The first of a series of meetings to bring home to the people of England the vital importance of the questions at issue was held in the Guildhall on Friday, September 4th; and the speakers included the Prime Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Balfour. In the course of his remarks Mr. Asquith referred to the Arbitration Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which he mentioned at a previous Guildhall meeting some three and a-half years previously. "We were very confident three years ago in the rightness of our position," he said. "We are equally confident to-day, when reluctantly and against our will, but with a clear judgment and with a clean conscience we find ourselves involved with the whole strength of this Empire in a bloody arbitrament between Might and Right."
Mr. Asquith continued:
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 to-day, if we had been base enough, through timidity, or through a perverted calculation of self-interest, or through a paralysis of the sense of honour and duty, if we had been base enough to be false to our word and faithless to our friends?
Our eyes would have been turned at this moment, with those of the whole civilised 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 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 defence of her vital liberties, made an heroic stand against overweening and overwhelming force. We should have been admiring, as detached spectators, the siege of Liège, the steady and manful resistance of their small army; the occupation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and memories; the gradual forcing back of their patriotic defenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp; countless outrages suffered through buccaneering levies exacted from the unoffending civil population, and finally, the greatest crime committed against civilisation and culture since the Thirty Years' War—the sack of Louvain and its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations—shameless holocaust of irreplaceable treasures, lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.
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 honour if, in defiance of our plighted and solemn obligations, we had endured, if we had not done our best to prevent—yes, and to avenge—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 page of history.
Several German newspapers, distorting the facts of the case with remarkable disingenuousness, had roundly asserted that England had chosen to take part in the war for purely materialistic reasons, and that this country was not so anxious to vindicate the principle of Belgian neutrality as to secure the oversea trade of the German Empire. Even if Mr. Asquith had not spoken on the subject at all, it would have been realised sooner or later that there was no foundation for this assertion; for it was hardly likely, if we had had only this object in view, that a community of practical business men would have tolerated the enormous sacrifice of life and money involved in attempting by war to displace German exports to European and non-European countries.
As this argument was advanced with such persistence in the German Press, it may be worth while dwelling on it for a moment. The total value of the German export trade for 1913 was just over £495,000,000, and of our own export trade £635,000,000. With many German products, such as dyes, and certain chemical and electrical goods, this country has never been able to compete. At the beginning of the war, for example, when the German coast had been blockaded by our Fleet, we should have been compelled to spend millions of pounds in order to experiment with, and later on to manufacture, aniline dyes analogous to those produced in Germany. The same remark applies to many classes of electrical goods. Millions would have had to be spent on experiments before we began to manufacture the products, assuming—in many cases a large assumption—the success of the experiments. This, too, at a time when money was notoriously scarce, when accommodation could not be obtained from the banks, and when the Government had just announced that it wanted a hundred millions sterling as a first instalment of war expenses.
Apart from this, even if we had thought of capturing Germany's export trade, or a large part of it, it was clear that other nations had conceived the same notion and were getting ready to act upon it. Japanese merchants, for instance, had their eyes fixed on the markets of China, and manufacturers in the United States had been showing, even before the war, a deep interest in South America. Is it likely, in these circumstances, that a nation such as this would have seen at least half a million men withdrawn from productive work, and the expenditure of millions of money, purely for the sake of competing with the United States and Japan in foreign markets?—always realising that the war must end some time, that Germany must once more begin to manufacture, and that competition would be as severe as ever in less than a decade? No; if we can capture some of Germany's export trade, that will be a mere incidental in the struggle for national existence, and the profits represented thereby will but ill balance the lives and money which will have to be sacrificed in the meantime.
Fortunately, Mr. Asquith took the opportunity, when speaking at the Guildhall, to make it clear that Great Britain and the British Dominions were not actuated by materialistic aims in entering upon the greatest campaign in history. There was something to be considered besides profits. Having referred to the sacking of Louvain, Mr. Asquith went on to say:
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 honour, to bear our part. The cynical violation of the neutrality of Belgium was, after all, but a step—a 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 the autonomy of the Free States of Europe. First Belgium, then Holland and 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, a new philosophy, preached by professors and learned men.
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 offence in the code of those who have made force their supreme divinity, and upon its altars are prepared to sacrifice both the gathered fruits and the potential germs of the unfettered human spirit. I use this language advisedly.
This is not merely a material; it is also a spiritual conflict. Upon its issue 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.
The Prime Minister proceeded to combat the absurd suggestions that the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, and the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, were likely to prove a menace to the German Empire:
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, have matured into a settled temper of confidence and goodwill. 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 laboured more strenuously or more successfully than my right honourable friend, Sir Edward Grey, 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 the Foreign Secretary—for it was he—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 honour to everybody, and the whole of this terrible welter would have been avoided.
With whom does the responsibility rest for its refusal and for all the illimitable suffering which now confronts the world? One Power, and one Power only, and that Power is Germany. That is the fount and origin of this world-wide 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 realise the strength and energy and persistency with which we laboured 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 realise that the choice lay between honour and dishonour, between treachery and good faith—when we at last 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.
Is there anyone 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.