Chapter 69
Unemployment 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, [cheers,] 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 s.h.i.+pping of the enemy has been hunted from the seas [cheers] and our seaman are still patiently, or impatiently, [laughter,] waiting for 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 we shall continue to owe, to our navy. [Cheers.] 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. [Cheers.]
Army's Glorious Record.
If we turn to our army [cheers] we can say with equal justice and pride that during these weeks it has rivaled the most glorious records of its past. [Cheers.] Sir John French [cheers] and his gallant officers and men live in our hearts, as they will live in the memories of those who come afterward. [Cheers,]
But splendid achievements such as these--equally splendid in retirement and in advance ["Hear, hear!"]--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.
[Cheers.]
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 [cheers] 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 furnis.h.i.+ng with such magnificent patriotism and liberality. [Cheers.]
Eager Territorials.
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. [Cheers.] But that is not enough. We must do still more. Already, in little more than a month, we have 500,000 recruits for the four new armies which, as Lord Kitchener told the country yesterday, he means to have ready to bring into the field. In a single day we have had as many men enlist 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 overstrained, and there have been many cases of temporary inconvenience and hards.h.i.+p 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 [cheers] will do much to mitigate the lot of wives and children and dependents who are left behind. [Cheers.]
We want more men, and, perhaps most of all, the help for training them.
Every one in the whole of this kingdom who has in days gone by, as officer or as non-commissioned officer, served his country never had a greater or more fruitful opportunity for service than is presented to him today. [Cheers.] We appeal to the manhood of 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. [Cheers.]
Scotland is doing well, and, indeed, more than well, and no part of Scotland I believe, in proportion, better than Edinburgh. I cannot 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 gentleman who has the Scottish command [cheers,] 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 so far as possible, and subject to the accidents of war, people belonging to the same place, breathing the same atmosphere, having the same a.s.sociations, should be kept together.
Our recruits come to us spontaneously, under no kind of compulsion, [cheers,] 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 comforts and all the luxuries that any of them have been accustomed 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 honor and the good faith of our country, to s.h.i.+eld the independence of free States, to protect against brute force the principles of civilization and the liberties of Europe. [Loud cheers.]
MR. ASQUITH AT DUBLIN.
Speech in the Round Room of the Mansion House, Sept. 25.
My Lord Mayor: Some weeks ago I took it upon myself to suggest to the four princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sociation and 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 thirty years one of their representatives in the House of Commons, ["Hear, hear!"] and now, indeed, by one of the melancholy privileges of time the senior among the Scottish members. [Laughter.] But, my Lord Mayor, tonight when I come to Dublin I can put forward neither the one claim nor the other. [A Voice--Home Rule.] I base my t.i.tle, 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 faculties and opportunities to render to Ireland. [Cheers.] I come here, not as a partisan, not even as a politician, but I come here as for the time being the head of the King's Government, [cheers,] to summon Ireland, a loyal and patriotic Ireland, to take her place in the defense of our common cause. [Cheers.] My Lord Mayor, it is no part of my mission tonight, it is indeed at this time of day wholly unnecessary, to justify, still less to excuse, the part which 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.
Unity of the Empire.
That, my Lord Mayor, as you said, is not the case today. [Cheers.] 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 of our national unity. Again I say that is not the case today. 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, [prolonged cheers,] without distinction of creed or party, of race or climate, cla.s.s 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 civilization, [cheers,] and all that is worth hoping for in the future progress of mankind. [Loud cheers.] What better or higher cause, my Lord Mayor, whether we succeed or fail? [Cries of "No failure."] We are going not to fail, but to succeed. [Enthusiastic cheers.] What higher cause than to arouse and enlist the best qualities of a free people, than to be engaged at one and the same time in the vindication of international good faith, in the protection of the weak against the violence of the strong, [cheers,] and in the a.s.sertion 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 practice the religion of force? It is not--I am sure you
Germany's Profound Mistakes.
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 deliberately 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 miscalculations. [Cheers.] Both of them natural enough in a man who had come to believe that in international matters everything can be explained and measured in terms of material force.
What, gentlemen, were those mistakes? The first was that Belgium, [cheers,] a small and prosperous country entirely disinterested in European quarrels, guaranteed by the joint and several compacts of the great powers, that Belgium would not resent, and certainly would not resist, the use of her territory as a highroad 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 fields should be drenched with the blood of her soldiers, her towns and villages devastated by marauders, her splendid heritage of monuments and of treasures, built up for her by the piety, art, and learning of the past, ruthlessly laid in ruins? The pa.s.sionate attachment of a numerically small population to the bit of territory, which looks so little upon the map, the pride and the unconquerable devotion of a free people to their own free State, these were things which apparently had never been dreamed of in the philosophy of Potsdam. [Laughter and "Hear, hear!"] 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. [Cheers.]
For, gentlemen, the indomitable resistance of the Belgians did more than change the whole face of the campaign. [Cheers.] It proved to the world that ideas which cannot be weighed or measured by any material calculus can still inspire and dominate mankind. [Cheers.] And that is the reason why the whole sympathy of the civilized 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. [Cheers.]
The Moral Bond of Civilization.
But, my Lord Mayor, Germany was guilty of another and a still more capital blunder in relation to ourselves. ["Hear, hear!"] I am not referring for the moment to the grotesque understanding upon which I dwelt a week ago at Edinburgh, their carefully fostered belief that we here were so rent with civil distraction, [laughter,] so paralyzed 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. [Cheers and cries of "Never!"] The German misconception 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, [laughter,] embark upon a costly and b.l.o.o.d.y contest from which it had nothing in the hope of profit to expect?
["Hear, hear!"] They forgot--they forgot that we, like the Belgians, had something at stake which cannot be translated into what one of our poets has called "The law of nicely calculated less or more." What was it we had at stake? First and foremost, the fulfillment to the small and relatively weak country of our plighted word [cheers] and behind and beyond that the maintenance of the whole system of international good-will which is the moral bond of the civilized world. [Cheers.] 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 ascendency of force. My Lord Mayor, 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 h.e.l.l 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 developments of the instruments of destruction, war has become an infinitely 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. ["Shame!"]
Shameful and Cynical Desecration.
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 those sentiments of religion and national a.s.sociation, 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 conflict with its smoke and its carnage there are the sufferings of those who are left behind, the waste of wealth, the economic dislocation, the heritage, the long heritage of enmities and misunderstanding 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 s.h.i.+rk it. [Cheers.] Our record in the matter is clear. We strove up to the last moment for peace [cheers] and only when we were satisfied that the price of peace was the betrayal of other countries and the dishonor and degradation of our own we took up the sword.
[Prolonged cheers.] I should like, if I might for a moment, 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 fifty years have pa.s.sed. Little progress, it seems, has yet been made toward 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 molding 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, [cheers,] each with a corporate consciousness of its own.
The Recognition of Nationality.
Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, Greece, and the Balkan States, they must be recognized as having exactly as good a t.i.tle as their more powerful neighbors--more powerful in strength and in wealth--exactly as good a t.i.tle to a place in the sun.
[Prolonged cheers and some laughter.] And it means, finally, or it ought to mean, perhaps by a slow and gradual process, the subst.i.tution for force, for the clash of competing ambition, for grouping and alliances and a precarious equipoise, the subst.i.tution for all these things of a real European partners.h.i.+p, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will. [Cheers.] A year ago that would have sounded like a Utopian idea. It is probably one that may not or will not be realized either today or tomorrow. If and when this war is decided in favor of the Allies, it will at once come within the range, and, before long, within the grasp of European statesmans.h.i.+p.
[Cheers.] I go back for a moment, if I am not keeping you too long, ["Go on,"] 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, [cheers,] and she would, I know, respond with alacrity to any summons which called upon her to take her share in the a.s.sertion and the defense of our common interests. But, gentlemen, 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 [cheers]
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?
The Appeal to Ireland.
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 worldwide resistance to pretensions which threaten to paralyze and sterilize all progress and the best destinies of mankind? [Cheers.] 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, 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. But of those who have fallen in both services we may ask how could men die better? [Cheers.]
The Indian Contingent.
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 today at Ma.r.s.eilles, [loud cheers,]
and in all parts of our great dominions the convoys are already mustering. Over half a million recruits have joined the colors here at home, [cheers,] and I come to ask you in Ireland, though you don't need my asking, to take your part. [Cheers and shouts of "We must."] There was a time when, through the operations of laws which every one now acknowledges to have been both unjust and impolitic, ["Hear, hear!"] the martial spirit of and the capacity for which Irishmen have always been conspicuous, found its chief outlet in the alien armies of the Continent. I have seen it computed--I do not know whether with precise accuracy--but I have seen it computed upon good authority that in the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, when the penal laws were here in full swing, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted under the banners of the empire of France and Spain, and we at home in the United Kingdom suffered a double loss; for, gentlemen, not only were we drained year by year of some of our best fighting material, ["Hear, hear!"] but over and over again we found ourselves engaged in battle array suffering and inflicting deadly loss upon those who might have been, and under happier conditions would have been, fellow-soldiers of our own.
[Cheers.] The British Empire has always been proud, and with reason, of those Irish regiments [cheers] and their Irish leaders, [more cheers,]
and was never prouder of them that it is today. [Great cheering.] We ask you here in Ireland to give us more, [cheers, and a Voice, "You'll get them,"] 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. [Cheers.]
The Volunteers of Ireland.
The conditions seem to me to be exceptionally favorable for the purpose.
We have of late been witnessing here in Ireland a spontaneous enrollment and organization in all parts of the country of bodies of volunteers. I say nothing--for I wish tonight to avoid trespa.s.sing upon even a square inch of controversial ground--I say nothing of the causes or motives which brought them originally into existence, [laughter,] and have fostered their growth and strength. I will only say--and this is my nearest approach to politics tonight--that there are two things which to my mind have become unthinkable. The first is that one section of Irishmen are going to fight. [Loud cheers.] The second is that Great Britain is going to fight either. [Renewed cheers.] 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 prompt.i.tude 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. [Cheers.] I should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish brigade, [cheers,] or, better still, an Irish army corps. [Loud cheers.] Do not let them be afraid that by joining the colors they will lose their ident.i.ty and become absorbed in some invertebrate ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sociated in this or that district in training and in common exercises should be kept together and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them. ["Hear, hear!"]
And of one thing further I am sure. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and we think that if the officers now engaged in training these men are proved equal to the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly and gratefully retained. I repeat that the empire needs recruits, and 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 immediate necessity, and no Irishman in responding to it need be afraid that he is prejudicing the future of the volunteers.
[Cheers.] I do not say, and I can not say, under what precise form or organization, 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. [Cheers.] I have only one more thing to say to you. [Cries of "Go on."] If our need is great your opportunity is also great. [Cheers.] 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. [Loud and prolonged cheers.] Scattered like the Autumn leaves to the four winds of heaven, we are a united nation, [renewed cheers,] 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 as the free-will offering of a free people. [Great cheering.]
The Earl of Meath, Lord Lieutenant of County Dublin, who was next called on, declared that their gathering would be historic because for the first time in her history Irishmen of all cla.s.ses, creeds, and politics had met on the same platform. The modern Attila might be known, as his predecessor was known, as the scourge of G.o.d. But for the constant vigilance of our army and our fleet Ireland might have met the fate of Belgium. He suggested that Earl Kitchener should, as far as possible, see that the Irish corps at the front should act together.
MR. ASQUITH AT CARDIFF.
Speech in the Skating Rink, Oct. 2.