Part 397 — MR. ASQUITH AT EDINBURGH.

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.

German "Culture."

Let me then ask for a moment what is this German culture, what is this German spirit of which the Emperor's armies are at present the missionaries in Belgium and in France? [Laughter.] Mankind owes much to Germany, a very great debt for the contributions she has made to philosophy, to science and to the arts; but that which is specifically German in the movement of the world in the last thirty years has been, on the intellectual side, the development of the doctrine of the supreme and ultimate prerogative in human affairs of material forces, and, on the practical side, taking of the foremost place in the fabrication and the multiplication of the machinery of destruction.

To the men who have adopted this gospel, who believe that power is the be all and end all of the State, naturally a treaty is nothing more than a piece of parchment, and all the Old World talk about the rights of the weak and the obligations of the strong is only so much threadbare and nauseating cant, for one very remarkable feature of this new school of doctrine is, whatever be its intellectual or its ethical merits, that it has turned out as an actual code for life to be a very purblind philosophy.

The German culture, the German spirit, did not save the Emperor and his people from delusions and miscalculations as dangerous as they were absurd in regard to the British Empire.

A Fantastic Dream.

We were believed by these cultivated observers [laughter] to be the decadent descendants of a people who, by a combination of luck and of fraud, [laughter,] had managed to obtain dominion over a vast quantity of the surface and the populations of the globe.

This fortuitous aggregation [laughter and cheers] which goes by the name of the British Empire was supposed to be so insecurely founded, and so loosely knit together, that at the first touch of serious menace from without it would fall to pieces and tumble to the ground. [Cheers.]

Our great dominions were getting heartily tired of the imperial connection. India, [loud cheers,] it was notorious to every German traveler, [laughter,] was on the verge of open revolt, and here at home we, the people of this United Kingdom, were riven by dissension so deep and so fierce that our energies, whether for resistance or for attack, would be completely paralyzed.

What a fantastic dream, ["Hear, hear!"] and what a rude awakening! [Laughter and cheers.] And in this vast and grotesque and yet tragic miscalculation is to be found one of the roots, perhaps the main root, of the present war.

But let us go one step more. It has been said, "By their fruits ye shall know them," and history will record that when the die was cast and the struggle began, it was the disciples of that same creed who revived methods of warfare which have for centuries past been condemned by the common sense as well as by the humanity of the great mass of the civilized world. [Cheers.]

Branded on the Brow.

Louvain, Malines, Termonde—these are names which will henceforward be branded on the brow of German culture. The ruthless sacking of the ancient and famous towns of Belgium is fitly supplemented by the story that reaches us only today from our own headquarters in France of the proclamation issued less than a week ago by the German authorities, who were for a moment, and happily for little more than a moment, in occupation of the venerable city of Rheims.

Mr. Asquith then read the concluding paragraph of the proclamation which appeared in these columns yesterday.

Do not let it be forgotten that it is from a power whose intellectual leaders are imbued with the idea that I have described, and whose Generals in the field sanction and even direct those practices—it is from that power the claim proceeds to impose its culture, its spirit, which means its domination, upon the rest of Europe. That is a claim, I say to you, to all my fellow-countrymen, to every citizen and subject of the British Empire whose ears and eyes my words can reach—that is a claim that everything that is great in our past and everything that promises hope or progress in our future summons us to resist to the end. [Loud cheers.]

The task—do not let us deceive ourselves—will not be a light one. Its full accomplishment—and nothing short of full accomplishment [cheers]—is worthy of our traditions or will satisfy our resolve—will certainly take months. It may even take years.

I have come here tonight not to ask you to count the cost, for no price can be too high to pay when honor and freedom are at stake, but to put before you, as I have tried to do, the magnitude of the issue and the supreme necessity that lies upon us as a nation, nay as a brotherhood and family of nations, to rise to its height and acquit ourselves of our duty.

Our Favorable Position.

The war has now lasted more than six weeks. Our supremacy at sea [great cheers] has not been seriously questioned. [Laughter.] Full supplies of food and of raw materials are making their way to our shores from every quarter of the globe. [Cheers.] Our industries, with one or two exceptions, maintain their activities.

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 shipping 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 furnishing 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 hardship 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 associations, 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 shield the independence of free States, to protect against brute force the principles of civilization and the liberties of Europe. [Loud cheers.]