This War has brought many changes, and will bring many more. But it has
brought one for which we cannot be too grateful, one which we may even
think in the days to come was the justification and the reward for all
the lives and all the treasure which the great struggle has demanded and
will yet demand from us.
It has made of us one people. And when I say one people, I am not
referring merely to the inhabitants of these small islands, which
Britons all the world over will ever regard, as they have ever regarded,
as "home." I include the great dominions over the seas--Australia,
Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and India, with their many races and
many people who live and enjoy their lives under the benign shelter of
the British flag.
Nothing the world has ever seen is equal in grandeur, and in the lesson
it has taught us, to the majestic uprising of the British peoples when
the first shock of war burst upon a startled world in those early days--
how long ago they seem to-day!--of August, 1914. From the Tropics to
the Poles not a dissentient voice was heard. It is not too much to say
that the entire British Empire, which many of us had perhaps come to
regard as somewhat a shadowy entity, leaped to arms with a unanimity
which not only surprised us, but, as we have every reason to know,
startled and bewildered our enemies.
Of our own people here at home we were always sure, provided they could
be induced to realise the magnitude of the great struggle before them.
Of that, from the earliest days of the violation of Belgium, there was
never the slightest doubt. The British people are, and have always
been, peculiarly sensitive to the sanctity of their pledged word; not
for nothing have we earned the reputation that the Englishman's word is
as good as his bond. And when our people realised that Germany, with a
cynical disregard of international honour and good faith to which
history happily offers few parallels, had deliberately attacked Belgium,
there was at once an explosion of cold rage which, could the Germans but
have understood it, would have convinced them that the British Empire
was in this War, for good or ill, until a final settlement had been
reached which would mean either absolute triumph or absolute
annihilation.
We know, as a matter of fact, that England's decision to fight over a
"scrap of paper" produced something akin to stupefaction in Berlin; we
know also that it produced an outburst of hate which found its ultimate
expression in the fatuous "Gott strafe England" which has become the
by-word of the world as an expression of impotent rage and spite. We
may take that as the greatest compliment an honest nation has ever
received from a people to whom such a thing as honour and good faith is
not only unknown, but is unimaginable. Knowing nothing of national
honour themselves, the Germans were naturally unable to forecast
accurately the course of action of either Belgium or Britain. From both
of them they have received a much-needed lesson, which I have no doubt
will be still further driven home by the stern logic of the events which
are even now shaping dimly before our eyes.
It was just this consideration of national honour which brought not only
England in particular, but the whole Empire, into the field as one man.
Great armies sprang into existence before our very eyes. From every
quarter of the globe offers of men, money, and supplies of all kinds
were poured into our lap with a profusion which was as surprising as it
was gratifying. We witnessed, in fact, what required a great national
peril to bring to birth, the nascence of the British Empire as a
fighting force. And anyone who fails to see that that fact will have a
very profound influence upon the future history of the world must be
blind indeed to the real significance of events.
The Empire has found itself. That is the one cardinal lesson which,
above all others, stands out as the greatest feature of the world-war.
Will anyone believe that Germany, with all the advantages she possesses
in the matter of organisation and long preparation for war, could in the
long last vanquish Britain, solidly united, armed to the teeth, her
deficiencies at last made good, and ready to shed the last drop of her
blood and spend her last shilling in defence of the glorious heritage
which has been won in a thousand years of strife and struggle? If she
stood alone to-day, without a single Ally in the world, Britain would
never give up the struggle which has been thrust upon her. But she is
not alone. She has powerful Allies who are as resolute as she is
herself, who realise as fully as she does all that is implied in the
threat of German domination, and who are as fully determined as she that
"the Prussian ulcer" shall be cut once and for all from the body politic
of civilisation.
Dealing for a moment with Great Britain alone, I do not hesitate to here
say that our people are united in this great quarrel as they have never
been united before.
In our other wars we have always had parties, more or less strong, but
never negligible, which seemed to see in the enemy an object for
friendship more attractive than our own people. We have always had
parties which, if not openly, at least covertly, seemed to incline to
the side of our foes. We all remember the South African campaign, when
a very large and influential section of the Liberal Party went out of
its way to champion the cause of Paul Kruger.
We do not need--and I have no desire--to dwell upon that unhappy time;
many of those who then made a great mistake have to-day atoned for their
error by their splendid efforts to vindicate the cause of Britain and
civilisation in the present struggle. I mention the fact only to show
that to-day there is no pro-German party in this country which carries
the slightest weight. The pro-German element is conspicuous by its
absence; it is represented only by a small rabble of discredited cranks
and self-advertisers for whom the nation has shown its contempt in
unmistakable fashion. The heart of the nation as a whole is sound, and
it is firmly determined that Germany's eternal attempts to annoy and
provoke her neighbours shall be once and for all suppressed.
I shall deal elsewhere with Germany's colossal blunders in regard to the
War; I will content myself with saying here that her first and greatest
mistake was in regard to the British Empire. She did not think we would
fight, but if we did she thought there would be revolution in Ireland
and India, and a sudden dropping off of our Colonial Dominions, leaving
us so weak and so torn with internal dissensions that we should be in no
shape to oppose her triumphal progress over the bodies of her enemies.
Over three million volunteers have rallied to the Colours in reply to
the German challenge. Ireland to-day, dropping all her historic feuds,
is practically solid for the Empire, and her sons, as ever, have shown
their glorious deeds under the British flag. India, with one voice and
heart, has rallied to the Empire; her men have given their blood without
stint in our cause, her princes have poured out their treasure like
water in our service, proud and glad to make what return they could for
the blessings they have enjoyed under British rule. The deeds of the
Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, have added a new and
imperishable tradition to British history. The bloodstained soil of the
Gallipoli Peninsula will remain for all time hallowed by the glory of
the men of Anzac, who, not once, but time and again, wrested seemingly
impossible triumphs from the very jaws of death and defeat.
They failed, it is true, to win the last and greatest victory, but the
story of their failure is more glorious than the story of many
successes, and so long as our race and our language endure the tale of
the landing at Suvla and the fight for the heights overlooking the
Dardanelles will be told as an example of what human flesh and blood can
achieve and endure. There is nothing greater or nobler in all our
history; and while our Empire can produce such men as those who for long
months faced the Turks in Gallipoli, we can be sure that in the British
Empire the world will have a force to be reckoned with.
Turn to South Africa. There were those among us who felt after the Boer
War that Britain was making a dangerous experiment in conferring
absolute self-government upon those who but a short time before had been
our implacable enemies. But the result was a triumph for British
principles of liberty and of trust in the essential justice and equity
of our rule. From the first, General Botha, our ablest and most
chivalrous antagonist in the war, showed absolute and unshakable loyalty
to the people who had put their trust in him. He was followed nobly by
the great mass of the people of South Africa, Dutch as well as English;
and when De Wet's misguided rebellion broke out it was suppressed with a
swift efficiency which elicited unstinted admiration, not unmixed, it
must be admitted, with surprise. Later we were to see the Union of
South Africa playing a gallant part in the expulsion of German rule from
the adjoining territories.
All this surely must have been a bitter pill for the Kaiser to swallow.
We know how he encouraged Kruger in his revolt against the British; we
know how confidently he had counted on disaffection in South Africa to
add to our difficulties; we can imagine his joy when De Wet and his
irreconcilables raised the standard of revolt, even though their motive
was much more hostility to the English than love for the German.
We know he looked upon Ireland as hopelessly disloyal and ready to fling
off for ever, perhaps with German help, the hated yoke of the Saxon. We
know he looked upon India as seething with discontent and eager to fling
herself into the arms of anyone who would give a hand in ejecting the
brutal British Raj. We know he looked upon our Dominions as ripe fruit
ready to drop off the parent tree at the slightest shake. We know he
looked upon ourselves as a decadent nation, grown rich and indolent,
caring for nothing but ease, and wrapped in a sloth from which we could
never awaken until it was too late. And, lo! upon the first touch of
war the weapons he had hoped to use shivered to fragments in his hand,
the hopes he had fondly entertained turned to Dead Sea ashes in his
mouth.
With one heart, one mind, and one unshakable purpose, the British Empire
rushed to war. Swept away in an instant were those bad old party
squabbles, those bad old party cries, with which our nation is prone to
amuse itself in times of peace to the exclusion, perhaps, of more vital
things. We seemed so desperately in earnest about our internal quarrels
that perhaps we could not expect the continental nations, least of all
the Germans, to realise that, for all our dispute, we are still one
nation, that we are still animated by precisely the same spirit that has
made England great, overlain though it may be by the dust and cobwebs
that have grown up in a century of freedom from war on a great scale.
We do not perhaps quite understand ourselves; it would be certainly too
much to expect the Germans to understand us, for they have shown an
utter inability to understand any type of mentality but their own. Had
they been better acquainted with our idiosyncrasies, I do not say that
war would have been averted, but it would certainly have been postponed
until Germany felt herself to be still stronger afloat and ashore, when
the task of defeating her would have been even harder and more
prolonged. So that perhaps we have reason to be thankful that, as the
struggle had to come--and of that there cannot be the slightest doubt--
it should have come early rather than late; we may have reason to be
thankful, despite all the miseries and losses which the War has caused,
that it was prematurely precipitated by German arrogance and greed and
blindness. How much greater would have been her chances of success if
she had been content to wait for, say, another five or ten years, when
her prospects of meeting the British Fleet on something like equal terms
would have been vastly improved!
And if our nation has closed its ranks and determined that this War
shall be fought to the only finish consistent with the continued
existence of civilisation as we understand it, what shall we say of our
Allies? What tribute can be too great for the matchless heroism of
France? How can we praise too highly the dogged courage of the Russian
soldier, which has time and again saved the situation in the West by a
display of self-sacrifice of which the world can offer few parallels?
What words can express all we owe to gallant little Serbia and
Montenegro, crushed beneath the heel of the invader, yet destined to
arise with their lustre undimmed and shining brighter than ever? How
can we show our appreciation of what Belgium, the greatest martyr of
all, has done for the sacred cause of liberty? Who can measure our debt
to Italy, flinging herself into the great battle of freedom, not at a
time when victory seemed assured, but when the clouds were thickest and
our hopes at their lowest ebb?
Can we detect any sign of weakening in the Allies' stern resolve?
Assuredly not. Bound together by a sacred pact to make no terms with
the enemy which shall not be acceptable to all, they will go on from
strength to strength, growing daily in power and resources, moved by one
mind and by one purpose, till the time comes for the dealing of the last
great blow which shall shatter finally and for ever Teutonic aspirations
to rule the world. If signs of weakness there be--and they are not
wanting--they are not to be found in the ranks of Germany's enemies.
Rather are they to be found in the camp of the enemy himself. From all
parts of the Teutonic Empires and their Allied nations come the signs
which tell of war-weariness, of a growing conviction that further
conquests are impossible, that the War has become a struggle for
existence, that the enemy is knocking ever more and more loudly at the
gate.
The scales are beginning to fall from the eyes of the German people.
They are yet far from convinced that all is lost, but at least they are
beginning to be sure that nothing is to be gained. No longer do we hear
the boastful assertion that all their losses shall be made good by huge
indemnities to be extracted from their crushed and beaten foes. A new
note is being sounded of the need for sacrifice; new warnings are ever
being given that Germany's war will have to be paid for by Germany, and
not by the rest of the world. It is too early to say that German
resolution is seriously weakened; it is not too soon to say that the
German people are beginning to realise at last the strength of the
combinations they have aroused against themselves.
On the other hand, the temper of the Allies, their confidence in their
cause, and their ability to make that cause good has never stood so
high. They have learned the lesson they needed eighteen months ago--
that the War will be something far more serious and more terrible than
they anticipated, that much remains to be done, that many sacrifices
will have to be made before success crowns their efforts. But in
learning that lesson they have also learned their own strength. They
have learned, too, to trust one another, to see that the cause of one is
the cause of all. And in the thoroughness with which they learn that
lesson lies the strongest pledge for a happy issue. The Allies cannot
be defeated so long as they remain true to themselves and to each other,
so long as they remain bound together by the bonds of loyalty and
constancy to a great and a sacred cause. That they are so bound to-day
none can dispute; that they will remain so bound to the end it would be
treason to them and to ourselves to doubt. Not to one but to each of
the Allies in turn have the Germans gone with their insulting attempts
to buy a separate peace, to achieve by sheer bribery what they have
failed to achieve by force of arms in spite of all their "victories."
By each of their opponents in turn they have been spurned with contempt.
Russia simply tore up their clumsy tenders of treason without deigning
even to reply. And, as we have since learned, even gallant little
Belgium, torn and ravished as few countries have ever been torn and
ravished in the world's history, spurned an offer which would have given
her back much of what she had lost, but would have lost for her the
priceless possession for which she fought--her national honour.
With these object-lessons before her eyes, perhaps in the days to come
even Germany, who has shown herself so thoroughly oblivious to what
honour and conscience mean, may realise that there are nations in the
world to whom there are better and higher things than mere wealth and
power, that there are principles which soar far above material
considerations, that she is face to face with something which is at
present far beyond her comprehension, and that something far mightier
than the mightiest cannon ever forged in the furnaces of Krupps' is
working for her downfall. That something is the moral sense of the
world at large, of which, as yet, the Germans have not the slightest
understanding. The German, even in the midst of his successes and
triumphs, is faced by a resolution at least as great as his own, he is
faced by men whose hearts are aflame with the sacred fire of liberty, he
is faced by men to whom honour and good faith are all in all. And in
the face of that combination even the boasted might and efficiency of
Germany will go down at last, in the fullness of time, in hopeless and
irretrievable ruin.