So we bid you welcome. And we ask you, our honoured guests, to do all you can to get into close touch with the habits and point of view of our country, both here and upon that battle-front whither you are bound, to play your own splendid part in the Great Game.
We are never going back to the old days when Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Canadians, Australians, and Americans sat each in their own compartment, and thanked God that they had it to themselves. We English-speaking races have got together over this War. We have lost terribly, but we are gaining much. We are rubbing shoulders in London, and Paris, and countless other places, and we are rubbing the knobs and the angles off one another, good and plenty. It is not always easy or comfortable to have knobs rubbed off you, and the process sometimes involves a little friction; but we must be prepared for that.
For instance, we all speak English, but we all pronounce it in different ways. Well, why not? Hitherto we have been inclined to assume that the other man was talking like that to annoy us. That is one of the knobs that has to be rubbed off—intolerance of trivial matters of taste and habit. To-day, under the most searching test in the world—the test of comradeship in the face of battle and sudden death—we are acquiring a profound respect for one another. When we have acquired just one other thing—tolerance for one another’s point of view—we shall have laid the foundation of an understanding which is going to hold us all up through some difficult times hereafter. Getting this old world back on to a peace basis, after the Kaiser has been put where he belongs, is going to call for all our courage, sincerity, and loyalty to our common ideals. When that period of Reconstruction comes—and it may come sooner than we think—the first plank in its platform must be a solid understanding between the two English-speaking races. They, at least, must speak with one voice, or the whole fabric will fall to the ground.
Our two nations can never hope entirely to understand one another. Neither can they expect always to see eye to eye. Their national personalities are too robust. But to-day their sons are learning to know the worst of one another and the best of one another and the invincible humanity of one another. With that knowledge will come—if we have the will—tolerance of one another’s point of view. We must get that. There are thousands of reasons why, but to you, soldiers and sailors, I am only going to mention one.
When the Victory comes, we shall enjoy its rewards. But all the while we shall be conscious that we have not won these entirely by ourselves. We shall in great measure have inherited them from men who have not lived to enjoy the fruits of their own sacrifice—men whom we have left behind, in France, Belgium, and Italy; in Asia and Africa; whose bones cover the ocean floor—men who gave everything that the Cause might live. To these we shall desire to raise a lasting memorial. We can best do that by building up a fabric of understanding on the foundation which they laid, so truly, with their own lives. If we do that—and only if we do that—our Dead can sleep in peace; for they will know that what they died for was worth while, and above all that we, their heritors, have kept faith with them—
“… Famous men
From whose bays we borrow—
They that put aside To-day,
All the joys of their To-day,
And with toil of their To-day