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THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY

ENGLAND UNSHEATHES THE SWORD

PREMIER ASQUITH

My Lord Mayor and Citizens of London: It is three and a half years since I last had the honor of addressing in this hall a gathering of the citizens. We were then met 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 circumstances 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 which now confronts us of a contest which for the number and importance of the powers

On September 5, 1914, soon after the outbreak of the war, Prime Minister Asquith addressed a great body of people at the Guildhall in London.

The Right Honorable Herbert Henry Asquith was born at Morley, Yorkshire, in 1852 and was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. Mr. Asquith had held many high offices in the gift of the British nation before he became Prime Minister in 1908. He was superseded in this office by David Lloyd George in January of 1917.

engaged, the scale of their armaments and armies, the width of the theater of conflict, the outpouring of blood and the 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 civilized 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 rightness of our position, when we welcomed the new securities for peace. We are equally confident in it today, when reluctantly, and against our will, but with a clear judgment and a clean conscience we find ourselves involved with the whole strength of this empire in a bloody arbitration 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 our condition as a nation to-day if we had been base enough through timidity or through perverted calculation of self-interest, or through a paralysis of the sense of honor and duty (cheers), if 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 civilized world to Belgium, a small State, which has lived for more than seventy years under the several and collective guarantee to which we in common with Prussia and Austria were parties, and we should have seen at the instance and by the action of two of these guaranteeing powers her neutrality violated, her independence strangled, her territory made use of as affording the easiest and the most convenient road to a war of unprovoked aggression against France. We, the British people, would at this moment have been standing by with folded arms and with such countenance as we could com

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mand while this small and unprotected State, in defense of her vital liberties, made a heroic stand against overweening and overwhelming force; we should have been admiring as detached spectators the siege of Liége, the steady and manful resistance of a small army to the occupation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and memories, the gradual forcing back of the patriotic defenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp, countless outrages inflicted by buccaneering levies exacted from the unoffending civil population, and, finally, the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years' War, the sack of Louvain, with its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivaled associations - a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance. What account should we, the Government and the people of this country, have been able to render to the tribunal of our national conscience and sense of honor, if, in defiance of our plighted and solemn obligations, we had endured, nay, if we had not done our best to prevent, yes, and to avenge these intolerable outrages? For my part I say which means in

that sooner than be a silent witness effect a willing accomplice of 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. (Prolonged cheers.)

NOW THE WAR HAS COME

WINSTON CHURCHILL

THIS is the same great European war that would have been 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. 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, and in the repeated bullyings and attempts to terrorize France which have been the characteristic of German policy ever since. 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.)

Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make the same mistake or the same sort

This is an extract from a speech delivered at the London Opera House, September 11, 1914.

The Right Honorable Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born November 30, 1874. He became a member of Parliament in 1900. In turn he held the following offices under the British Crown UnderSecretary of State for the Colonies, President of the Board of Trade, and Home Secretary. From 1911 to 1915 he was First Lord of the Admiralty. He is now an officer, serving in the British army.

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of mistake as Germany made when she had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. 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 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; 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.

I use these words because this is a war in which we are all together, all classes, all races, all States, principalities, dominions, and powers throughout the British Empire

we are all together. 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,

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