Chapter 72
That is the struggle which is opened now and which must go forward without pause or abatement until it is settled decisively and finally one way or the other. On that there can be no compromise or truce. It is our life or it is theirs. We are bound, having gone so far, to go forward without flinching to the very end. [Cheers.]
"The Terror of Europe."
This is the same great European war that would have fought in the year 1909 if Russia had not humbled herself and given way to German threats.
It is the same war that Sir Edward Grey stopped last year. [Loud cheers.] Now it has come upon us. If you look back across the long periods of European history to the original cause, you will, I am sure, find it in the cruel terms enforced upon France in the year 1870, ["Hear, hear!"] and in the repeated bullyings and attempts to terrorize France which have been the characteristic of German policy ever since.
[Cheers.] The more you study this question the more you will see that the use the Germans made of their three aggressive and victorious wars against Denmark, against Austria, and against France has been such as to make them the terror and the bully of Europe, the enemy and the menace of every small State upon their borders, and a perpetual source of unrest and disquietude to their powerful neighbors. [Cheers.]
Claims of Nationality.
Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. [Cheers.] Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work toward great and sound principles for the European system. And the first of those principles which we should keep before us is the principle of nationality [cheers]--that is to say, not the conquest or subjugation of any great community or of any strong race of men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered [cheers]; and if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should try to settle their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe which must follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and feelings of the people who live in them.
That is the aim which, if it is achieved, will justify the exertions of the war and will make some amends to the world for the loss and suffering, the agony of suffering, which it has wrought and entailed, and which will give to those who come after us not only the pride which we hope they will feel in remembering the martial achievements of the present age of Britain, but which will give them also a better and fairer world to live in and a Europe free from the causes of hatred and unrest which have poisoned the comity of nations and ruptured the peace of Christendom.
The Unity of the Empire.
I use these words because this is a war in which we are all together, [cheers,] all cla.s.ses, all races, all States, princ.i.p.alities, dominions, and powers throughout the British Empire--we are all together. [Cheers.]
Years ago the elder Pitt urged upon his countrymen the compulsive invocation, "Be one people." It has taken us till now to obey his appeal, but now we are together, and while we remain one people there are no forces in the world strong enough to beat us down or break us up.
[Cheers.]
I hope, even in this dark hour of strife and struggle, that the unity which has been established in our country under the pressure of war will not cease when the great military effort upon which we are engaged and the great moral causes which we are pursuing have been achieved. I hope, and I do not think my hope is a vain one, that the forces which have come together in our islands and throughout our empire may continue to work together, not only in a military struggle, but to try to make our country more quickly a more happy and more prosperous land, where social justice and free inst.i.tutions are more firmly established than they have been in the past. [Cheers.] If that is so we shall not have fought in vain at home as well as abroad.
With these hopes and in this belief I would urge you, laying aside all hindrance, thrusting away all private aims, to devote yourselves unswervingly and unflinchingly to the vigorous and successful prosecution of the war. [Loud cheers.]
THE GREAT WAR.
Speech by David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Queen's Hall, London, Sept. 19.
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have come here this afternoon to talk to my fellow-countrymen about this great war and the part that we ought to take in it. I feel my task is easier after we have been listening to the greatest war song in the world ("The March of the Men of Harlech").
[Applause.]
Why Our National Honor Is Involved.
There is no man in this room who has always regarded the prospect of engaging in a great war with greater reluctance and with greater repugnance than I have done throughout the whole of my political life.
["Hear, hear!"] There is no man either inside or outside of this room more convinced that we could not have avoided it without national dishonor. [Great applause.] I am fully alive to the fact that every nation who has ever engaged in any war has always invoked the sacred name of honor. Many a crime has been committed in its name; there are some being committed now. All the same, national honor is a reality, and any nation that disregards it is doomed. ["Hear, hear!"] Why is our honor as a country involved in this war? Because, in the first instance, we are bound by honorable obligations to defend the independence, the liberty, the integrity, of a small neighbor that has always lived peaceably. [Applause.] She could not have compelled us; she was weak; but the man who declines to discharge his duty because his creditor is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard. [Loud applause.] We entered into a treaty--a solemn treaty--two treaties--to defend Belgium and her integrity. Our signatures are attached to the doc.u.ments. Our signatures do not stand alone there; this country was not the only country that undertook to defend the integrity of Belgium. Russia, France, Austria, Prussia--they are all there. Why are Austria and Prussia not performing the obligations of their bond? It is suggested that when we quote this treaty it is purely an excuse on our part--it is our low craft and cunning to cloak our jealousy of a superior civilization--[Laughter]--that we are attempting to destroy. Our answer is the action we took in 1870.
["Hear, hear!"] What was that? Mr. Gladstone was then Prime Minister.
[Applause.] Lord Granville, I think, was then Foreign Secretary. I have never heard it laid to their charge that they were ever Jingoes.
France and Belgium in 1870.
What did they do in 1870? That treaty bound us then. We called upon the belligerent powers to respect it. We called upon France, and we called upon Germany. At that time, bear in mind, the greatest danger to Belgium came from France, and not from Germany. We intervened to protect Belgium against France, exactly as we are doing now to protect her against Germany. [Applause.] We proceeded in exactly the same way. We invited both the belligerent powers to state that they had no intention of violating Belgian territory. What was the answer given by Bismarck? He said it was superfluous to ask Prussia such a question in view of the treaties in force. France gave a similar answer. We received at that time the thanks of the Belgian people for our intervention in a very remarkable doc.u.ment. It is a doc.u.ment addressed by the Munic.i.p.ality of Brussels to Queen Victoria after that intervention, and it reads:
The great and n.o.ble people over
That was in 1870. Mark what followed. Three or four days after that doc.u.ment of thanks a French army was wedged up against the Belgian frontier, every means of escape shut out by a ring of flame from Prussian cannon. There was one way of escape. What was that? Violating the neutrality of Belgium. What did they do? The French on that occasion preferred ruin and humiliation to the breaking of their bond. [Loud applause.] The French Emperor, the French Marshals, 100,000 gallant Frenchmen in arms, preferred to be carried captive to the strange land of their enemies rather than dishonor the name of their country.
[Applause.] It was the last French army in the field. Had they violated Belgian neutrality the whole history of that war would have been changed, and yet, when it was the interest of France to break the treaty then, she did not do it.
"A Sc.r.a.p of Paper."
It is the interest of Prussia today to break the treaty, and she has done it. [Hisses.] She avows it with cynical contempt for every principle of justice. She says: "Treaties only bind you when it is your interest to keep them." [Laughter.] "What is a treaty?" says the German Chancellor, "A sc.r.a.p of paper." Have you any five-pound notes about you?
[Laughter and applause.] I am not calling for them. [Laughter.] Have you any of those neat little Treasury one-pound notes? [Laughter.] If you have, burn them; they are only sc.r.a.ps of paper. [Laughter and applause.] What are they made of? Rags. [Laughter.] What are they worth?
The whole credit of the British Empire. [Loud applause.] Sc.r.a.ps of paper! I have been dealing with sc.r.a.ps of paper within the last month.
One suddenly found the commerce of the world coming to a standstill. The machine had stopped. Why? I will tell you. We discovered--many of us for the first time, for I do not pretend that I do not know much more about the machinery of commerce today than I did six weeks ago, and there are many others like me--we discovered that the machinery of commerce was moved by bills of exchange. I have seen some of them, [laughter,]
wretched, crinkled, scrawled over, blotched, frowsy, and yet those wretched little sc.r.a.ps of paper move great s.h.i.+ps laden with thousands of tons of precious cargo from one end of the world to the other.
[Applause.] What is the motive power behind them? The honor of commercial men. [Applause.] Treaties are the currency of international statesmans.h.i.+p. [Applause.] Let us be fair--German merchants, German traders, have the reputation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world, ["Hear, hear"] but if the currency of German commerce is to be debased to the level of that of her statesmans.h.i.+p, no trader from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look at a German signature again. [Loud applause.] This doctrine of the sc.r.a.p of paper, this doctrine which is proclaimed by Bernhardi, that treaties only bind a nation as long as it is to its interest, goes under the root of all public law. It is the straight road to barbarism. ["Hear, hear!"] It is as if you were to remove the magnetic pole because it was in the way of a German cruiser. [Laughter.] The whole navigation of the seas would become dangerous, difficult, and impossible; and the whole machinery of civilization will break down if this doctrine wins in this war. ["Hear, hear!"] We are fighting against barbarism, [applause,] and there is only one way of putting it right. If there are nations that say they will only respect treaties when it is to their interest to do so, we must make it to their interest to do so for the future. [Applause.]
Germany's Perjury.
What is their defense? Consider the interview which took place between our Amba.s.sador and the great German officials. When their attention was called to this treaty to which they were parties, they said: "We cannot help that. Rapidity of action is the great German a.s.set." There is a greater a.s.set for a nation than rapidity of action, and that is honest dealing. [Loud applause.] What are Germany's excuses? She says Belgium was plotting against her; Belgium was engaged in a great conspiracy with Britain and France to attack her. Not merely is it not true, but Germany knows it is not true. ["Hear, hear!"] What is her other excuse. That France meant to invade Germany through Belgium. That is absolutely untrue. ["Hear, hear!"] France offered Belgium five army corps to defend her if she were attacked. Belgium said: "I do not require them; I have the word of the Kaiser. Shall Caesar send a lie?" [Laughter and applause.] All these tales about conspiracy have been vamped up since. A great nation ought to be ashamed to behave like a fraudulent bankrupt, perjuring its way through its obligations. ["Hear, hear!"] What she says is not true. She has deliberately broken this treaty, and we were in honor bound to stand by it. [Applause.]
Belgium's "Crime."
Belgium has been treated brutally. ["Hear, hear!"] How brutally we shall not yet know. We already know too much. But what had she done? Had she sent an ultimatum to Germany? Had she challenged Germany? Was she preparing to make war on Germany? Had she inflicted any wrong upon Germany which the Kaiser was bound to redress? She was one of the most unoffending little countries in Europe. ["Hear, hear!"] There she was--peaceable, industrious, thrifty, hard working, giving offense to no one. And her cornfields have been trampled, her villages have been burned, her art treasures have been destroyed, her men have been slaughtered--yea, and her women and children too. [Cries of "Shame!"]
Hundreds and thousands of her people, their neat, comfortable little homes burned to the dust, are wandering homeless in their own land. What was their crime? Their crime was that they trusted to the word of a Prussian King. [Applause.] I do not know what the Kaiser hopes to achieve by this war. [Derisive laughter.] I have a shrewd idea what he will get; but one thing he has made certain, and that is that no nation will ever commit that crime again.
"The Right to Defend Its Homes."
I am not going to enter into details of outrages. Many of them are untrue, and always are in a war. War is a grim, ghastly business at best or at worst, ["Hear, hear!"] and I am not going to say that all that has been said in the way of outrages must necessarily be true. I will go beyond that, and I will say that if you turn two millions of men--forced, conscript, compelled, driven--into the field, you will always get among them a certain number who will do things that the nation to which they belong would be ashamed of. I am not depending on these tales. It is enough for me to have the story which Germans themselves avow, admit, defend and proclaim--the burning and ma.s.sacring, the shooting down of harmless people. Why? Because, according to the Germans, these people fired on German soldiers. What business had German soldiers there at all? ["Hear, hear!" and applause.] Belgium was acting in pursuance of the most sacred right, the right to defend its homes.
But they were not in uniform when they fired! If a burglar broke into the Kaiser's Palace at Potsdam, destroyed his furniture, killed his servants, ruined his art treasures--especially those he had made himself, [laughter and applause], and burned the precious ma.n.u.scripts of his speeches, do you think he would wait until he got into uniform before he shot him down? [Laughter.] They were dealing with those who had broken into their household. ["Hear, hear!"] But the perfidy of the Germans has already failed. They entered Belgium to save time. The time has gone. [Loud and continued applause.] They have not gained time, but they have lost their good name. ["Hear, hear!"]
The Case of Servia.
But Belgium is not the only little nation that has been attacked in this war, and I make no excuse for referring to the case of the other little nation, the case of Servia. ["Hear, hear!"] The history of Servia is not unblotted. Whose history, in the category of nations, is unblotted?
["Hear, hear!"] The first nation that is without sin, let her cast a stone at Servia. She was a nation trained in a horrible school, but she won her freedom with a tenacious valor, and she has maintained it by the same courage. [Applause.] If any Servians were mixed up in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Grand Duke, they ought to be punished. ["Hear, hear!"] Servia admits that. The Servian Government had nothing to do with it. Not even Austria claims that. The Servian Prime Minister is one of the most capable and honored men in Europe. ["Hear, hear!"] Servia was willing to punish any one of her subjects who had been proved to have any complicity in that a.s.sa.s.sination. What more could you expect?
What were the Austrian demands? Servia sympathized with her fellow-countrymen in Bosnia--that was one of her crimes. She must do so no more. Her newspapers were saying nasty things about Austria; they must do so no longer. That is the German spirit; you had it in Zabern.
["Hear, hear!" and applause.] How dare you criticise a Prussian official? [laughter,] and if you laugh, it is a capital offense--the Colonel in Zabern threatened to shoot if it was repeated. In the same way the Servian newspapers must not criticise Austria. I wonder what would have happened if we had taken the same line about German newspapers. ["Hear, hear!"] Servia said: "Very well, we will give orders to the newspapers that they must in future criticise neither Austria, nor Hungary, nor anything that is theirs." [Laughter.] Who can doubt the valor of Servia, when she undertook to tackle her newspaper editors?
[Laughter and applause.] She promised not to sympathize with Bosnia, she promised to write no critical articles about Austria; she would have no public meetings in which anything unkind was said about Austria.
"Servia Faced the Situation with Dignity."
But that was not enough. She must dismiss from her army the officers whom Austria should subsequently name. Those officers had just emerged from a war where they had added l.u.s.tre to the Servian arms; they were gallant, brave, and efficient. ["Hear, hear!"] I wonder whether it was their guilt or their efficiency that prompted Austria's action! But, mark you, the officers were not named; Servia was to undertake in advance to dismiss them from the army, the names to be sent in subsequently. Can you name a country in the world that would have stood that? [Cries of "No."] Supposing Austria or Germany had issued an ultimatum of that kind to this country, saying, "You must dismiss from your army, and from your navy, [laughter,] all those officers whom we shall subsequently name." Well, I think I could name them now.
[Laughter.] Lord Kitchener [loud applause] would go. Sir John French [applause] would be sent away; Gen. Smith-Dorrien [applause] would go, and I am sure that Sir John Jellicoe [applause] would have to go. And there is another gallant old warrior who would go, Lord Roberts.
[Applause.] It was a difficult situation for a small country. Here was a demand made upon her by a great military power that could have put half a dozen men in the field for every one of Servia's men, and that power was supported by the greatest military power in the world. How did Servia behave? It is not what happens to you in life that matters; it is the way in which you face it, ["Hear, hear!"] and Servia faced the situation with dignity. She said to Austria: "If any officers of mine have been guilty, and are proved to be guilty, I will dismiss them." Austria said: "That is not good enough for me." It was not guilt she was after, but capacity. ["Hear, hear!"]
Russia's Turn.
Then came Russia's turn. Russia has a special regard for Servia; she has a special interest in Servia. Russians have shed their blood for Servian independence many a time, for Servia is a member of Russia's family, and she cannot see Servia maltreated. Austria knew that. Germany knew it, and she turned round to Russia and said: "I insist that you shall stand by with your arms folded while Austria is strangling your little brother to death." What answer did the Russian Slav give? He gave the only answer that becomes a man. ["Hear, hear!"] He turned to Austria, and said: "You lay hands on that little fellow, and I will tear your ramshackle empire [loud applause and laughter] limb from limb." And he is doing it! [Loud applause.]
The Little Nations.
That is the story of two little nations. The world owes much to little nations--and to little men! [Laughter and applause.] This theory of bigness, this theory that you must have a big empire, and a big nation, and a big man--well, long legs have their advantage in a retreat.
[Laughter and applause.] The Kaiser's ancestor chose his warriors for their height, and that tradition has become a policy in Germany. Germany applies that ideal to nations, and will only allow six-foot-two nations to stand in the ranks. [Laughter.] But ah! the world owes much to the little five-foot-five nations. The greatest art in the world was the work of little nations; the most enduring literature of the world came from little nations; the greatest literature of England came when she was a nation of the size of Belgium fighting a great empire. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. Yes, and the salvation of mankind came through a little nation. G.o.d has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries His choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and strengthen their faith; and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism, our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages. [Loud applause.]