Lloyd George Suggests Piracy

May 1930:

Lloyd George exchanged a few words with my father and then turning to me said: “What are you going to do, my boy, when you grow up?” “I’m going into the Navy, sir,” I replied, giving what was then my stock answer. He frowned, shook his long mane of white hair and said, “There are much greater storms in politics. If it’s piracy you want, with broadsides, boarding parties, walking the plank and blood on the deck, this is the place.” He continued for a couple of minutes comparing modern politics with the naval battles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then went on his way.

— Julian Amery, Approach March: A Venture in Autobiography