Speech in Usher Hall, Sept. 18.
A fortnight ago today, in the Guildhall of the City of London, I
endeavored to present to the nation and to the world the reasons which
have compelled us, the people of all others which have the greatest
interest in the maintenance of peace, to engage in the hazards and
horrors of war. I do not wish to repeat tonight in any detail what I
then said.
The war has arisen immediately and ostensibly, as every one 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 honorable friend and colleague Sir Edward Grey [loud
cheers] the conditions of a peaceful settlement of the actual
controversy were already within sight when, on July 31, Germany [hisses]
by her own deliberate act made war a certainty.
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, as I have already shown
elsewhere, and as I repeat here tonight, we are at war for three
reasons--in the first place, to vindicate the sanctity of treaty
obligations ["Hear, hear!"] and of what is properly called the public
law of Europe, ["Hear, hear!";] in the second place, to assert and to
enforce the independence of free States, relatively small and weak,
against the encroachments and the violence of the strong, [cheers,] and,
in the third place, to withstand, as we believe in the best interests
not only of our own empire but of civilization at large, the arrogant
claim of a single power to dominate the development of the destinies of
Europe. [Cheers.]
Meeting a Challenge.
Since I last spoke some faint attempts have been made in Germany to
dispute the accuracy and the sincerity of this statement of our attitude
and aim. It has been suggested, for instance, that our professed zeal
for treaty rights and for the interests of small States is a newborn and
simulated 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 here tonight with two, widely removed
in point of time, but both, as it happens, very apposite to the present
case.
I will go back first to the war carried on first against the
revolutionary Government of France and then against Napoleon, which
broke out in 1793, and which lasted for more than twenty years. We had
then at the head of the Government in this country one of the most
peace-loving Ministers who have 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 lately, I think, as February in
1792, in a memorable speech in the House of Commons, which shows among
other things the shortness of human foresight, he declared that there
never was a time when we in this country could more reasonably expect
fifteen years of peace.
And what was it, gentlemen, 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. [Cheers.] For nearly 200 years the great
powers of Europe had guaranteed 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?
Defense of Small States.
I quote you the exact words he used in the House of Commons, they are so
applicable to the circumstances 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. [Cheers.]
He went on to say:
This House [the House of Commons] means substantial good faith to
its engagements. If it retains a just sense of the solemn faith of
treaties, it must show a determination 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 independence
of Belgium, was threatened. Mr. Gladstone was then Prime Minister of
this country, [cheers,] and he was, if possible, a stronger and more
ardent advocate of peace even than Mr. Pitt himself. ["Hear, hear!"]
Mr. Gladstone's Dictum.
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,
and I should like to read a passage from a speech ten years later,
delivered in 1880, by Mr. Gladstone himself in this city, in which he
reviewed that transaction and explained his reasons for it. He said: "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
tyrannous and lawless power." That is what I call a good cause, though I
detest war, and there are no epithets too strong if you will supply me
with them that I will not endeavor to heap upon its head.
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. ["Hear,
hear!"]
It is, indeed, the avowed belief of the leaders of German thought--I
will not say of the German people--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 [laughter] and the German
spirit is the best thing that could happen to the world.