Dateline- Toronto

by Ernest Hemingway

  It was a big luncheon given by the United Press for the former prime minister and until the speeches began all the reporters present were under a pledge not to send any messages. Lloyd George was to speak but his speech was not a private one. At the last moment the reporters were informed that it had been decided the speech was for publication.

  The Star watched Lloyd George finish a hearty luncheon at the head one of the six tables on the banquet floor, Newton D. Baker introducing the famous statesman.

  While Mr. Baker was speaking, Lloyd George leaned forward and toyed with his spectacles. It is his old trick while getting ready to speak. There was a thin sputter of applause several times during Baker’s speech, but the audience was impatient with the preliminaries. They wanted Lloyd George. Lloyd George who sat there grave and dignified playing with his spectacles and making phrases in his mind.

  The Lloyd George who rose to speak was not the “Mister George” of the “Hey this way, Mister George” of the photographers.

  It was the Lloyd George of the great days who spoke, and as he spoke the Star tried to analyze what it is that makes him the really wonderful orator he is. While you are writing his words on the paper they die and lose their greatness. If you remember them they move you, but once they have been reduced to lead marks on paper they are far less effective. True, he said very fine and very strong things, but in type the essence of them is gone.

  It is his wonderful voice combined with his Gaelic gift of prophecy that strikes one. When he talks, you feel he is a prophet and prophets have a way of their own. He talks much as Peter the Hermit must have talked about the Crusades. If Sarah Bernhardt’s voice was golden, and it was, Lloyd George’s is hammered gold. He must love to use it. His preaching voice is very different from his speaking voice, which is rather ordinary, although with a strain of richness in it.

  “Canada sent 400,000 troops to fight for our flag,” he told his audience. “Not one of those would have come in response to a decree from Downing Street. They were the fruit of the independence you taught us. We could not have enrolled a single company of Canadians if we had issued an order that [they] should be impressed for the support of the British Empire. They came of their own free will on the appeal of their own ministers, supported by their own Parliament, elected by their own people and the lesson you taught us in the eighteenth century has been the salvation of the British Empire, as we know it today.

  “The real founder of the British Empire as we know it was George Washington. Washington taught us to make it a democratic empire. Canada is as free from any interference with her own affairs from Downing Street as America.

  “In London at this hour we have representatives of the great dominions of the British crown, all sitting under conditions of perfect equality.

  “Among them is General Smuts who twenty or thirty years ago fought against the British forces for the independence of his native land and afterwards signed a treaty to become an independent partner in the Empire. We have Mr. Cosgrove, the head of the Irish Free State, sitting there as the result of a treaty representing a free people with the most complete independence as far as their internal affairs are concerned. We owe that something that is of strength to us, something that is a source of power to us, a something that is a source of might to us—we owe that entirely to the lessons from you, the free people of this great country, and so far from any resentment, from any feeling of regret in British hearts, we have nothing but a feeling of gratitude for the great men who founded this great republic and in doing so taught Britain how to govern free people.”

  That was the best part of his speech. But it was not what held his audience most. A certain way of saying “Empire,” a bite in his voice when he spoke of military domination and the great feeling of the prophet held them tight with him.

  Later the Star met Lloyd George at his evening press conference. Lloyd George sat tipped back in a chair in a ballroom in the Waldorf before a huge mirror and answered questions [as] fast as they were asked.

  “Do you think Liberal reunion is coming?” brought the answer, “Oh yes, it’s coming, like all good things, it’s coming.”

  “Would you like to see more women in politics?” He answered, chuckling, “That depends on the kind of women.”

  The Star asked Lloyd George about the Imperial Conference, but he said he had heard nothing except fragmentary reports by wireless and could not discuss it as yet.

  As he stepped into the elevator, he said: “I’m going to get an hour’s sleep now before dinner.” The elevator shut.

  Miss Megan George a Hit

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 6, 1923

  NEW YORK.—Miss Megan George is the idol of the ship news reporters. These hard-boiled men, who are used to greeting the early-morning faces of famous movie stars and visiting foreign beauties, were completely knocked over by the youngest of the Lloyd George family.

  “She doesn’t have to tell us she doesn’t use cosmetics,” one reporter said. “We’ve seen them come off at seven o’clock in the morning before. She’s a wonder, I tell you.”

  Luis Angel Firpo was in the crowd that met Lloyd George at the City Hall. He had a ticket for the mayor’s boat, but there was a celebration dinner last night, to celebrate his re-embracing his Argentine citizenship, and the boat left a little early.

  The Star, after talking and walking with Lloyd George about the Mauretania for nearly an hour, stepped with the former premier on board the Macon to go ashore. The Star had gotten up at an early hour on the morning to attend to the welcoming business aboard the revenue cutter for which, fortunately for many newspapermen and -women, official government passes were necessary.

  At the Theater with Lloyd George

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  October 6, 1923

  NEW YORK.—Lloyd George attended the Music Box Revue last night. In front of the theater the street was jammed solid with people waiting to see him. Police had difficulty in keeping the entrance open.

  When Dame Margaret entered the box first in a light-purple evening gown, no one recognized her. Then came Megan, her hair parted in the center and drawn low over her ears. A sputtering of handclapping broke out. Lloyd George followed Megan into the box wearing a big cape, his hair hanging over his collar in the back, one of his four double chins resting on the high collar in front. With his silvery hair and his keen face, he looked in the big cape like some retired medieval fencing master.

  There was a storm of applause in the theater and then the party seated themselves. There were twelve others in the box, including Sir Alfred Mond, Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, Thomas Lamont. The curtain rose. The music began and Lloyd George leaned forward, his chin on his hand, one finger pressing into his cheek. He chuckled at each real joke and caught them all. Megan had wrapped a Spanish shawl, a souvenir of last winter’s trip to Algeciras, around her shoulders, and both she and her mother never took their eyes from the stage. They did not laugh quite as quickly as Lloyd George at some of the jokes but enjoyed the show tremendously.

  On the stage a man was supposed to be having a dream in which he is married to an absolutely charming and beautiful wife. “God pity the poor bachelors on a night like this,” he cried, and Lloyd George rocked with laughing.

  A moment later the man’s real wife awakens him rudely. This also was good for a laugh.

  Then a tenor in a shiny satin dinner coat came out and began to sing. While he sang, the girls he sang of appeared back of a film and gracefully postured into sight and out again. It was very pretty.

  Sir Alfred was enthusiastic about the Zionist movement and talked with a boyish enthusiasm. “You know when they mention Lloyd George’s name at a meeting everybody goes crazy,” he said. “They’re absolutely wild about him.”

  Irish Republican sympathizers had little luck with Lloyd George in New York. While the George party were in the Music Box Theater last night, about forty men and women made a demonstration outside, but were shooed on by t
he police without any arrests being made. Most of them returned and stood in the dense crowd that packed the opposite side of Forty-fifth Street. When the former prime minister and his party came out of the theater, the hecklers started to shout and threw a few eggs, but their range was from ten to twenty yards short. Flanked by motorcycle police and the friendly crowd, Lloyd George’s car rolled away untouched. The hysterical women among the de Valera agitators were cheered ironically by the crowd, which took the whole affair as a joke.

  Hearst Not Paying Lloyd George

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  October 6, 1923

  ABOARD LLOYD GEORGE’S SPECIAL.—In the special car “Ottawa” attached to a special train provided by the Canadian National Railways, Lloyd George is speeding toward Canada today.

  The train is guarded by state constabulary armed with pistols, who patrol each station as the train stops. Lloyd George is wearing a flowing artist’s tie, an old hat and has discarded his ulster. He is enjoying the trip immensely. He is traveling by day in order to see the country and has a perfect October day for the trip past the Palisades and through the historic Vermont country.

  There was some talk this morning that Lloyd George will extend his Canadian trip to Vancouver.

  “It seems a shame that he should get up to Canada and not go to the coast,” Sir Henry Thornton, whose private car precedes Lloyd George’s on the train, told the Star today.

  Lloyd George will be strongly urged to make the Vancouver trip.

  Sir Alfred Cope [Lloyd George’s secretary] told the Star, however, he believed Lloyd George’s program would make the extension impossible.

  Lloyd George made platform appearances for crowds who came to see him at Albany, Troy, North Bennington, Vermont, Manchester, Vermont, and Rutland. The special train is due to arrive at Montreal at 9:15 tonight and in addition to the dignitaries will be met by a reception committee in Welsh costume.

  Lloyd George and his party lunched today as the guests of Sir Henry and Lady Thornton aboard the C.N.R. president’s private car. Sir Henry, wearing a cap, looks very much like Babe Ruth. Miss Ann Thornton [his daughter] and Megan George are becoming great friends. G. H. Ingalls, vice-president of the New York Central, and J. E. Dalrymple, vice-president of the Canadian National, were also luncheon guests.

  After leaving Troy the train has been winding through the green hills of upper New York State. The trees are all turning, the beeches yellow, the maples red. It is a glorious landscape and a perfect day for the trip. Lloyd George has been enthusiastic about the beauty of the country.

  A current like an electric wire of human sympathy stretches across the seas between England and America, Lloyd George told a crowd of five hundred people at Troy, while his special train, which arrives in Montreal [Saturday], stopped for five minutes.

  “No man took a greater part in settling the ago-old dispute between Britain and Ireland than your fellow townsman and ex-governor, Martin H. Glynn,” Lloyd George told an audience of three thousand people gathered to hear him at Albany today. “He explained to me the views of an Irishman and I told him the aims of Britain in rather a dingy room in the House of Commons.”

  A strong cordon of police, around the platform Lloyd George spoke from, attempted to keep Sir Henry Thornton from getting near the speaker. Lloyd George was introduced by the ex-governor, an old Downing Street acquaintance who traveled to Albany with him aboard the special car “Ottawa.” The street below the Albany station was full of people. A band played “Men of Harlech” and then “Auld Lang Syne” as the train pulled out after a ten-minute halt.

  ALBANY, N.Y.—Sir Alfred Cope, speaking for Lloyd George, made the following statement to the Star this morning in answer to an editorial in the London Morning Post, which was reprinted in the New York Times this morning:

  “Mr. Lloyd George is not here for the Hearst press nor for the United Press or any other newspaper organization. He is here as a private citizen and is paying his own expenses except in Canada, where he is the guest of the Canadian government, and some expenses that are paid in the United States by Corsedd. I have refused offers of three and four thousand dollars for him to lecture, making only a 20-minute speech. All journalists who accompany him must make their own arrangements with the railway companies. Peter B. Kyne was engaged by me to help handle Lloyd George’s tour in the States. He was not hired as a Hearst man, but as a man with practical experience, a novelist and author and a man who is free to sell his work wherever he wishes. As a matter of fact, he tells me his contract with Hearst expired a few days ago.

  “Lloyd George is urged to speak several times in each town he will stop at, but in return for his speech he wants the rest of his time to get the American and Canadian views. That is what he is here for. To see the country and to know the people. He is not here on a lecture tour.”

  “A Man of the People”

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 8, 1923

  MONTREAL.—“I am a man of the people and I have fought all my life for the people. I have had more sympathy and support from Americans in my fight for democracy than from almost any other country,” Lloyd George told the crowds who gathered around the rear platform of his car on Saturday at Troy, N.Y., and North Bennington and Manchester, Vt., to see and hear the famous wartime prime minister.

  Although Lloyd George is universally popular with Americans, some of them seem just a bit confused as to who he is. One New Yorker said to the Star: “I guess there wasn’t anybody else could take the helm the way he did. I have just finished reading his book, Men Like Gods [by H. G. Wells]. I guess things would be pretty good all right if we had that Utopia, eh?”

  It was a very impressive moment when David Lloyd George met the son of Abraham Lincoln. A crowd of villagers pressed around but stood a little back from the two. “Just a moment. I want to have Megan here to shake your hand,” Lloyd George said. Megan came out from the car and stood demure and shy before the white-haired, bearded old man. “I am most glad to meet you, my dear,” said Mr. [Robert Todd] Lincoln.

  “How old were you when your father died?” Lloyd George asked. “Just twenty-one,” Mr. Lincoln said. “I was away at college when he was killed.” Mr. Lincoln is eighty-four now. The special train only had four minutes allowed it to stop and while Lloyd George and Mr. Lincoln were still talking the whistle blew for the departure.

  “My principal recollection of Toronto [in 1889] was being got up in the middle of the night by some newspaperman who wanted my opinion as to whether there was going to be war [in South Africa] or not,” Lloyd George told the Star as his train neared Montreal. “Yes, I attended my first cabinet meeting there too. Ross was premier then. Yes, that was the very first cabinet meeting. That was before the Boer War.

  “From Toronto I went out on the prairie, out in Saskatchewan,” he said, leaning back in his seat in his private car and smoking. “I remember a town there called Rapid City. And another called Carlyle. It was near Carlyle that I saw a coyote. He was loping along ahead of us.” Continuing his reminiscences of that trip of thirty-four years ago, “Yes, it was near Carlyle that there was a meeting going on one Sunday morning. People had come for miles to go to the church.”

  He gave several reminiscences of the great anti-war meeting in Birmingham at the time of the Boer War when he was nearly mobbed. “They really had me if they had known it. The man who was inciting the mob stood on the window ledge just outside the room I was in. He could have gotten me by simply smashing the glass.” His eyes twinkled. “But they didn’t know I was in there hearing all these passionate denunciations of myself. No, I did not escape wearing a policeman’s coat. I simply marched out with the police. No one knew me then and I was not recognized.”

  Lloyd George seldom prepares his speeches in advance.

  “I have a pretty good idea what I am going to say, so it is never written out in advance,” he explained to the Star.

  Count Apponyi and the Loan

  The Toronto Dail
y Star

  October 15, 1923

  Count Albert Apponyi, 77 years old, for fifty years one of Hungary’s greatest statesmen, head of the Hungarian peace delegation at Paris, and one of the few surviving idealists of Europe, arrived in Toronto this morning.

  Count Apponyi is tall, a head taller than ordinary men, and looks like a combination of Colonel [George Taylor] Denison and Anatole France. He has enormous brown hands, a quick smile, a leathery, seamed, aristoratic Magyar face, white hair and beard.

  The Star brought him the first news that the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission had unanimously adopted a resolution requesting the League of Nations to reorganize Hungarian finances as they had those of Austria, commencing with a loan of £24,000,000 to the stricken country on the international markets.

  “This is great news,” Count Apponyi said. “It is a matter of the greatest need and urgency. This move marks the turning of the tide for Hungary.”

  Count Apponyi arrived this morning from Chicago, where he saw Lloyd George. It was a dramatic meeting between the two statesmen.

  They met at the speakers’ table of the great luncheon given in Lloyd George’s honor by the Chicago Association of Commerce at the Hotel La Salle.

  Lloyd George, short of stature and dynamic, left his place and walked with hand outstretched to where sat Count Apponyi, tall, venerable of years, an artist’s portrait, almost, a product of a culture that is a thousand years old.

  Count Apponyi rose, his hand met Lloyd George’s in a warm, firm clasp, and with one impulse the audience leaped to its feet in a storm of cheering and applause.

  When Lloyd George returned to his seat, he turned to Mayor Dever and Judson Stone, at his right and left, and said: “I consider Count Apponyi one of the most brilliant statesmen of Europe.”