Part 18

My Lords and Gentlemen: I address you in circumstances that call for action rather than for speech.

After every endeavor had been made by my Government to preserve the peace of the world, I was compelled, in the assertion of treaty obligations deliberately set at nought, and for the protection of the public law of Europe and the vital interests of my empire, to go to war.

My navy and army have, with unceasing vigilance, courage, and skill, sustained, in association with gallant and faithful allies, a just and righteous cause.

From every part of my empire there has been a spontaneous and enthusiastic rally to our common flag.

Gentlemen of the House of Commons: I thank you for the liberality with which you have met a great emergency.

My Lords and Gentlemen: We are fighting for a worthy purpose, and we shall not lay down our arms until that purpose has been fully achieved.

I rely with confidence upon the loyal and united efforts of all my subjects, and I pray that Almighty God may give us His blessing.

Then a commission for proroguing the Parliament was read, after which the Lord Chancellor said:

My Lords and Gentlemen: By virtue of his Majesty's commission, under the great seal, to us and other lords directed, and now read, we do, in his Majesty's name and in obedience to his commands, prorogue this Parliament to Tuesday the twenty-seventh day of October, one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, to be then here holden; and this Parliament is accordingly prorogued to Tuesday the twenty-seventh day of October, one thousand nine hundred and fourteen.

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Summons of the Nation to Arms

British People Roused by Their Leaders.

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Earl Curzon of Kedleston Suggests Holding of Public Meetings.

Hackwood, Basingstoke, Aug. 27.

_To the Editor of The Times:_

Sir: Many of us are wondering what we can do to serve our country in this crisis. We sit on local or on larger committees. We attempt, within the narrow range of our influence, to gain recruits, we organize relief, we help to provide or furnish hospitals, we subscribe both to the national and to private funds; and, apart from this, we go about our ordinary duties with as much composure as we can, wondering where, when, and how it will be open to us who are no longer young and cannot bear arms, but have perhaps had some experience of affairs, to render more effective aid.

Does not a path lie open to the class of so-called "public men," and does not the very name which is given to them indicate the nature of this duty? Surely it is to place themselves at the disposal of the public. The two great needs of the moment are more men--hundreds of thousands more men--for the army, and a clearer understanding by the masses of the population, not merely of the justice of our cause, but of the supreme issues, both for our own country and for the whole empire, that are involved.

No one would propose that jingo speeches should be shouted from public platforms, or that an attempt should be made to inflame crude or unworthy passions. But the man who, when his country is engaged in a righteous war and is fighting for her existence, preaches the cause of that war is not a jingo; and the passions to which he appeals are not unworthy, but are the noblest of which human nature is capable.

I wish, therefore, to say that if the Government, with whom the initiative must primarily lie--since no one would wish to do anything that is contrary to their conception of sound policy--desire that public meetings should be held in our great centres of population, to explain the cause and circumstances of the war, and the duty that lies upon the manhood of the nation, I and, I am convinced, many others are ready to throw ourselves into the task.

I have told the Prime Minister that I would be proud to appear on a public platform with any member of the Government to state or defend a case in which party is dead and where we are all united. I doubt not that if they are required many others will be willing to do the same. We have no desire to deluge the country with a flood of noisy rhetoric, or to start a miniature electioneering campaign. But if in any great city where recruiting is slow or the issues are not apprehended, or the public conscience is not quick to respond to the national summons, I, or any of those who share my views, can be of any service on the platform I am sure that we are willing to respond and that we shall welcome any organization that may be set on foot for the purpose. I am, yours obediently,

CURZON OF KEDLESTON.

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PRIME MINISTER'S LETTER.

Addressed to the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and the Lord Mayor of Cardiff.

My Lords: The time has come for combined effort to stimulate and organize public opinion and public effort in the greatest conflict in which our people has ever been engaged.

No one who can contribute anything to the accomplishment of this supremely urgent task is justified in standing aside.

I propose, as a first step, that meetings should be held without delay, not only in our great centres of population and industry, but in every district, urban and rural, throughout the United Kingdom, at which the justice of our cause should be made plain, and the duty of every man to do his part should be enforced.

I venture to suggest to your lordships that the four principal cities over which you respectively preside should lead the way.

I am ready myself, so far as the exigencies of public duty permit, to render such help as I can, and I should be glad, with that object, to address my fellow-subjects in your cities.

I have reason to know that I can count upon the co-operation of the leaders of every section of organized political opinion. Your faithful servant,

H.H. ASQUITH.

28th August, 1914.

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MR. ASQUITH IN LONDON.

Speech at the Guildhall, Sept. 5.

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. [Cheers.] 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 engaged, the scale of their armaments and armies, the width of the theatre 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. ["Hear, hear!"] 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, [cheers,] we find ourselves involved with the whole strength of this empire in a bloody arbitration between might and right [Cheers.] 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 today 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?

Blind Barbarian Vengeance.

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 command 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, [cries of "Shame!"] with its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivaled associations--a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance. [Prolonged cheers.] 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, [renewed cheers,] these intolerable outrages? For my part I say that sooner than be a silent witness--which means in 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.]

Germany's Aim--to Crush Freedom.

That is only a phase--a lurid and illuminating phase in the contest in which we have been called by the mandate of duty and of honor to bear our part. The cynical violation of the neutrality of Belgium was, after all, but a step--the first step--in a deliberate policy of which, if not the immediate, the ultimate, and the not far distant aim, was to crush the independence and autonomy of the free States of Europe. First Belgium, then Holland, then Switzerland, countries, like our own, imbued and sustained with the spirit of liberty, were one after another to be bent to the yoke, and these ambitions were fed and fostered by a body of new doctrines and new philosophies preached by professors and learned men. The free and full self-development which to these small States, to ourselves, to our great and growing dominions over the seas, to our kinsmen across the Atlantic, is the well-spring and life-breath of national existence--that free self-development is the one capital offense in the code of those who have made force their supreme divinity, and who upon its altars are prepared to sacrifice both the gathered fruits and the potential germs of the unfettered human spirit. [Cheers.] I use this language advisedly. This is not merely a material; it is also a spiritual conflict. [Cheers.] Upon its issues everything that contains promise and hope, that leads to emancipation and a fuller liberty for the millions who make up the mass of mankind will be found sooner or later to depend.

Our Efforts for Peace.

Let me now just for a moment turn to the actual situation in Europe. How do we stand? For the last ten years, by what I believe to be happy and well-considered diplomatic arrangements, we have established friendly and increasingly intimate relations with the two powers, France and Russia, with whom, in days gone by, we have had in various parts of the world occasions for constant friction, and now and again for possible conflict. Those new and better relations, based in the first instance upon business principles of give and take, matured into a settled temper of confidence and good-will. They were never in any sense or at any time, as I have frequently said in this hall, directed against other powers. No man in the history of the world has ever labored more strenuously or more successfully than my right honorable friend Sir Edward Grey [cheers] for that which is the supreme interest of the modern world, a general and abiding peace. It is, I venture to think, a very superficial criticism which suggests that under his guidance the policy of this country has ignored, still less that it has counteracted and hampered, the concert of Europe. It is little more than a year ago that under his Presidency, in the stress and strain of the Balkan crisis, the Ambassadors of all the great powers met here day after day curtailing the area of possible differences, reconciling warring ambitions and aims, and preserving against almost incalculable odds the general harmony. And it was in the same spirit and with the same purpose, when a few weeks ago Austria delivered her ultimatum to Servia, that our Foreign Secretary put forward the proposal for a mediating conference between the four powers who were not directly concerned--Germany, France, Italy, and ourselves. If that proposal had been accepted actual controversy would have been settled with honor to everybody, and the whole of this terrible welter would have been avoided. ["Hear, hear!"]

Germany's Responsibility.

And with whom does the responsibility rest [cries of "The Kaiser!"] for this refusal and for all the illimitable suffering which now confronts the world? One power and one power only, and that power--Germany. [Loud hisses.] That is the fount and origin of this worldwide catastrophe. We are persevering to the end. No one who has not been confronted as we were with the responsibility of determining the issues of peace and war can realize the strength and energy and persistency with which we labored for peace. We persevered by every expedient that diplomacy could suggest, straining almost to the breaking point our most cherished friendships and obligations, even to the last making effort upon effort, and hoping against hope. Then, and only then, when we were at last compelled to realize that the choice lay between honor and dishonor, between treachery and good faith, when at last we reached the dividing line which makes or mars a nation worthy of the name, it was then, and then only, that we declared for war. [Cheers.] Is there any one in this hall or in this United Kingdom or in the vast empire of which we here stand in the capital and centre who blames or repents our decision? [Cries of "No!"] For these reasons, as I believe, we must steel ourselves to the task, and in the spirit which animated our forefathers in their struggle against the domination of Napoleon we must and we shall persevere to the end. [Cheers.]

Memorable and Glorious Example of Belgium.

It would be a criminal mistake to underestimate either the magnitude, the fighting quality, or the staying power of the forces which are arrayed against us. But it would be equally foolish and equally indefensible to belittle our own resources, whether for resistance or attack. [Cheers.] Belgium has shown us by a memorable and a glorious example what can be done by a relatively small State when its citizens are animated and fired by the spirit of patriotism. In France and Russia we have as allies two of the greatest powers of the world engaged with us in a common cause, who do not mean to separate themselves from us any more than we mean to separate ourselves from them. [Cheers.] We have upon the seas the strongest and most magnificent fleet that has ever been seen. The expeditionary force which left our shores less than a month ago has never been surpassed, as its glorious achievements in the field have already made clear, not only in material and equipment but in the physical and the moral quality of its constituents. [Cheers.]

Work of the Navy.

As regards the navy, I am sure my right honorable friend (Mr. Winston Churchill) will tell you there is happily little more to be done. I do not flatter it when I say that its superiority is equally marked in every department and sphere of its activity. [Cheers.] We rely on it with the most absolute confidence, not only to guard our shores against the possibility of invasion, not only to seal up the gigantic battleships of the enemy in the inglorious seclusion of his own ports [laughter] whence, from time to time, he furtively steals forth to sow the seeds of murderous snares, which are more full of menace to neutral ships than to the British fleet. Our navy does all this, and while it is thirsting, I do not doubt, for that trial of strength in a fair and open fight, which is so far prudently denied it, it does a great deal more. It has hunted the German mercantile marine from the high seas. It has kept open our own sources of food supply and has largely curtailed those of the enemy, and when the few German cruisers which still infest the more distant ocean routes have been disposed of, as they will be disposed of very soon, [cheers,] it will achieve for British and neutral commerce passing backward and forward, from and to every part of our empire, a security as complete as it has ever enjoyed in the days of unbroken peace. Let us honor the memory of the gallant seamen who, in the pursuit of one or another of these varied and responsible duties, have already laid down their lives for their country.

Call for United Effort.

In regard to the army there is call for a new, a continuous, a determined, and a united effort. For, as the war goes on, we shall have not merely to replace the wastage caused by casualties, not merely to maintain our military power at its original level, but we must, if we are to play a worthy part, enlarge its scale, increase its numbers, and multiply many times its effectiveness as a fighting instrument. [Cheers.] The object of the appeal which I have made to you, my Lord Mayor, and to the other chief Magistrates of our capital cities, is to impress upon the people of the United Kingdom the imperious urgency of this supreme duty. Our self-governing dominions throughout the empire, without any solicitation on our part, have demonstrated with a spontaneousness and a unanimity unparalleled in history their determination to affirm their brotherhood with us and to make our cause their own. [Cheers.] From Canada, from Australia, from New Zealand, from South Africa, and from Newfoundland the children of the empire assert, not as an obligation, but as a privilege, their right and their willingness to contribute money and material, and, what is better than all, the strength and sinews, the fortunes, and the lives of their best manhood. [Cheers.] India, too, with no less alacrity, has claimed her share in the common task. [Cheers.] Every class, and creed, British and natives, Princes and people, Hindus and Mohammedans, vie with one another in noble and emulous rivalry. Two divisions of our magnificent Indian Army are already on their way. [Cheers.] We welcome with appreciation and affection their proffered aid. In an empire which knows no distinction of race or cause we all alike as subjects of the King-Emperor are joint and equal custodians of our common interests and fortunes. We are here to hail with profound and heartfelt gratitude their association, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, with our home and dominion troops, under the flag which is the symbol to all of a unity that a world in arms cannot dissever or dissolve. With these inspiring appeals and examples from our fellow-subjects all over the world, what are we doing and what ought we to do here at home?

Over a Quarter of a Million Men Enrolled.

Mobilization was ordered on the 4th of August; immediately afterward Lord Kitchener issued his call for 100,000 recruits for the regular army, which has been followed by a second call for another 100,000. The response up to today gives us between 250,000 and 300,000. [Cheers.] I am glad to say that London has done its share. The total number of Londoners accepted is not less than 42,000. [Cheers.] I need hardly say that that appeal involves no disparagement or discouragement of the territorial force. The number of units in that force who have volunteered for foreign service is most satisfactory and grows every day. We look to them with confidence to increase their numbers, to perfect their organization and training, and to play efficiently the part which has always been assigned to them, both offensive and defensive, in the military system of the empire. But to go back to the expansion of the regular army. We want more men--men of the best fighting quality, and if for a moment the number who offer themselves and are accepted should prove to be in excess of those who can at once be adequately trained and equipped, do not let them doubt that prompt provision will be made for the incorporation of all willing and able men in the fighting forces of the kingdom. We want, first of all, men, and we shall endeavor to secure them. Men desiring to serve together shall, wherever possible, be allotted to the same regiment or corps. The raising of battalions by counties or municipalities with this object will be in every way encouraged. But we want not less urgently a larger supply of ex-non-commissioned officers, and the pick of the men with whom in past days they served, men, therefore, whom in most cases we shall be asking to give up regular employment and to return to the work of the State, which they alone are competent to do. The appeal we make is addressed quite as much to their employers as to the men themselves. The men ought to be absolutely assured of reinstatement in their business at the end of the war. [Cheers.] Finally, there are numbers of commissioned officers now in retirement who are much experienced in the handling of troops and have served their country in the past. Let them come forward, too, and show their willingness, if need be, to train bodies of men for whom at the moment no cadre or unit can be found.

Abundant Ground for Pride and Confidence.