks very nearly brought about our defeat in the war. It was a near thing. You cannot trust them and they are a decadent race. The Greeks, on the other hand, are our friends, and they are a rising people... We must secure Constantinople and the Dardanelles. You cannot do that effectively without crushing the Turkish power.

There is another little tax called the increment tax. For the future what will happen? We mean to value all the land in the kingdom. And here you can draw no distinction between agricultural land and other land, for the simple reason that East and West Ham was agricultural land a few years ago. And if land goes up in the future by hundreds and thousands an acre through the efforts of the community, the community will get 20 per cent. of that increment.

Britain is Liberal; Britain is not Tory; Britain is not Socialist; Britain is not standstill; Britain is not revolutionary; Britain is sanely progressive. It means to go on, but not to go over. Therefore the temper of Britain is Liberal.

[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should afford the occasion to humanise industry. Yet such is the case. Old prejudices have vanished, new ideas are abroad; employers and workers, the public and the State, are favourable to new methods. This opportunity must not be allowed to slip. It may well be that, when the tumult of war is a distant echo, and the making of munitions a nightmare of the past, the effort now being made to soften asperities, to secure the welfare of the workers, and to build a bridge of sympathy and understanding between employer and employed, will have left behind results of permanent and enduring value to the workers, to the nation and to mankind at large.

You have practically taken over the whole of the engineering works of this country and controlled them by the State. I have seen resolutions passed from time to time at Trade Union Congresses [laughter] about nationalising the industries of this country. We have done it. [Cheers and laughter.]

In so far as territories have been taken away from Germany, it is a restoration. Alsace-Lorraine—forcibly taken away from the land to which its population were deeply attached. Is it an injustice to restore them to their country? Schleswig-Holstein—the meanest of the Hohenzollern frauds; robbing a poor, small, helpless country, with a pretence that you are not doing it, and then retaining that land against the wishes of the population for fifty or sixty years. I am glad the opportunity has come for restoring Schleswig-Holstein. Poland—torn to bits, to feed the carnivorous greed of Russian, Austrian, and Prussian autocracy. This Treaty has re-knit the torn flag of Poland, which is now waving over a free and a united people; and it will have to be defended, not merely with gallantry, but with wisdom. For Poland is indeed in a perilous position, between a Germany shorn of her prey and an unknown Russia which has not yet emerged. All these territorial adjustments of which we have heard are restorations. Take Danzig—a free city, forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia. They are all territories that ought not to belong to Germany, and they are now restored to the independence of which they have been deprived by Prussian aggression.