[Lloyd George] was still pessimistic about the war—said we were fighting better brains than our own—that there was not one really first-class man on … - David Lloyd George

Why had Wales made sacrifices in the face of unexampled difficulties and intimidation from squires and agents? It was not to install one statesman in power. It was not to deprive one party of power in order to put another party in power. It was not to transfer the emoluments of office from one statesman to another. No; it was done because Wales had by an overwhelming majority demonstrated its determination to secure its own progress. ... Welsh members wanted nothing for themselves but something for their country, and I do not think they would support a Liberal Ministry, I do not care how illustrious the Minister might be who led it, unless it pledged itself to concede to Wales those great measures of reform on which Wales had set its heart.

The issue was whether they were going to maintain our present economic structure, with improvements ameliorating its asperities gradually and cautiously, or whether they were going to pull the whole thing down, to put the whole of our commerce and industry into the melting-pot, at a moment when everything depended on credit and confidence, and absolutely destroy these things by committing the country to a wild series of proposals. Put compendiously, the proposal of the Labour Party was, "The nation is suffering from lack of capital; let us take what there is." (Laughter.) The old idea of bleeding a patient, abandoned by the medical profession, was taken up by the Labour Party. Even the doctors never bled a patient who was suffering from anaemia, yet that was what the Labour Party proposed. It was the stupidest programme ever put before the electorate.

When I came to consider what the Liberal quota of the Ministry was to be, I was confronted with the resolution carried by all the Liberal Ministers at a meeting to which I was not summoned, binding each and all not to serve under me. This decision was responsible for the disastrous split in the Liberal Party which diminished its influence, paralysed its energies, and distracted its purpose for all the years that have ensued since 1916. Even to this day it poisons relations between men whose cordial co-operation is essential to the well-being of Liberalism. It deflects judgment upon every issue. Yet however disastrous it was to the future strength of the Party, from the point of view of the efficiency of the Government as a war instrument, the decision arrived at by the official leaders of the Party to decline association with the new Government was an undoubted advantage.