A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 Message Board

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To: Neocon who wrote (966)	10/29/1999 7:12:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (2) of 3246

I'm astounded that you would consider including Lloyd George on your list after rejecting Wilson as "the well- intentioned fool who set the stage for Hitler." How can you add one and not the other? It can't be because of domestic policy. Although I know of Lloyd George only in outline, both seem to have embraced the progressive movements of the day. Both promoted forms of progressive taxation and other reforms. Lloyd George even gave his country its first elements of socialized medicine. It can't even be the concept of "self-determination" that would exclude Wilson, but allow Lloyd George to slip in, since it was Lloyd George who signed the Government of Ireland Act granting "self-determination" and home rule to the Irish. If Wilson is rejected because of the Treaty of Versailles, then Lloyd George must surely fall before him. The Brit PM might have supported Wilson's concept of "peace without victory" against Clemenceau, but he did not. Instead he framed that dangerous compromise that the treaty became. He signed a treaty that would give to his countrymen and to France many of the traditional spoils of war and that would impose on Germany the conditions that Hitler so skillfully exploited to build his pathologically traditional imperial world.