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 OXFORD 
 
 
 
 
 The War 
 
 
 
 Its 
 
 Causes And 
 
 its 
 
 Message
 
 THE WAR 
 
 ITS CAUSES AND ITS MESSAGE 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 THE PRIME MINISTER 
 
 August - October 1914 
 
 DEDICATED TO / 
 
 THE KING 
 
 By His Majesty's Gracious Permission 
 
 METHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON 
 
 1914
 
 JHE WAR 
 
 ITS CAUSES AND ITS MESSAGE 
 
 SPEECHES DELIVERED BY 
 
 THE PRIME MINISTER 
 
 August - October 1914 « 
 
 METHUEN & CO. LTD. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 -
 
 First Published in 1974
 
 A Speech in the House of Commons 
 6th August, 1914 
 
 In support of the Motion for a Vote of Credit of 
 
 £100,000,000 
 
 IN asking the House to agree to the resolution which Mr. 
 Speaker has just read from the Chair, 1 do not propose, be- 
 cause I do not think it is in any way necessary, to traverse 
 the ground again which was covered by my right hon. Friend the 
 Foreign Secretary two or three nights ago. He stated — and I do 
 not think any of the statements he made are capable of answer 
 and certainly have not yet been answered — the grounds upon 
 which with the utmost reluctance and with infinite regret His 
 Majesty's Government have been compelled to put this country 
 in a state of war with what for many years and indeed genera- 
 tions past has been a friendly Power. But, Sir, the papers which 
 have since been presented to Parliament, and which are now in 
 the hands of hon. Members, will, I think, show how strenuous, 
 how unremitting, how persistent, even when the last glimmer of 
 hope seemed to have faded away, were the efforts of my right hon. 
 Friend to secure for Europe an honourable and a lasting peace. 
 Everyone knows in the great crisis which occurred last year in 
 the East of Europe, it was largely, if not mainly, by the acknow- 
 ledgment of all Europe due to the steps taken by my right hon. 
 Friend that the area of the conflict was limited, and that so far 
 as the Great Powers are concerned, peace was maintained. If his 
 efforts upon this occasion have, unhappily, been less successful, 
 I am certain that this House and the country, and I will add pos- 
 terity and history, will accord to him what is, after all, the best 
 tribute that can be paid to any statesman : that, never derogating 
 for an instant or by an inch from the honour and interests of his 
 own country, he has striven, as few men have striven, to main- 
 tain and preserve the greatest interest of all countries — universal 
 peace. These papers which are now in the hands of hon. 
 Members show something more than that. They show what 
 were the terms which were offered to us in exchange for our
 
 neutrality. I trust that not only the Members of this House, but 
 all our fellow-subjects everywhere will read the communications, 
 will read, learn, and mark the communications which passed only 
 a week ago to-day betweea Berlin and London in this matter. 
 The terms by which it was sought to buy our neutrality are con- 
 tained in the communication made by the German Chancellor to 
 Sir Edward Goschen on the 29th July, No. 85 of the published 
 Paper. I think I must refer to them for a moment. After 
 referring to the state of things as between Austria and Russia, 
 Sir Edward Goschen goes on : — 
 
 " He then proceeded to make the following strong bid for British 
 neutrality. He said that it was clear, so far as he was able to judge the 
 main principle which governed British policy, that Great Britain would 
 never stand by and allow France to be crushed in any conflict there 
 might be. That, however, was not the object at which Germany aimed. 
 Provided that neutrality of Great Britain were certain, every assurance 
 would be given to the British Government that the Imperial Govern- 
 ment " 
 
 Let the House observe these words — 
 
 " aimed at no territorial acquisition at the expense of France should 
 they prove victorious in any war that might ensue." 
 
 Sir Edward Goschen proceeded to put a very pertinent question : — 
 
 " I questioned His Excellency about the French Colonies" 
 
 What are the French colonies ? They mean every part of the 
 dominions and possessions of France outside the geographical 
 area of Europe — 
 
 " and he said that he was unable to give a similar undertaking in that 
 
 respect." 
 
 Let me come to what, in my mind, personally has always been 
 the crucial and almost the governing consideration, namely, the 
 position of the small States : — 
 
 "As regards Holland, however, His Excellency said that so long as 
 Germany's adversaries respected the integrity and neutrality of the 
 Netherlands Germany was ready to give His Majesty's Government an 
 assurance that she would do likewise." 
 
 Then we come to Belgium : — 
 
 " It depended upon the action of France what operations Germany 
 might be forced to enter upon in Belgium, but, when the war was over, 
 Belgian integrity would be respected if she had not sided against 
 Germany." 
 
 Let the House observe the distinction between these two cases. 
 In regard to Holland it was not only independence and integrity 
 but also neutrality ; but in regard to Belgium, there was no 
 mention of neutrality at all, nothing but an assurance that after 
 the war came to an end the integrity of Belgium would be re- 
 spected. Then His Excellency added : — 
 
 " Ever since he had been Chancellor the object of his policy had been 
 to bring about an understanding with England. He trusted that these 
 assurances "
 
 the assurances I have read out to the House — 
 
 " might form the basis of that understanding which he so much 
 desired." 
 
 What does that amount to ? Let me just ask the House. I do 
 so, no f with the object of inflaming passion, certainly not with the 
 object of exciting feeling against Germany, but I do so to vindicate 
 and make clear the position of the British Government in this matter. 
 What did that proposal amount to ? In the first place, it meant 
 this : That behind the back of France — they were not made a 
 party to these communications — we should have given, if we had 
 assented to that, a free licence to Germany to annex, in the event 
 of a successful war, the whole of the extra European dominions 
 and possessions of France. W T hat did it mean as regards Bel- 
 gium ? When she addressed, as she has addressed in these last 
 few days, her moving appeal to us to fulfil our solemn guarantee 
 of her neutrality, what reply should we have given ? What reply 
 should we have given to that Belgian appeal ? We should have 
 been obliged to say that without her knowledge we had bartered 
 away to the Power threatening her our obligation to keep our 
 plighted word. The House has read, and the country has read, 
 of course, in the last few hours, the most pathetic appeal addressed 
 by the King of Belgium, and I do not envy the man who can read 
 that appeal with an unmoved heart. Belgium are fighting and 
 losing their lives. What would have been the position of Great 
 Britain to-day in the face of that spectacle if we had assented to 
 this infamous proposal ? Yes, and what are we to get in return 
 for the betrayal of our friends and the dishonour of our obliga- 
 tions ? What are we to get in return ? A promise — nothing 
 more ; a promise as to what Germany would do in certain 
 eventualities ; a promise, be it observed — I am sorry to have to 
 say it, but it must be put upon record — given by a Power which was 
 at that very moment announcing its intention to violate its own 
 treaty and inviting us to do the same. I can only say, if we 
 had dallied or temporised, we, as a Government, should have 
 covered ourselves with dishonour, and we should have betrayed 
 the interests of this country, of which we are trustees. I am glad, 
 and I think the country will be glad, to turn to the reply which 
 my right hon. Friend made, and of which I will read to the House 
 two of the more salient passages. This document, No. 101 of my 
 Paper, puts on record a week ago the attitude of the British 
 Government, and, as I believe, of the British people. My right 
 hon. Friend says : — 
 
 " His Majesty's Government cannot for a moment entertain the 
 Chancellor's proposal that they should bind themselves to neutrality on 
 such terms. What he asks us in effect is to engage to stand by while 
 French Colonies are taken if France is beaten, so long as Germany does 
 not take French territory as distinct from the Colonies. From the 
 material point of view "
 
 My right hon. Friend, as he always does, used very temperate 
 language : — 
 
 " such a proposal is unacceptable, for France, without further territory 
 in Europe being taken from her, could be so crushed as to lose her posi- 
 tion as a Great Power, and become subordinate to Germany policy." 
 
 That is the material aspect. But he proceeded : — 
 
 "Altogether, apart from that, it would be a disgrace for us to make 
 this bargain with Germany at the expense of France, a disgrace from 
 which the good name of this country would never recover. The Chan- 
 cellor also in effect asks us to bargain away whatever obligation or interest 
 we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could not entertain 
 that bargain either." 
 
 He then says : — 
 
 " We must preserve our full freedom to act, as circumstances may seem 
 to us to require." 
 
 And he added, I think, in sentences which the House will 
 appreciate :— 
 
 " You should . . . add most earnestly that the one way of main- 
 taining the good relations between England and Germany is that they 
 should continue to work together to preserve the peace of Europe. . . . 
 For that object this Government will work in that way with all sincerity 
 and goodwill. 
 
 " If the peace of Europe can be preserved and the present crisis safely 
 passed, my own endeavour will be to promote some arrangement to 
 which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no 
 aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies 
 by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired 
 this and worked for it " 
 
 The statement was never more true — 
 
 "as far as I could, through the last Balkan crisis, and Germany having 
 a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has 
 hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but 
 if this present crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone 
 through for generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief 
 and reaction which will follow may make possible some more definite 
 rapprochement between the Powers than has been possible hitherto." 
 
 That document, in my opinion, states clearly, in temperate and 
 convincing language, the attitude of this Government. Can any 
 one who reads it fail to appreciate the tone of obvious sincerity 
 and earnestness which underlies it ; can any one honestly doubt 
 that the Government of this country in spite of great provoca- 
 tion — and I regard the proposals made to us as proposals which 
 we might have thrown aside without consideration and almost 
 without answer — can any one doubt that in spite of great provo- 
 cation the right hon. Gentleman, who had already earned the 
 title — and no one ever more deserved it — of Peace Maker of 
 Europe, persisted to the very last moment of the last hour in that 
 beneficent but unhappily frustrated purpose. I am entitled to 
 say, and I do so on behalf of this country — I speak not for a 
 party, I speak for the country as a whole — that we made every
 
 effort any Government could possibly make for peace. But this 
 war has been forced upon us. What is it we are fighting for ? 
 Everyone knows, and no one knows better than the Government 
 the terrible, incalculable suffering, economic, social, personal, 
 and political, which war, and especially a war between the 
 Great Powers of the world, must entail. There is no man 
 amongst us sitting upon this bench in these trying days — more 
 trying perhaps than any body of statesmen for a hundred years 
 have had to pass through — there is not a man amongst us who has 
 not, during the whole of that time, had clearly before his vision 
 the almost unequalled suffering which war, even in a just cause, 
 must bring about, not only to the peoples who are for the moment 
 living in this country and in the other countries of the world, but 
 to posterity and to the whole prospects of European civilisation. 
 Every step we took we took with that vision before our eyes, 
 and with a sense of responsibility which it is impossible to 
 describe. Unhappily, if in spite of all our efforts to keep the 
 peace, and with that full and overpowering consciousness of the 
 result, if the issue be decided in favour of war, we have, never- 
 theless, thought it to be the duty as well as the interest of this 
 country, to go to war, the House may be well assured it was 
 because we believe, and I am certain the country will believe, 
 we are unsheathing our sword in a just cause. 
 
 If I am asked what we are fighting for I reply in two sentences. 
 In the first place to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an 
 obligation which, if it had been entered into between private 
 persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded 
 as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self- 
 respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, 
 we are fighting to vindicate the principle which, in these days 
 when force, material force, sometimes seems to be the dominant 
 influence and factor in the development of mankind, we are 
 fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not 
 to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the 
 arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. I do not 
 believe any nation ever entered into a great controversy — and 
 this is one of the greatest history will ever know — with a clearer 
 conscience and stronger conviction that it is fighting, not for 
 aggression, not for the maintenance even of its own selfish in ■ 
 terest, but that it is fighting in defence of principles, the mainte 
 nance of which is vital to the civilisation of the world. With a 
 full conviction, not only of the wisdom and justice, but of the 
 obligations which lay upon us to challenge this great issue, we 
 are entering into the struggle. Let us now make sure that all the 
 resources, not only of this United Kingdom, but of the vast Empire 
 of which it is the centre, shall be thrown into the scale, and it is 
 that that object may be adequately secured, that I am now about 
 to ask this Committee — to make the very unusual demand upon
 
 it — to give the Government a Vote of Credit of ^100,000,000. I 
 am not going, and I am sure the Committee do not wish it, into 
 the technical distinctions between Votes of Credit and Supple- 
 mentary Estimates and all the rarities and refinements which 
 arise in that connection. There is a much higher point of view 
 than that. If it were necessary, I could justify, upon purely 
 technical grounds, the course we propose to adopt, but I am not 
 going to do so, because I think it would be foreign to the temper 
 and disposition of the Committee. There is one thing to which 
 I do call attention, that is, the Title and Heading of the Bill. 
 As a rule, in the past Votes of this kind have been taken simply 
 for naval and military operations, but we have thought it right 
 to ask the Committee to give us its confidence in the extension 
 of the traditipnal area of Votes of Credit so that this money 
 which we are asking them to allow us to expend may be applied 
 not only for strictly naval and military operations, but to assist 
 the food supplies, promote the continuance of trade, industry, 
 business, and communications, whether by means of insurance or 
 indemnity against risk or otherwise, for the relief of distress, and 
 generally for all expenses arising out of the existence of a state of 
 war. I believe the Committee will agree with us that it was wise to 
 extend the area of the Vote of Credit so as to include all these 
 various matters. It gives the Government a free hand. Of 
 course, the Treasury will account for it, and any expenditure that 
 takes place will be subject to the approval of the House. I think 
 it would be a great pity — in fact, a great disaster — if, in a crisis 
 of this magnitude, we were not enabled to make provision — pro- 
 vision far more needed now than it was under the simpler con- 
 ditions that prevailed in the old days — for all the various ramifi- 
 cations and developments of expenditure which the existence of 
 a state of war between the Great Powers of Europe must entail 
 on any one of them. 
 
 I am asking also in my character of Secretary of State for 
 War — a position which I held until this morning — for a Supple- 
 mentary Estimate for men for the Army. Perhaps the Com- 
 mittee will allow me for a moment just to say on that personal 
 matter that I took upon myself the office of Secretary of State 
 for War under conditions upon which I need not go back but 
 which are fresh in the minds of everyone, in the hope and with 
 the object that the condition of things in the Army, which all of 
 us deplored, might speedily be brought to an end and complete 
 confidence re-established. I believe that is the case ; in fact, I 
 know it to be. There is no more loyal and united body, no body 
 in which the spirit and habit of discipline are more deeply in- 
 grained and cherished than in the British Army. Glad as I 
 should have been to continue the work of that office, and I would 
 have done so under. normal conditions, it would not be fair to the 
 Army, it would not be just to the country, that any Minister
 
 should divide his attention between that Department and another, 
 still less that the First Minister of the Crown, who has to look 
 into the affairs of all departments and who is ultimately respon- 
 sible for the whole policy of the Cabinet, should give, as he could 
 only give, perfunctory attention to the affairs of our Army in a 
 great war. I am very glad to say that a very distinguished 
 soldier and administrator, in the person of Lord Kitchener, with 
 that great public spirit and patriotism that everyone would expect 
 from him, at my request stepped into the breach. Lord Kitchener, 
 as everyone knows, is not a politician. His association with the 
 Government as a Member of the Cabinet for this purpose must 
 not be taken as in any way identifying him with any set of 
 political opinions. He has, at a great public emergency, re- 
 sponded to a great public call, and I am certain he will have 
 with him, in the discharge of one of the most arduous tasks that 
 has ever fallen upon a Minister, the complete confidence of all 
 parties and all opinions. 
 
 I am asking on his behalf for the Army, power to increase the 
 number of men of all ranks, in addition to the number already 
 voted, by no less than 500,000. I am certain the Committee will 
 not refuse its sanction, for we are encouraged to ask for it not 
 only by our own sense of the gravity and the necessities of the 
 case, but by the knowledge that India is prepared to send us 
 certainly two Divisions, and that every one of our self- governing 
 Dominions, spontaneously and unasked, has already tendered to 
 the utmost limits of their possibilities, both in men and in money, 
 every help they can afford to the Empire in a moment of need. 
 Sir, the Mother Country must set the example, while she responds 
 with gratitude and affection to those filial overtures from the 
 outlying members of her family. 
 
 Sir, I will say no more. This is not an occasion for contro- 
 versial discussion. In all that I have said, I believe I have not 
 gone, either in the statement of our case or in my general de- 
 scription of the provision we think it necessary to make, beyond 
 the strict bounds of truth. It is not my purpose — it is not the 
 purpose of any patriotic man — to inflame feeling, to indulge in 
 rhetoric, to excite international animosities. The occasion is far 
 too grave for that. We have a great duty to perform, we have a 
 great trust to fulfil, and confidently we believe that Parliament 
 and the country will enable us to do it.
 
 A Speech in the House of Commons 
 27th August, 1914 
 
 I BEG to move," That an humble Address be presented to His 
 Majesty praying Him to convey to His Majesty the King of 
 the Belgians the sympathy and admiration with which this 
 House regards the heroic resistance offered by his army and 
 people to the wanton invasion of his territory, and an assurance 
 of the determination of this Country to support in every way the 
 efforts of Belgium to vindicate her own independence and the 
 public law of Europe." 
 
 Very few words are needed to commend to the House the 
 Address, the terms of which will shortly be read from the Chair. 
 The War which is now shaking to its foundations the whole 
 European system originated in a quarrel in which this country 
 had no direct concern. We strove with all our might, as every- 
 one now knows, to prevent its outbreak, and when that was no 
 longer possible, to limit its area. It is all important, and I think 
 it is relevant to this Motion, that it should be clearly understood 
 when it was and why it was that we intervened. It was only 
 when we were confronted with the choice between keeping and 
 breaking solemn obligations, between the discharge of a binding 
 trust and of shameless subservience to naked force, that we threw 
 away the scabbard. We do not repent our decision. The issue 
 was one which no great and self-respecting nation, certainly 
 none bred and nurtured like ourselves, in this ancient home of 
 liberty, could, without undying shame, have declined. We were 
 bound by our obligations, plain and paramount, to assert and 
 maintain the threatened independence of a small and neutral 
 State. Belgium had no interests of her own to serve, save and 
 except the one supreme and ever-widening interest of every 
 State, great or little, which is worthy of the name, the preserva- 
 tion «f her integrity and of her national life. 
 
 10
 
 History tells us that the duty of asserting and maintaining that 
 great principle — which is, after all, the well-spring of civilisation 
 and of progress — has fallen once and again at the most critical 
 moment in the past to States relatively small in area and in popu- 
 lation, but great in courage and in resolve — to Athens and Sparta, 
 to the Swiss Cantons, and, not least gloriously, three centuries 
 ago, to the Netherlands. Never, Sir, I venture to assert, has the 
 duty been more clearly and bravely acknowledged, and never 
 has it been more strenuously and heroically discharged, than 
 during the last weeks by the Belgian King and the Belgian 
 people. They have faced without flinching and against almost 
 incalculable odds the horrors of irruption, of devastation, of spolia- 
 tion, and of outrage. They have stubbornly withstood and suc- 
 cessfully arrested the inrush, wave after wave, of a gigantic and 
 overwhelming force. The defence of Liege will always be the 
 theme of one of the most inspiring chapters in the annals of 
 liberty. The Belgians have won for themselves the immortal 
 glory which belongs to a people who prefer freedom to ease, to 
 security, even to life itself. We are proud of their alliance and 
 their friendship. We salute them with respect and with honour. 
 We are with them heart and soul, because by their side and in 
 their company we are defending at the same time two great causes 
 — the independence of small States and the sanctity of inter- 
 national covenants. We assure them — as I ask the House in 
 this Address to do — we assure them to-day, in the name of this 
 United Kingdom and of the whole Empire, that they may count 
 to the end on our whole-hearted and unfailing support. 
 
 11
 
 A Letter Addressed to the Lord Mayor of 
 London, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the 
 Lord Mayor of Dublin, and the Lord Mayor 
 of Cardiff, 28th August, 1914 
 
 My Lords, 
 
 The time has come for combined effort to stimulate and organise 
 public opinion and public effort in the greatest conflict in which 
 our people has ever been engaged. 
 
 No one who can contribute anything to the accomplishment of 
 this supremely urgent task is justified in standing aside. 
 
 I propose, as a first step, that meetings should be held without 
 delay, not only in our great centres of population and industry, 
 but in every district, urban and rural, throughout the United 
 Kingdom, at which the justice of our cause should be made 
 plain, and the duty of every man to do his part should be enforced. 
 
 I venture to suggest to your lordships that the four principal 
 cities, over which you respectively preside, should lead the way. 
 
 I am ready myself, so far as the exigencies of public duty per- 
 mit, to render such help as I can, and I should be glad, with that 
 object, to address my fellow-subjects in your cities. 
 
 I have reason to know that I can count upon the co-operation 
 of the leaders of every section of organized political opinion. 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 H. H. Asquith. 
 
 12
 
 A Speech at the Guildhall 
 4th ? September, 1914 
 
 MY LORD, MAYOR and citizens of London, it is three and 
 a half years since I last had the honour of addressing in 
 this hall a gathering of the citizens. We were then meet- 
 ing under the presidency of one of your predecessors men of all 
 creeds and parties, to celebrate and approve the joint declaration 
 of the two great English-speaking States that for the future any 
 differences between them should be settled, if not by agreement, 
 at least by judicial inquiry and arbitration, and never in any cir- 
 cumstances by war. Those of us who hailed that great eirenicon 
 between the United States and ourselves as a landmark on 
 the road of progress were not sanguine enough to think, or 
 even to hope, that the era of war was drawing to a close. But 
 still less were we prepared to anticipate the terrible spectacle 
 Avhich now confronts us — a contest, which for the number and 
 importance of the Powers engaged, the scale of their armaments 
 and armies, the width of the theatre of conflict, the outpouring 
 of blood and loss of life, the incalculable toll of suffering levied 
 upon non-combatants, the material and moral loss accumulating 
 day by day to the higher interests of civilised mankind — a contest 
 which in every one of these aspects is without precedent in the 
 annals of the world. We were very confident three years ago 
 in the Tightness of our position when we welcomed the new 
 securities for peace. We are equally confident in it to-day, 
 when reluctantly, and against our will, but with clear judg- 
 ment and a clean conscience, we find ourselves involved 
 with the whole strength of this Empire in this bloody arbitra- 
 ment between might and right. The issue has passed out 
 of the domain of argument into another field. But let me ask 
 you, and through you the world outside, what would have been 
 
 13
 
 our condition as a nation to-day, if through timidity, or through a 
 perverted calculation of self-interest, or through a paralysis of the 
 sense of honour and duty, we had been base enough to be 
 false to our word, and faithless to our friends ? Our eyes 
 would have been turned at this moment with those of the whole 
 civilised world to Belgium, a small State which has lived for more 
 than seventy years under a several and collective guarantee, to 
 which we, in common with Prussia and Austria, were parties. 
 We should have seen, at the instance and by the action of two 
 of those guaranteeing Powers, her neutrality violated, her 
 independence strangled, her territory made use of as affording 
 the easiest and most convenient road to a war of un- 
 provoked aggression against France. We, the British people, 
 should at this moment have been standing by, with folded 
 arms and with such countenance as we could command, 
 while this small and unprotected State, in defence of her vital 
 liberties, made a heroic stand against overweening and over- 
 whelming force. We should have been admiring as detached 
 spectators the siege of Liege, the steady and manful resistance 
 of a small army, the occupation of Brussels with all its 
 splendid traditions and memories, the gradual forcing back of the 
 patriotic defenders of their fatherland to the ramparts of 
 Antwerp, countless outrages suffered by them, buccaneering 
 levies exacted from the unoffending civil population, and, finally, 
 the greatest crime committed against civilisation and culture 
 since the Thirty Years War, the sack of Louvain, with its build- 
 ings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations, a 
 shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures, lit up by blind bar- 
 barian vengeance. What account could we, the Government 
 and the people of this country, have been able to render to the 
 tribunal of our national conscience and sense of honour, if, in 
 defiance of our plighted and solemn obligations, we had endured, 
 and had not done our best to prevent, yes, to avenge, these 
 intolerable wrongs ? For my part, I say that sooner than be a 
 silent witness, which means in effect a willing accomplice, to this 
 tragic triumph of force over law, and of brutality over freedom, I 
 would see this country of ours blotted out of the pages of history. 
 That is only a phase, a lurid and illuminating phase, in the con- 
 test into which we have been called by the mandate of duty and 
 of honour to bear our part. The cynical violation of the neutrality 
 of Belgium was not the whole, but a step, a first step, in a de- 
 liberate policy of which, if not the immediate, the ultimate and 
 not far distant aim was to crush the independence and the 
 autonomy of the Free States of Europe. First Belgium, then 
 Holland and Switzerland, countries like our own, imbued and 
 sustained with the spirit of liberty, were, one after another, to be 
 bent to the yoke. And these ambitions were fed and fostered by 
 a body of new doctrine, a new philosophy, preached by professors 
 
 14
 
 and learned men. The free and full self-development which to 
 these small States, to ourselves, to our great and growing Dominions 
 over the seas, to our kinsmen across the Atlantic, is the well- 
 spring and life-breath of national existence, that free self- 
 development is the one capital offence in the code of those who 
 have made force their supreme divinity, and upon its altars they 
 are prepared to sacrifice both the gathered fruits and the potential 
 germs of the unfettered human spirit. I use this language 
 advisedly. 
 
 This is not merely a material, it is also a spiritual conflict. 
 Upon its issue everything that contains the promise of hope, that 
 leads to emancipation and a fuller liberty for the millions who 
 make up the mass of mankind, will be found sooner or later to 
 depend. 
 
 Let me now turn for a moment to the actual situation in 
 Europe. How do we stand ? For the last ten years by what I 
 believe to be happy and well-considered diplomatic arrangements 
 we have established friendly and increasingly intimate relations 
 with the two Powers, France and Russia, with whom in days 
 gone by we have had in various parts of the world occasion for 
 constant friction, and now and again for possible conflict. These 
 new and better relations, based in the first instance upon business 
 principles of give and take, matured into a settled temper of con- 
 fidence and goodwill. They were never in any sense or at any 
 time, as I have frequently stated in this hall, directed against 
 other Powers. 
 
 No man in the history of the world has ever laboured more 
 strenuously or more successfully than my right hon. friend Sir 
 Edward Grey for that which is the supreme interest of the 
 modern world — a general and abiding peace. It is, I venture 
 to think, a very superficial criticism which suggests that under 
 his guidance the policy of this country has ignored, still less 
 that it has counteracted and hampered, the Concert of Europe. 
 It is little more than a year ago when, under the stress and 
 strain of the Balkan crisis, the Ambassadors of the Great 
 Powers met here day after day and week after week, cur- 
 tailing the area of possible differences, reconciling warring 
 ambitions and aims, and preserving against almost incalculable 
 odds the general harmony, and it was in the same spirit and with 
 the same purpose when a few weeks ago Austria delivered her 
 ultimatum to Servia that the Foreign Secretary — for it was he — 
 put forward the proposal for a mediating conference between the 
 four Powers not directly concerned — Germany, France, Italy, and 
 ourselves. If that proposal had been accepted the actual con- 
 troversy would have been settled with honour to everybody, and 
 the whole of this terrible welter would have been avoided. 
 And with whom does the responsibility rest for its refusal 
 and for all the illimitable sufferings which now confront the 
 
 .15
 
 world ? One Power, and one Power only, and that Power 
 is Germany. There is the foundation and origin of this 
 world-wide catastrophe. We persevered to the end, and no 
 one who has not been confronted, as we were, with the 
 responsibility, which unless you had been face to face with it 
 you could not possibly measure, the responsibility of determining 
 the issues of peace and war — no one who has not been in that 
 position can realise the strength, energy, and persistence with 
 which we laboured for peace. We preserved by every ex- 
 pedient that diplomacy could suggest — straining almost to the 
 breaking point our most cherished friendships and obligations — 
 even to the last moment making effort upon effort, and indulging 
 hope against hope. Then, and only then, when we were at last 
 compelled to realise that the choice lay between honour and dis- 
 honour, between treachery and good faith — when we at last 
 reached the dividing line which makes or mars a nation worthy of 
 the name, it was then only that we declared for war. 
 
 Is there any one in this hall, or in this United Kingdom, or in 
 the vast Empire of which we here stand in the capital and centre, 
 who blames us or repents our decision. If not, as I believe 
 there is not, we must steel ourselves to the task, and, in the 
 spirit which animated our forefathers in their struggle against 
 the dominion of Napoleon, we must, and we shall, persevere to 
 the end. 
 
 It would be a criminal mistake to underestimate either the 
 magnitude, the fighting quality, or the staying power of the forces 
 which are arrayed against us ; but it would be equally foolish, and 
 equally indefensible to belittle our own resources whether for 
 resistance or for attack. Belgium has shown us by memor- 
 able and glorious example what can be done by a relatively 
 small State when its citizens are animated and fired by the spirit 
 of patriotism. 
 
 In France and Russia we have as allies two of the greatest 
 Powers in the world, engaged with us in a common cause, who do 
 not mean to separate themselves from us any more than we mean 
 to separate ourselves from them. We have upon the seas 
 the strongest and most magnificent Fleet the world has ever 
 seen. The Expeditionary Force which left our shores less than 
 a month ago has never been surpassed, as its glorious achievements 
 in the field have already made clear, not only in material equip- 
 ment, but in the physical and moral quality of its constituent 
 parts. 
 
 As regards the Navy, I am sure my right honourable friend 
 Mr. Churchill, whom we are glad to see here, will tell you 
 there is happily little more to be done. I do not flatter it 
 when I say that its superiority is equally marked in every depart- 
 ment and sphere of its activity. We rely on it with the most 
 absolute confidence, not only to guard our shores against the 
 
 16
 
 possibility of invasion, not only to seal up the gigantic battle- 
 ships of the enemy in the inglorious seclusion of their own 
 ports, whence from time to time he furtively steals forth 
 to sow the sea with murderous snares, which are more full of 
 menace to neutral ships than to the British Fleet. Our Navy 
 does all this, and while it is thirsting, I do not doubt for that 
 trial of strength in a fair and open fight which has so far been 
 prudently denied it, it does a great deal more. It has hunted the 
 German Mercantile Marine from the high seas. It has kept open 
 our own stores of food supply, and largely curtailed those of the 
 enemy, and when the few German cruisers which still infest the 
 more distant ocean routes have been disposed of — as they will 
 be very soon — it will achieve for British and neutral com- 
 merce, passing backwards and forwards, from and to every port 
 of our Empire, a security as complete as it has ever enjoyed 
 in the days of unbroken peace. Let us honour the 
 memory of the gallant feamen who, in the pursuit of one or 
 another of these varied and responsible duties, have already laid 
 down their lives for their country. 
 
 In regard to the Army, there is a call for a new, a continuous, 
 a determined, and a united effort. For, as the war goes on, we 
 shall have not merely to replace the wastage caused by casual- 
 ties, not merely to maintain our military power at its original 
 level, but we must, if we are to play a worthy part, enlarge its 
 scale, increase its numbers, and multiply many times its effec- 
 tiveness as a fighting instrument. The object of the appeal which 
 I have made to you, my Lord Mayor, and to the other Chief 
 Magistrates of our capital cities, is to impress upon them the 
 imperious urgency of this supreme duty. 
 
 Our self-governing Dominions throughout the Empire, without 
 any solicitation on our part, demonstrated with a spontaneousness 
 and unanimity unparalleled in history their determination to 
 affirm their brotherhood with us, and to make our cause their 
 own. 
 
 From Canada, from Australia, from New Zealand, from South 
 Africa, and from Newfoundland, the children of the Empire, 
 assert, not as an obligation, but as a privilege, their right, and 
 their willingness to contribute money, material, and, what is 
 better than all, the strength and sinews, the fortunes, and lives of 
 their best manhood. 
 
 India, too, with not less alacrity, has claimed her share in the 
 common task. Every class and creed, British and native, 
 princes and people, Hindoos and Mohammedans, vie with one 
 another in a noble and emulous rivalry. Two divisions of 
 our magnificent Indian Army are already on their way. We 
 welcome with appreciation and affection their proffered aid, 
 and, in an Empire which knows no distinction of race or 
 class, where all alike, as subjects of the King Emperor, are 
 
 I?
 
 joint and equal custodians of our common interest and for- 
 tunes, we here hail with profound and heartfelt gratitude their 
 association side by side and shoulder to shoulder with our home 
 and Dominion troops, under the flag which is a symbol to 
 all of a unity that the world in arms cannot dissever or dissolve. 
 
 With these inspiring appeals and examples from our 
 fellow-subjects all over the world, what are we doing, and 
 what ought we to do at home ? Mobilisation was ordered 
 on the 4th August. Immediately afterwards Lord Kitchener 
 issued his call for 100,000 recruits for the Regular Army, which 
 has been followed by a second call for another 100,000. The 
 response up to to-day gives us between 250,000 and 300,000 men, 
 and I am glad to say that London has done its share. The total 
 number of Londoners accepted is not less than 42,000. I need 
 hardly say that the appeal involves no disparagement or dis- 
 couragement of the Territorial Force. The number of units in 
 that force who have volunteered for foreign service is most satis- 
 factory, and grows every day. We look to them with confidence 
 to increase their numbers, to perfect their organisation in train- 
 ing, and to play the efficient part which has always been assigned 
 to them, both offensive and defensive, in the military system of 
 the Empire. 
 
 But to go back to the expansion of the Regular Army, we 
 want more men, men of the best fighting quality, and if for the 
 moment the number who offer and are accepted should prove to 
 be in excess of those who can at once be adequately trained and 
 equipped, do not let them doubt that appropriate provision will be 
 made for incorporation of all willing and able men in the fighting 
 forces of the King. We want first of all men, and we shall 
 endeavour to secure that men desiring to serve together shall, 
 wherever possible, be allotted to the same regiment or corps. 
 The raising of battalions by counties or by municipalities with 
 this object will be in everyway encouraged, but we want not less 
 urgently a larger supply of ex-non-commissioned officers, the 
 pick of the men who have served their country in the past, and 
 whom, therefore, in most cases, we shall be asking to give up 
 regular employment in order that they may return to the work 
 for the State which they alone are competent to do. 
 
 The appeal which we make is addressed quite as much to their 
 employers as to the men themselves. They ought surely to be 
 assured of reinstatement in their positions at the end of the war. 
 Finally, there are numbers of commissioned officers now in re- 
 tirement with large experience of handling troops, who have 
 served their country in the past. Let them come forward, too, 
 and show their willingness, if need be, to train bodies of men, for 
 whom for the moment no regular cadres or units can be found. 
 I have little more to say. 
 
 As to the actual progress of the war I will not say anything 
 
 W
 
 except that, in my judgment, in whatever direction we look there 
 is abundant ground for pride and for comfort. 
 
 I say nothing more, because I think we should bear in mind, 
 all of us, that we are at present watching the fluctuation of fortune 
 only in the early stages of what is going to be a protracted 
 struggle. We must learn to take long views and to cultivate 
 above all other qualities — those of patience, endurance, and stead- 
 fastness. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us go, each one of us, to his or her appropriate 
 part in the great common task. 
 
 Never had a people more or richer sources of encouragement 
 and inspiration. Let us realise, first of all, that we are fighting 
 as a United Empire, in a cause worthy of the highest traditions 
 of our race. Let us keep in mind the patient and indomitable 
 seamen who never relax for a moment, night or day, the ; r stern 
 vigil on the lonely sea. Let us keep in mind our gallant troops, 
 who to-day, after a fortnight's continuous fighting under condi- 
 tions which would try the mettle of the best army that ever took 
 the field, maintain not only an undefeated but an unbroken 
 front. 
 
 Finally, let us recall the memories of the great men and the 
 great deeds of the past, commemorated some of them in the 
 monuments which we see around us on these walls, not forgetting 
 the dying message of the younger Pitt — his last public utterance, 
 made at the table of your predecessor, my Lord Mayor, in this 
 very hall, " England has saved herself by her exertions and 
 will, as I trust, save Europe by her example." The England of 
 those days gave a noble answer to his appeal and did not sheath 
 the sword until after nearly twenty years of fighting the freedom 
 of Europe was secured. Let us go and do likewise. 
 
 19
 
 A Speech in Edinburgh 
 18th September, 1914 
 
 A FORTNIGHT ago to-day, in the Guildhall of the City of 
 London, I endeavoured to present to the nation and to the 
 world the reasons which have compelled us, the people of all 
 others who have the greatest interest in the maintenance of peace, 
 to engage in the hazards and the horrors of war. I do not wish to 
 repeat to-night in any detail what I then said. The war has arisen 
 immediately and ostensibly, as everyone knows, out of a dispute 
 between Austria and Servia, in which we in this country had no 
 direct concern. The diplomatic history of those critical weeks — 
 the last fortnight in July and the first few days of August — is now 
 accessible to all the world. It has been supplemented during the 
 last few days by the admirable and exhaustive dispatch of our 
 late Ambassador at Vienna, Sir Maurice de Bunsen — a dispatch 
 which I trust everybody will read, and no one who reads it can 
 doubt that largely through the efforts of my right hon. friend and 
 colleague, Sir Edward Grey, the conditions of a peaceful settle- 
 ment of the actual controversy were already within sight when on 
 July 31 Germany, by her own deliberate act, made war a cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 The facts are incontrovertible. They are not sought to be 
 controverted, except, indeed, by the invention and circulation of 
 such wanton falsehoods as that France was contemplating and 
 even commencing the violation of Belgian territory as a first step 
 on her road to Germany. The result is that we are at war, and 
 we are at war — as I have already shown elsewhere, and as I 
 repeat here to-night— for three reasons. In the first place, to 
 vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and of what is properly 
 called the public law of Europe ; in the second place, to assert 
 and to enforce the independence of free States, relatively small 
 and weak, against encroachment and violence by the strong; 
 
 20
 
 and in the third place, to withstand, as we believe in the 
 best interests not only of our own Empire, but of civilisation at 
 large, the arrogant claim of a single Power to dominate the 
 development of the destinies of Europe. 
 
 Since I last spoke some faint attempts have been made in 
 Germany to dispute the accuracy and the sincerity of this state- 
 ment of our attitude and aim. It has been suggested for in- 
 stance, that our professed zeal for treaty rights and for the 
 interests of small States is a new-born and stimulated passion. 
 What, we are asked, has Great Britain cared in the past for 
 treaties or for the smaller nationalities except when she had some 
 ulterior and selfish purpose of her own to serve ? I am quite 
 ready to meet that challenge, and to meet it in the only way in 
 which it could be met, by reference to history ; and out of many 
 illustrations which I might take I will content myself with 
 two, widely removed in point of lime, but both, as it happens, very 
 apposite to the present case. I will go back first to the war carried 
 on at first against the revolutionary Government of France and then 
 against Napoleon, which broke out in 1793 and which lasted for 
 more than 20 years. We had then at the head of the Government 
 in this country one of the most peace-loving Ministers who has 
 ever presided over our fortunes, Mr. Pitt. For three years, from 
 1789 to 1792, he resolutely refused to interfere in any way with 
 the revolutionary proceedings in France or in the wars that 
 sprang out of them, and as late, I think, as February in 1792, in 
 a memorable speech in the House of Commons, which shows 
 amongst other things the shortness of human foresight, he de- 
 clared that there never was a time when we in this country could 
 more reasonably expect 15 years of peace. And what was it that, 
 within a few months of that declaration, led this pacific Minister 
 to war? It was the invasion of the treaty rights, guaranteed by 
 ourselves, of a small European State — the then States General of 
 Holland. 
 
 For nearly 200 years the Great Powers of Europe had guaran- 
 teed to Holland the exclusive navigation of the River Scheldt. 
 The French revolutionary Government invaded what is now 
 Belgium, and as a first act of hostility to Holland declared the 
 navigation of the Scheldt to be open. Our interest in that matter 
 then, as now, was relatively small and insignificant. But what 
 was Mr. Pitt's reply. I quote you the exact words he used in 
 the House of Commons ; they are so applicable to the circum- 
 stances of the present moment. This is in 1793 : — 
 
 " England will never consent that another country should 
 arrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure the political 
 system of Europe established by solemn treaties and guaranteed 
 by the consent of the Powers." 
 
 He went on to say that " If this House — the House of Commons 
 — means substantial good faith to its engagements, if it retains 
 
 21
 
 a just sense of the solemn faith of treaties, it must show a deter- 
 mination to support them." And it was in consequence of that 
 stubborn and unyielding determination to maintain treaties, to 
 defend small States, to resist the aggressive domination of a 
 single Power that we were involved in a war which we had done 
 everything to avoid and which was carried on upon a scale both 
 as to area and as to duration up to then unexampled in the history 
 of mankind. 
 
 That is one precedent. Let me give you one more. I come 
 down to 1870, when this very treaty to which we are parties no 
 less than Germany, and which guarantees the integrity and inde- 
 pendence of Belgium, was threatened. Mr. Gladstone was then 
 Prime Minister of this country, and he was, if possible, a stronger 
 and more ardent advocate of peace even than Mr. Pitt himself. 
 Mr. Gladstone, pacific as he was, felt so strongly the sanctity of 
 our obligations that — though here again we had no direct interest 
 of any kind at stake — he made agreements with France and 
 Prussia to co-operate with either of the belligerents if the other 
 violated Belgian territory. I should like to read a passage from 
 a speech 10 years later, delivered in 1880 by Mr. Gladstone him- 
 self in this city of Edinburgh, in which he reviewed that transac- 
 tion and explained his reasons for it. 
 
 After narrating the facts which I have summarized, he said 
 this : " If we had gone to war " — which he was prepared to do — 
 " we should have gone to war for freedom. We should have gone 
 to war for public right, we should have gone to war to save human 
 happiness from being invaded by a tyrannous and lawless Power. 
 That," Mr. Gladstone said, " is what I call a good cause, gentle- 
 men. And though I detest war, and there are no epithets too 
 strong if you will supply me with them that I will not endeavour 
 to heap upon its head ; in such a war as that, while the breath in 
 my body is continued to me, I am ready to engage." 
 
 So much for our own action in the past in regard to treaties 
 and small States. But, faint as is this denial of this part of our 
 case, it becomes fainter still, it dissolves into the thinnest of thin 
 air, when it has to deal with our contention that we and our Allies 
 are withstanding a Power whose aim is nothing less than the 
 domination of Europe. It is, indeed, the avowed belief of the 
 leaders of German thought, I will not say of the German people, but 
 of those who for many years past have controlled German policy, 
 that such a domination, carrying with it the supremacy of what 
 they call German culture and the German spirit, is the best thing 
 that could happen to the world. 
 
 Let me, then, ask for a moment what is this German culture ? 
 What is this German spirit of which the Emperor's armies are at 
 present the missionaries in Belgium and in France ? Mankind owes 
 much to Germany, a very great debt for the contributions she has 
 made to philosophy, to science, and to the arts, but that which is
 
 specifically German in the movement of the world in the last 
 30 years has been, on the intellectual side, the development of the 
 doctrine of the supreme and ultimate prerogative in human 
 affairs of material force, and on the practical side the taking of 
 the foremost place in the fabrication and the multiplication of the 
 machinery of destruction. To the men who have adopted this 
 gospel, who believe that power is the be all and end all of a 
 State, naturally a treaty is nothing more than a piece of parch- 
 ment, and all the old world talk about the rights of the weak and 
 the obligations of the strong is only so much threadbare and 
 nauseating cant. 
 
 One very remarkable feature of this new school of doctrine 
 whatever be its intellectual or its ethical merits, is that it has 
 turned out, as an actual code for life, to be a very purblind philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 For German culture and the German spirit did not save the 
 Emperor and his people from delusions and miscalculations as 
 dangerous as they were absurd in regard to the British Empire. 
 We were believed by these cultivated observers to be the de- 
 cadent descendants of a people who, by a combination of luck 
 and of fraud had managed to obtain dominion over a vast quantity 
 of the surface and the populations of the globe. This fortuitous 
 aggregation which goes by the name of the British Empire was 
 supposed to be so insecurely founded, and so loosely knit together, 
 that, at the first touch of serious menace from without, it would 
 fall to pieces and tumble to the ground. Our great Dominions 
 were getting heartily tired of the Imperial connection. India, 
 it was notorious to every German traveller, was on the verge of 
 open revolt, and here at home we, the people of this United 
 Kingdom, were riven by dissension so deep and so fierce that our 
 energies, whether for resistance or for attack, would be completely 
 paralysed. What a fantastic dream! And what a rude awaken- 
 ing ! And in this vast and grotesque, and yet tragic, miscalcula- 
 tion is to be found one of the roots, perhaps the main root, of the 
 present war. 
 
 But let us go one step more. It has been said " By their fruits 
 ye shall know them," and history will record that, when the die 
 was cast and the struggle began, it was the disciples of that same 
 creed who revived methods of warfare which have for centuries 
 past been condemned by the common sense, as well as by the 
 humanity, of the great mass of the civilised world. 
 
 Louvain, Malines, Termonde. These are names which will 
 henceforth be branded on the brow of German culture. The 
 ruthless sacking of the ancient and famous towns of Belgium is 
 fitly supplemented by the story that reaches us only to-day from 
 our own Headquarters in France, of the proclamation issued less 
 than a week ago by the German authorities, who were for 
 moment, and, happily, for little more than a moment, in occupa- 
 
 ?3
 
 tion of the venerable city of Reims. Let me read, for it 
 should be put on record, the concluding paragraph of the 
 proclamation : 
 
 With a view to securing adequately the safety of the troops, 
 and to instil calm into the population of Reims, the persons 
 named below [81 in number, and including all the leading 
 citizens of the town] have been seized as hostages by the 
 Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. These hostages 
 will be hanged at the slightest attempt at disorder. Also the 
 town will be totally or partially burned and the inhabitants 
 will be hanged for any infraction of the above. 
 By order of German authorities. 
 Do not let it be forgotten that it is from a Power whose intel- 
 lectual leaders are imbued with the ideal that I have described, 
 and whose generals in the field sanction and even direct those 
 practices — it is from that Power that the claim proceeds to impose 
 its culture, its spirit — which means its domination — upon the rest 
 of Europe. That is a claim, I say to you, to all my fellow-country- 
 men, to every citizen and subject of the British Empire whose 
 ears and eyes my words can reach — that is a claim that every- 
 thing that is great in our past and everything that promises hope 
 or progress in our future summons us to resist to the end. The 
 task — do not let us deceive ourselves — the task will not be a light 
 one. Its full accomplishment — and nothing short of full ac- 
 complishment is worthy of our traditions or will satisfy our 
 resolve — will certainly take months, it may even take years. I 
 have come here to-night, not to ask you to count the cost, for 
 no price can be too high to pay when honour and freedom are 
 at stake, but to put before you, as I have tried to do, the 
 magnitude of the issue and the supreme necessity that lies upon 
 us as a nation, nay, as a brotherhood and family, of nations, to 
 rise to its height and acquit ourselves of our duty. 
 
 The war has now lasted more than six weeks. Our supre- 
 macy at sea has not been seriously questioned. Full supplies 
 of food and of raw materials are making their way to our 
 shores from every quarter of the globe. Our industries, with 
 one or two exceptions, maintain their activities. Unemploy- 
 ment is so far not seriously in excess of the average. The 
 monetary situation has improved, and every effort that the zeal 
 and the skill of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the co- 
 operation and expert advice of the bankers and business 
 men of the country, can devise — every effort is being made to 
 achieve what is most essential — the complete re-establishment of 
 the foreign exchanges. Meanwhile, the merchant shipping of 
 the enemy has been hunted from the seas, and our seamen are 
 still, patiently or impatiently, waiting a chance to try conclusions 
 with the opposing Fleet. Great and incalculable is the debt which 
 we have owed during these weeks, and which in increasing measure 
 
 ?A
 
 we shall continue to owe, to our Navy. The Navy needs no help, 
 and as the months roll on — thanks to a far-sighted policy in the 
 past — its proportionate strength will grow. 
 
 If we turn to our Army we can say with equal justice and 
 pride that, during these weeks, it has revived the most glorious 
 records of its past. Sir John French and his gallant officers and 
 men live in our hearts as they will live in the memories of those 
 who come afterwards. But splendid achievements such as these 
 — equally splendid in retirement and in advance — cannot be won 
 without a heavy expenditure of life and limb, of equipment, and 
 supplies. Even now, at this very early stage, I suppose there is 
 hardly a person here who is not suffering from anxiety and 
 suspense. Some of us are plunged in sorrow for the loss of those 
 we love, cut off, some of them, in the springtime of their young 
 lives. We will not mourn for them overmuch. 
 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name. 
 
 But these gaps have to be filled. The wastage of modern war 
 is relentless and almost inconceivable. We have — I mean His 
 Majesty's Government have — since the war began dispatched to 
 the front already considerably over 200,000 men, and the amplest 
 provision has been made for keeping them supplied with all that 
 was necessary in food, in stores, and in equipment. They will 
 very soon be reinforced by Regular troops from India, from 
 Egypt, and the Mediterranean, and in due time by the contingents 
 which our Dominions are furnishing with such magnificent 
 patriotism and liberality. We have with us here our own gallant 
 Territorials, becoming every day a fitter and a finer force, eager 
 and anxious to respond to any call, either at home or abroad, that 
 may be made upon them. 
 
 But that is not enough. We must do still more. Already in 
 little more than a month we have half a million recruits for the 
 four new Armies which, as Lord Kitchener told the country 
 yesterday, he means to have ready to bring into the field. En- 
 listing as we were last week, in a single day as many men as we 
 have been accustomed to enlist in the course of a whole year, it is 
 not, I think, surprising that the machinery has been over-strained, 
 and there have been many cases of temporary inconvenience and 
 hardship and discomfort. With time and patience and good 
 organization these things will be set right, and the new scale of 
 allowances which was announced in Parliament yesterday will do 
 much to mitigate the lot of wives and children and dependents 
 who are left behind. We want more men, and perhaps most of 
 all help for training them. Every one in the whole of this king- 
 dom who has in days gone by, as officer or as non-commissioned 
 officer, served his country never had a greater or a more fruitful 
 opportunity of service than is presented to him to-day. 
 
 25
 
 We appeal to the manhood ot the three kingdoms. To such 
 an appeal I know well, coming from your senior representative 
 in the House of Commons, that Scotland will not turn a deaf ear. 
 Scotland is doing well, and indeed more than well, and no part of 
 Scotland, I believe, in proportion better than Edinburgh. I can- 
 not say with what pleasure I heard the figures given out by the 
 Lord Provost, and those which have been supplied to me by the 
 gallant general who has the Scottish Command, which show, 
 indeed, as we expected, that Scotland is more than holding her 
 own. 
 
 In that connection let me repeat what I said two weeks ago in 
 London. We think it of the highest importance that, as far as 
 possible and subject to the accidents of war, people belonging to 
 the same place, breathing the same atmosphere, having the same 
 associations, should be kept together. 
 
 I have only one word more to say. What is it that we can 
 offer to our recruits ? They come to us spontaneously, under no 
 kind of compulsion, of their own free will, to meet a national and 
 an Imperial need ; we present to them no material inducement 
 in the shape either of bounty or bribe, and they have to face the 
 prospect of a spell of hard training from which most of the com- 
 forts and all the luxuries that many of them have been accus- 
 tomed to are rigorously banished. But then, when they are fully 
 equipped for their patriotic task, they will have the opportunity 
 of striking a blow, it may be even of laying down their lives, not 
 to serve the cause of ambition or aggression, but to maintain the 
 honour and the good faith of our country, to shield the indepen- 
 dence of free States, to protect against brute force the principles 
 of civilization and the liberties of Europe. 
 
 26
 
 A Speech in Dublin, 25tn Sept., 1914 
 
 SOME weeks ago I took it upon myself to suggest to the four 
 principal magistrates of the United Kingdom that they 
 should afford me an opportunity of making a personal appeal 
 to their citizens at a great moment in our national history. I 
 have already delivered my message in London and in Edinburgh. 
 To the first of those great communities I was able to speak as an 
 Englishman by birth and as a Londoner by early association and 
 a long residence. To the second, the capital of the Ancient 
 Kingdom of Scotland, I had special credentials as having been 
 for the best part of 30 years one of their representatives in the 
 House of Commons, and now indeed by one of the melancholy 
 privileges of time the senior among the Scottish members. But 
 to-night when I come to Dublin I can put forward neither the 
 one claim nor the other. I base my title, such as it is, to your 
 hospitality and your hearing upon such service as during the 
 whole of my political life I have tried, with a whole heart and to 
 the best of my faculty and opportunities, to render to Ireland. I 
 come here not as a partisan, not even as a politician, but 
 as for the time being the head of the King's Government, to 
 summon Ireland, a loyal and patriotic Ireland, to take her place 
 in the defence of our common cause. 
 
 It is no part of my mission to-night — it is indeed at this time 
 of day wholly unnecessary — to justify, still less to excuse, the 
 part that the Government of the United Kingdom has taken in 
 this supreme crisis in our national affairs. There have been wars 
 in the past in regard to which there has been among us diversity 
 of opinion, uneasiness as to the wisdom of our diplomacy, anxiety 
 as to the expediency of our policy, doubts as to the essential 
 righteousness of our cause. That is not the case to-day. Even 
 in the memorable struggle which we waged a hundred years 
 ago against the domination of Napoleon there was always a 
 minority, respectable not merely in number, but in the sincerity 
 and in the eminence of its adherents, which broke the front 
 
 27
 
 of our national unity. Again I say that is not the case to- 
 day. We feel as a nation — or rather, I ought to say, speaking 
 here and looking round upon our vast Empire in every quarter 
 of the globe, as a family of nations — without distinction of 
 creed or party, of race or climate, of class or section, that we are 
 united in defending principles and in maintaining interests which 
 are vital, not only to the British Empire, but to all that is worth 
 having in our common civilisation and all that is worth hoping for 
 in the future progress of mankind. 
 
 What better or higher cause, whether we succeed or fail, and 
 we are going not to fail but to succeed, what higher cause can 
 arouse and enlist the best energies of a free people than to be 
 engaged at one and the same time in the vindication of inter- 
 national good faith, the protection of the weak against the 
 violence of the strong, and in the assertion of the best ideals of 
 all the free communities in all the ages of time and in every part 
 of the world against the encroachments of those who believe, and 
 who preach, and who practise the religion of force ? 
 
 It is not — I am sure you will agree with me — it is not neces- 
 sary to demonstrate once more that of this war Germany is the 
 real and the responsible author. The proofs are patent, mani- 
 fold, and overwhelming. Indeed, on the part of Germany her- 
 self we get upon this point, if denial at all, a denial only of the 
 faintest and the most formal kind. For a generation past she 
 has been preparing the ground, equipping herself both by land 
 and sea, fortifying herself with alliances, what is perhaps even 
 more important, teaching her youth to seek and to pursue as the 
 first and the most important of all human things the supremacy 
 of German power and the German spirit, and all that time 
 biding her opportunity. Many of the great wars of history have 
 been almost accidentally brought on. There was nothing in the 
 quarrel, such as it was, between Austria and Servia that could 
 not, and would not, have been settled by pacific means. But in 
 the judgment of those who guide and control German policy the 
 hour had come to strike the blow that had been long and delibe- 
 rately prepared. In their hands lay the choice between peace 
 and war, and their election was for war. In so deciding, as 
 everybody now knows, Germany made two profound miscalcu- 
 lations, both of them natural enough in men who had come to 
 believe that in international matters everything can be explained 
 and measured in terms of material force. 
 
 What were those mistakes ? The first was that Belgium, a 
 small and prosperous country, entirely disinterested in European 
 quarrels, guaranteed by the joint and several compacts of the 
 Great Powers, would not resent, and certainly would not resist, 
 the use of her territory as a high road for an invading German 
 force into France. How could they imagine that this little 
 country, rather than allow her neutrality to be violated and her
 
 independence insulted and menaced, was prepared that her ficldr; 
 should be drenched with the blood of her soldiers, her towns and 
 villages devastated by marauders, her splendid heritage of monu- 
 ments and of treasures built up for her by the piety, art, and 
 learning of the past ruthlessly laid in ruins ? The passionate 
 attachment of a numerically small population to the bit of terri- 
 tory, which looks so little upon the map, the pride of unconquer- 
 able devotion of a free people to their own free State — these were 
 things which apparently had never been dreamed of in the philo- 
 sophy of Potsdam. 
 
 Rarely in history has there been a greater material disparity 
 between the invaders and the invaded. But the moral disparity 
 was at least equally great, for the indomitable resistance of the 
 Belgians did more than change the whole face of the campaign. 
 It proved to the world that ideas which cannot be weighed or 
 measured by any material calculus can still inspire and dominate 
 mankind. That is the reason why the whole sympathy of the 
 civilised world at this moment is going out to these small States 
 — Belgium, Servia, and Montenegro — that have played so worthy 
 a part in this historic struggle. 
 
 But Germany was guilty of another and a still more capital 
 blunder in relation to ourselves. I am not referring for the 
 moment to the grotesque misunderstanding upon which I dwelt 
 a week ago at Edinburgh — their carefully fostered belief that we 
 here were so rent with civil distraction, so paralysed by luke- 
 warmness or disaffection in our Dominions and Dependencies, 
 that if it came to fighting we might be brushed aside as an 
 impotent and even a negligible factor. The German mis- 
 conception went even deeper than that. They asked themselves 
 what interest, direct or material, had the United Kingdom in 
 this conflict. Could any nation, least of all the cold, calculating, 
 phlegmatic, egotistic British nation, embark upon a costly 
 and bloody contest from which it had nothing in the hope 
 of profit to expect ? They forgot that we, like the Belgians, 
 had something at stake which cannot be translated into 
 what one of our poets has called "the lore of nicely cal- 
 culated less or more." 
 
 What was it we had at stake ? First and foremost, 
 the fulfilment to the small and relatively weak country of 
 our plighted word, and behind and beyond that the main- 
 tenance of the whole system of international good will, which 
 is the moral bond of the civilised world. Here again they 
 were wrong in thinking that the reign of ideas, old world ideas 
 like those of duty and good faith, had been superseded by the 
 ascendancy of force. War is at all times a hideous thing ; at the 
 best an evil to be chosen in preference to worse evils, and at the 
 worst little better than the letting loose of hell upon earth. The 
 Prophet of old spoke of the " confused noise of battle and the
 
 garments rolled in blood," but in these modern days, with the 
 gigantic scale of the opposing armies and the scientific develop- 
 ments of the instruments of destruction, war had become an in- 
 finitely more devastating thing than it ever was before. The 
 hope that the general recognition of a humaner code would soften 
 or abate some of its worst brutalities has been rudely dispelled by 
 the events of the last few weeks. The German invasion of Belgium 
 and France contributes indeed some of the blackest pages to its 
 sombre annals. Rarely has a non-combatant population suffered 
 more severely, and rarely, if ever, have the monuments of piety 
 and of learning and of those sentiments of religious and national 
 association of which they are the permanent embodiment, even in 
 the worst times of the most ruthless warriors been so shamefully 
 and cynically desecrated ; and behind the actual theatre of con- 
 flict, with its smoke and its carnage, there are the sufferings of 
 those who are left behind, the waste of wealth, the economic dis- 
 location, the heritage — the long heritage — of enmities and mis- 
 understanding which war brings in its train. 
 
 Why do I dwell upon these things ? It is to say this — that 
 great indeed is the responsibility of those who allow their country 
 — as we have done — to be drawn into such a welter. But there 
 is one thing much worse than to take such a responsibility, and 
 that is upon a fitting occasion to shirk it. Our record in the 
 matter is clear. We strove up to the last moment for peace, and 
 only when we were satisfied that the price of peace was the 
 betrayal of other countries and the dishonour and degradation of 
 our own did we take up the sword. 
 
 I should like, beyond this inquiry into causes and motives, to 
 ask your attention and that of my fellow-countrymen to the end 
 which, in this war, we ought to keep in view. Forty-four years 
 ago, at the time of the war of 1870, Mr. Gladstone used these 
 words. He said : " The greatest triumph of our time will be 
 the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing 
 idea of European politics." Nearly 50 years have passed. Little 
 progress, it seems, has as yet been made towards that good and 
 beneficent change, but it seems to me to be now at this moment 
 as good a definition as we can have of our European policy. 
 The idea of public right — what does it mean when translated 
 into concrete terms ? It means first and foremost, the clearing 
 of the ground by the definite repudiation of militarism as the 
 governing factor in the relation of States and of the future 
 moulding of the European world. It means next that room 
 must be found and kept for the independent existence and the 
 free development of the smaller nationalities each with a 
 corporate consciousness of its own. Belgium, Holland, 
 Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Greece, and the Balkan 
 States — they must be recognised as having exactly as good a title 
 as their more powerful neighbours — more powerful in strength 
 
 30
 
 and in wealth — to a place in the sun. And it means finally, or it 
 ought to mean, perhaps, by a slow and gradual process, the sub- 
 stitution for force, for the clash of competing ambition, for group- 
 ings and alliances and a precarious equipoise, of a real European 
 partnership based on the recognition of equal right and estab- 
 lished and enforced by a common will. A year ago that would 
 have sounded like a Utopian idea. It is probably one that may 
 not, or will not, be realised either to-day or to-morrow, but if and 
 when this war is decided in favour of the Allies it will at once 
 come within the range and before long within the grasp of 
 European statesmanship. 
 
 I go back for a moment to the peculiar aspects of the actual 
 case upon which I have dwelt, because it seems to me that they 
 ought to make a special appeal to the people of Ireland. Ireland 
 is a loyal country, and she would, I know, respond with alacrity 
 to any summons which called upon her to take her share in the 
 assertion and the defence of our common interests. But the 
 issues raised by this war are of such a kind that unless I mistake 
 her people and misrepresent her history, they touch a vibrating 
 chord both in her imagination and in her conscience. How can 
 you Irishmen be deaf to the cry of the smaller nationalities to 
 help them in their struggle for freedom, whether, as in the case 
 of Belgium, in maintaining what she has won, or, as in the case 
 of Poland or the Balkan States, in regaining what they have lost 
 or in acquiring and putting upon a stable foundation what has never 
 been fully theirs ? How, again, can you Irishmen, if I understand 
 you, sit by in cool detachment and with folded arms while we in 
 company of our gallant Allies of France and Russia, are opposing 
 a world-wide resistance to pretensions which threaten to paralyse 
 and sterilise all progress and the best destinies of mankind ? 
 
 During the last few weeks Sir John French and his heroic 
 forces have worthily sustained our cause. The casualties have 
 been heavy — Ireland has had her share. But although they have 
 been increased during the last week from the ranks of our gallant 
 Navy by one of the hazards of warfare at sea, of those who have 
 fallen in both services we may ask how could men die better ? 
 They have left behind them an example and an appeal. From 
 all quarters of the Empire its best manhood is flowing in. The 
 first Indian Contingent is, I believe, landing to-day at Marseilles, 
 and in all parts of our great Dominions the convoys are already 
 mustering. 
 
 Over half a million recruits have joined the colours here at 
 home, and I come to ask you in Ireland, though you do not need 
 my asking, to take your part. There was a time when, through 
 the operations of laws which everyone now acknowledges to have 
 been both unjust and impolitic, the martial spirit and capacity for 
 which Irishmen have always been conspicuous found its chief 
 outlet in the alien armies of the Continent. I have seen it 
 
 31
 
 computed — I do not know whether with precise accuracy — but I 
 have seen it computed upon good authority that in the first 
 50 years of the 18th century, when the penal laws were here in 
 full swing, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted under the 
 banners of the Empires of France and Spain, and we at home in 
 the United Kingdom suffered a double loss, for, not only were we 
 drained year by year of some of our best fighting material, but 
 over and over again we found ourselves engaged in battle array, 
 suffering from and inflicting deadly loss upon those who might 
 have been, and under happier conditions would have been, fellow 
 soldiers of our own. The British Empire has always been proud, 
 and with reason, of those Irish regiments and their Irish leaders, 
 and was never prouder of them than it is to-day. We ask 
 you here in Ireland to give us more, to give them without 
 stinting. We ask Ireland to give of her sons the most in number, 
 the best in quality, that a proud and loyal daughter of the Empire 
 ought to devote to the common cause. The conditions seem to 
 me to be exceptionally favourable for the purpose. We have of 
 late been witnessing here in Ireland a spontaneous enrolment 
 and organisation in all parts of the country of bodies of volun- 
 teers. I say nothing — for I wish to-night to avoid trespassing 
 upon even a square inch of controversial ground — I say nothing 
 of the causes or motives which brought them originally into 
 existence, and have fostered their growth and strength. I will 
 only say — and this is my nearest approach to politics to-night — 
 that there are two things which to my mind have become un- 
 thinkable. The first is that one section of Irishmen are going to fight 
 another, and the second is that Great Britain is going to fight either. 
 Speaking here in Dublin, I may perhaps address myself for a 
 moment particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going 
 to ask them all over Ireland — not only them, but I make the 
 appeal to them particularly — to contribute with promptitude and 
 enthusiasm a large and worthy contingent of recruits to the 
 second new Army of half a million which is growing up, as it were, 
 out of the ground. I should like to see, and we all want to see, 
 an Irish Brigade, or, better still, an Irish Army Corps. Do not 
 let them be afraid that by joining the colours they will lose their 
 identity and become absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what 
 is perhaps equally repugnant, be artificially redistributed in units 
 which have no national cohesion or character. We wish to the 
 utmost limit that military exigencies will allow that men who 
 have been already associated in this or that district in training 
 and in common exercises should be kept together and continue to 
 recognise the corporate bond which now unites them. And of 
 one thing further I am sure. We are in urgent need of com- 
 petent officers, and we think if officers now engaged in training 
 these men are proved equal to the test, there is no fear that 
 their services will not be gladly, gratefully retained. 
 
 32
 
 But, I repeat, the Empire needs recruits, needs them at 
 once, that they may be fully trained and equipped in time 
 to take their part in what may well be the decisive fields of the 
 greatest struggle in the history of the world. That is our imme- 
 diate necessity, and no Irishmen in responding to it need be 
 afraid that he is prejudicing the future of the Volunteers. I do 
 not say and I cannot say, under what precise form or organisa- 
 tion, but I trust and believe, and indeed I am certain, that the 
 Volunteers will become a permanent part, an integral and a 
 characteristic part, of the defensive forces of the Crown. 
 
 If our need is great, your opportunity is also great. The call 
 which I am making is, as you know well, backed by the 
 sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the Empire 
 and the world. Old animosities between us are dead, scattered 
 like the autumn leaves to the four winds of heaven. We are a 
 united nation, owing and paying to our Sovereign the heartfelt 
 allegiance of men who at home not only love but enjoy for 
 themselves the liberty which our soldiers and our sailors are 
 fighting, by land and by sea, to maintain and to extend — for 
 others. There is no question of compulsion or bribery. What 
 we want we believe you are ready and eager to give — the 
 free-will offering of a free people. 
 
 33
 
 A Speech in Cardiff 2nd October, 1914 
 
 IN the course of the last month I have addressed meetings 
 in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and now in the com- 
 pletion of the task which I set myself and which the kind- 
 ness of our great municipalities has allowed me to perform I have 
 come to Cardiff. England, Scotland, and Ireland have each of 
 them a definite and a well-established capital city, but I have 
 always understood that there was some doubt where the capital 
 of the Principality of Wales was to be found on the map. Wales 
 is a single and indivisible entity with a life of its own, drawing 
 its vitality from an ancient past, and both, I believe, in the 
 volume and in the reality of its activity never more virile than it 
 is to-day. But I do not know that there is any general agree- 
 ment amongst Welshmen as to where their capital is to be found, 
 and without attempting as an outsider to differentiate or to re- 
 concile competing claims I stand here to-night in what I believe 
 to be a safe coign of vantage under the hospitality and the autho- 
 rity of the Lord Mayor of Cardiff. 
 
 Though I am not altogether a stranger to Wales, you may 
 nevertheless ask why I have requested your permission to address 
 this great audience here to-night. I am not altogether an idle 
 man, and during the last few months I can honestly say that 
 there has hardly been a day, indeed there have been very few 
 hours, which have not been preoccupied with grave cares and 
 responsibility. But throughout them all I have been, and I am, 
 sustained by a profound and unshakable belief in the righteous- 
 ness of our cause, and by overwhelming evidence that in the 
 pursuit and the maintenance of that cause the Government have 
 behind them, without distinction of race, of party, or of class, the 
 whole moral and material support of the British Empire. Let 
 me take the opportunity to acknowledge and to welcome the calm, 
 reasoned, and dignified statement of our cause which the Christian 
 Churches of the United Kingdom, through some of their most 
 distinguished leaders and ministers, have this week presented to 
 the world. 
 
 34
 
 I will not repeat, and I certainly cannot improve upon it, and 
 indeed I am not here to-night to argue out propositions which 
 British citizens in every part of the world to-day regard as beyond 
 the reach of controversy. I do not suppose that in the history 
 of mankind there has ever been in such a vast and diverse com- 
 munity agreement so unanimous in purpose and so concentrated, 
 a corporate conscience so clear and so convinced, co-operation so 
 spontaneous, so ardent, and so resolute. Just consider what it 
 means, here in this United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Ire- 
 land, and Wales — to hear one plain, harmonious, great united 
 voice over the seas from our great Dominions. Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, South Africa, New Zealand, our Crown Colonies swell the 
 chorus. 
 
 In India — where whatever we won by the sword we hold and 
 we retain by the more splendid title of just and disinterested rule, 
 by the authority, not of a despot, but of a trustee — the response 
 to our common appeal has moved all our feelings to their pro- 
 foundest depths, and has been such as to shiver and to shatter 
 the vain and ignorant imaginings of our enemies. That is a 
 remarkable and indeed a unique spectacle. 
 
 What is it that stirred the imagination, aroused the conscience, 
 enlisted the manhood, welded into one compact and irresistible 
 force the energies and the will of the greatest Imperial structure 
 that the world has ever known ? That is a question which, for 
 a moment, at any rate, it is well worth asking and answering. 
 Let me say, then, first negatively, that we are not impelled, any 
 of us, by some of the motives which have occasioned the bloody 
 struggles of the past. In this case, so far as we are concerned, 
 ambition and aggression play no part. What do we want ? 
 W T hat do we aim at ? What have we to gain ? 
 
 We are a great, world-wide, peace-loving partnership. By the 
 wisdom and the courage of our forefathers, by great deeds of 
 heroism and adventure by land and sea, by the insight and cor- 
 porate sagacity, the tried and tested experience of many genera- 
 tions, we have built up a dominion which is buttressed by the two 
 pillars of Liberty and Law. We are not vain enough or foolish 
 enough to think that in the course of a long process there have 
 not been blunders, or worse than blunders, and that to-day our 
 Dominion does not fall short of what in our ideals it might and 
 it ought and, we believe, it is destined to be. But such as we 
 have received it, and such as we hope to have it, with it we are 
 content. 
 
 We do not covet any people's territory. We have no desire 
 to impose our rule upon alien populations. The British Empire 
 is enough for us. All that we wished for, all that we wish for 
 now, is to be allowed peaceably to consolidate our own resources, 
 to raise within the Empire the level of common opportunity, to 
 draw closer the bond of affection and confidence between its parts, 
 
 35
 
 and to make it everywhere the worthy home of the best traditions 
 of British liberty. Does it not follow from that that nowhere in 
 the world is there a people who have stronger motives to avoid 
 war and to seek and ensue peace ? Why, then, are the British 
 people throughout the length and breadth of our Empire every- 
 where turning their ploughshares into swords ? Why are the 
 best of our ablebodied men leaving the fields and the factory and 
 the counting-house for the recruiting office and the training 
 camp ? 
 
 If, as I have said, we have no desire to add to our Imperial 
 burdens, either in area or in responsibility, it is equally true that 
 in entering this war we had no ill will to gratify nor wrongs of 
 our own to avenge. In regard to Germany in particular, our 
 policy — repeatedly stated in Parliament, resolutely pursued year 
 after year both in London and in Berlin — our policy has been to 
 remove one by one the outstanding causes of possible friction 
 and so to establish a firm basis for cordial relations in the days to 
 come. 
 
 We have said from the first — I have said it over and over 
 again, and so has Sir Edward Grey — we have said from the first 
 that our friendships with certain Powers, with France, with 
 Russia, and with Japan, were not to be construed as implying 
 cold feelings and still less hostile purposes against any other 
 Power. But at the same time we have always made it clear, to 
 quote words used by Sir Edward Grey as far back as November, 
 191 1 — I quote his exact words — " One does not make new friend- 
 ships worth having by deserting old ones. New friendships by 
 all means let us have, but not at the expense of the ones we have." 
 That has been, and I trust will always be, the attitude of those 
 whom the Kaiser in his now notorious proclamation describes as 
 the treacherous English. 
 
 We laid down — and I wish to call not only your attention but 
 the attention of the whole world to this, when so many false 
 legends are now being invented and circulated — in the following 
 year — in the year 1912 we laid down in terms carefully approved 
 by the Cabinet, and which I will textually quote, what our rela- 
 tions with Germany ought in our view to be. We said, and we 
 communicated this to the German Government — " Britain 
 declares that she will neither make, nor join in, any unprovoked 
 attack upon Germany. Aggression upon Germany is not the 
 subject, and forms no part, of any treaty, understanding, or com- 
 bination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a 
 party to anything that has such an object." There is nothing 
 ambiguous or equivocal about that. 
 
 But that was not enough for German statesmanship. They 
 wanted us to go further. They asked us to pledge ourselves 
 absolutely to neutrality in the event of Germany being engaged 
 in war, and this, mind you, at a time when Germany was enor- 
 
 36
 
 mously increasing both her aggressive and her defensive resources, 
 especially upon the sea. They asked us, to put it quite 
 plainly, for a free hand, so far as we were concerned, when 
 they selected the opportunity to overbear, to dominate the 
 European world. 
 
 To such a demand but one answer was possible, and that was 
 the answer we gave. None the less we have continued during 
 the whole of the last two years, and never more energetically 
 and more successfully than during the Balkan crisis of last year, 
 to work not only for the peace of Europe but for the creation of 
 a better international atmosphere and a more cordial co-operation 
 between all the Powers. From both points of view, that of our 
 domestic interests as a kingdom and an Empire, and that of our 
 settled attitude and policy in the counsels of Europe, a war such 
 as this, which injures the one and frustrates the other, was and 
 could only be regarded as among the worst of catastrophes — 
 among the worst of catastrophes, but not the worst. 
 
 Four weeks ago, speaking at the Guildhall, in the City of 
 London, when the war was stil! in its early days, I asked my 
 fellow-countrymen with what countenance, with what conscience, 
 had we basely chosen to stand aloof, we could have watched from 
 day to day the terrible unrolling of events — public faith shame- 
 lessly broken, the freedom of a small people trodden in the dust, 
 the wanton invasion of Belgium and then of France, by hordes 
 who leave behind them at every stage of their progress a dismal 
 trail of savagery, of devastation, and of desecration worthy of the 
 blackest annals in the history of barbarism. That was four 
 weeks ago. The war has now lasted for 60 days, and every 
 one of those days has added to the picture its share of sombre 
 and repulsive traits. We now see clearly written down in letters 
 of carnage and spoliation the real aims and methods of this long- 
 prepared and well-organized scheme against the liberties of 
 Europe. 
 
 I say nothing of other countries. I pass no judgment upon 
 them. But if we here in Great Britain had abstained and re- 
 mained neutral, forsworn our word, deserted our friends, faltered 
 and compromised with the plain dictates of our duty — nay, if we 
 had not shown ourselves ready to strike with all our forces at the 
 common enemy of civilization and freedom, there would have 
 been nothing left for our country but to veil her face in shame and to 
 be ready in her turn — for her time would have come — to share 
 the doom which she would have richly deserved, and after 
 centuries of glorious life to go down to her grave " unwept, 
 unhonoured, and unsung." 
 
 Let us gladly acknowledge what becomes clearer and clearer 
 every day, that the world is just as ready as it ever was, and no 
 part of it readier than the British Empire, to understand and to re- 
 spond to moral issues. The new school of German thought has 
 
 37
 
 been teaching for a generation past that in the affairs of nations 
 there is no code of ethics. According to their doctrine force and 
 nothing but force is the test and the measure of right. As the 
 events which are going on before our eyes have made it plain, 
 they have succeeded only too well in indoctrinating with their 
 creed — I will not say the people of Germany, — like Burke, I 
 will not attempt to draw up an indictment against a nation — 
 I will not say the people of Germany, but those who control and 
 execute German policy. 
 
 But it is one of those products of German genius which, whether 
 or not it was intended exclusively for home consumption, has not, 
 I am happy to say, found a market abroad, and certainly not 
 within the boundaries of the British Empire. We still believe 
 here, old-fashioned people as we are, in the sanctity of treaties, 
 that the weak have rights and that the strong have duties, that 
 small nationalities have every bit as good a title as large ones to 
 life and independence, and that freedom for its own sake is as 
 well worth fighting for to-day as it ever was in the past. And we 
 look forward at the end of this war to a Europe in which these 
 great and simple and venerable truths will be recognized and 
 safeguarded for ever against the recrudescence of the era of blood 
 and iron. Stated in a few words that is the reason for our united 
 front, the reason that has brought our gallant Indian warriors to 
 Marseilles, that is extracting from our most distant Dominions 
 the best of their manhood, and which in the course of two months 
 has transformed the United Kingdom into a vast recruiting 
 ground. 
 
 Now I have come here to-night not to talk but to do business. 
 Before I sit down I want to say to you a few practical words. 
 We are confronted, as you all know and recognize, by the greatest 
 emergency in our history. Every part of the United Kingdom 
 and every man and every woman in every part of it is called 
 upon to make his or her contribution and to do his or her share, 
 and our primary business is to fill the ranks. There is, I find, in 
 some quarters an apprehension that the recruiting for the New 
 Army and the functions to be assigned to that Army when it is 
 formed and trained, may interfere with, or may in some way 
 belittle or disparage the Territorial Force. Believe me, no 
 delusion could be more mischievous or more complete. 
 
 No praise could be too high for the patriotic and sustained 
 efforts of the county associations or for the quality and efficiency 
 of the Territorial troops. It is a comparatively easy thing to 
 make great efforts and sacrifices under the stress and strain, which 
 we are now experiencing, of a supreme crisis. The Territorials, 
 without any such stimulus, in the piping times of peace, when war 
 and the sufferings and the struggles and glories of war were con- 
 tingent and remote, these men gave their time, sacrificed their 
 leisure — not only in their annual training, but in thousands of 
 
 38
 
 cases both officers and men devoted their spare hours to preparing 
 themselves in the study and the practice of the art of war. They 
 have now been embodied for two months, and I am expressing 
 the considered opinion of one of the most eminent generals when 
 I say that the divisions now in camp in various parts of the 
 country, and improving every day in efficiency, have completely 
 justified their title to play any part that may be assigned to them, 
 either in home defence, in the manning of our garrisons, or in the 
 battle lines at the front. 
 
 It is then no want of appreciation of the patriotism and of the 
 efficiency of the Territorial Forces that leads me to ask you to- 
 night for recruits for the Regular Army. We wish, so far as 
 military exigencies permit, that the new battalions and squadrons 
 and batteries should retain their local associations and their cor- 
 porate and distinctive national character. Why, the freedom and 
 the autonomy of the smaller nationalities is one of the great issues 
 of this gigantic contest. 
 
 I went a week ago to Dublin to make an appeal to Ireland. I 
 asked Irishmen then, as I do now, on behalf of the Government 
 and of the War Office, to enlist in and to make up the comple- 
 ment of an Irish Army Corps. I repeat that appeal to-night to 
 the men of Wales. We want that. We want you to fill up the 
 ranks of the Welsh Army Corps. We believe that the preserva- 
 tion of local and national ties, of the genius of a people, which 
 has a history of its own, is not only hostile to or inconsistent with, 
 but, on the contrary, fosters and strengthens and stimulates the 
 spirit of a common purpose, of a corporate brotherhood, of an 
 underlying and binding Imperial unity throughout every section 
 and among all ranks of the forces of the Crown. 
 
 Men of Wales, of whom I see so many thousands in this 
 splendid gathering, let me say one last word to you. Remember 
 your past. Think of the villages and the mountains which in old 
 days were the shelter of the recruiting ground of your fathers in 
 the struggles which adorn and glorify your annals. Never has a 
 stronger or a more compelling appeal been made to you of all 
 that you as a nation honour and hold true. Be worthy of those 
 who went before you and leave to your children the richest of all 
 inheritances, the memory of fathers who in a great cause put 
 self-sacrifice before ease, and honour above life itself. 
 
 39
 
 
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 THE WAR OF CIVILIZATION 
 
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 WHY WE ARE AT WAR 
 
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 War. Selected by E. V. Lucas. Fcap. 8vo, Is. net. 
 
 Nursing in War Time : Lessons for the Inexperienced. 
 
 By M. N. Oxford, author of " A Handbook of Nursing." 
 Second edition. Fcap. 8vo, Is. net. 
 
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 The Reveille. By Bret Harte. Fcap. 8vo, 4 pp., Id. 
 The Searchlights. By Alfred Noyes. Fcap. 8vo, 4 pp., Id 
 Remember Louvain ! A Little Book of Liberty and 
 
 War. Selected by E. V. Lucas. Fcap. 8vo, Is. net. 
 Nursing in War Time : Lessons for the Inexperienced. 
 
 By M. N. Oxford, author of "A Handbook of Nursing." 
 
 Second edition. Fcap. 8vo, Is. net. 
 
 METHUEN & Co. Ltd. LONDON
 
 .^.SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIL 
 
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 AA 000 281016