The Indian Contingent.
They have left behind them an example and an appeal. From all quarters of the empire its best manhood is flowing in. The first Indian contingent is, I believe, landing today at Marseilles, [loud cheers,] and in all parts of our great dominions the convoys are already mustering. Over half a million recruits have joined the colors here at home, [cheers,] and I come to ask you in Ireland, though you don't need my asking, to take your part. [Cheers and shouts of "We must.">[ There was a time when, through the operations of laws which every one now acknowledges to have been both unjust and impolitic, ["Hear, hear!">[ the martial spirit of and the capacity for which Irishmen have always been conspicuous, found its chief outlet in the alien armies of the Continent. I have seen it computed—I do not know whether with precise accuracy—but I have seen it computed upon good authority that in the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, when the penal laws were here in full swing, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted under the banners of the empire of France and Spain, and we at home in the United Kingdom suffered a double loss; for, gentlemen, not only were we drained year by year of some of our best fighting material, ["Hear, hear!">[ but over and over again we found ourselves engaged in battle array suffering and inflicting deadly loss upon those who might have been, and under happier conditions would have been, fellow-soldiers of our own. [Cheers.] The British Empire has always been proud, and with reason, of those Irish regiments [cheers] and their Irish leaders, [more cheers,] and was never prouder of them that it is today. [Great cheering.] We ask you here in Ireland to give us more, [cheers, and a Voice, "You'll get them,">[ to give them without stinting. We ask Ireland to give of her sons, the most in number, the best in quality that a proud and loyal daughter of the empire ought to devote to the common cause. [Cheers.]
The Volunteers of Ireland.
The conditions seem to me to be exceptionally favorable for the purpose. We have of late been witnessing here in Ireland a spontaneous enrollment and organization in all parts of the country of bodies of volunteers. I say nothing—for I wish tonight to avoid trespassing upon even a square inch of controversial ground—I say nothing of the causes or motives which brought them originally into existence, [laughter,] and have fostered their growth and strength. I will only say—and this is my nearest approach to politics tonight—that there are two things which to my mind have become unthinkable. The first is that one section of Irishmen are going to fight. [Loud cheers.] The second is that Great Britain is going to fight either. [Renewed cheers.] Speaking here in Dublin, I may perhaps address myself for a moment particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them all over Ireland—not only them, but I make the appeal to them particularly—to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a million, which is growing up as it were out of the ground. [Cheers.] I should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish brigade, [cheers,] or, better still, an Irish army corps. [Loud cheers.] Do not let them be afraid that by joining the colors they will lose their identity and become absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or, what is perhaps equally repugnant, be artificially redistributed in units which have no national cohesion or character. We wish to the utmost limit that military exigencies will allow that men who have been already associated in this or that district in training and in common exercises should be kept together and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them. ["Hear, hear!">[ And of one thing further I am sure. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and we think that if the officers now engaged in training these men are proved equal to the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly and gratefully retained. I repeat that the empire needs recruits, and needs them at once, that they may be fully trained and equipped in time to take their part in what may well be the decisive fields of the greatest struggle in the history of the world. That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in responding to it need be afraid that he is prejudicing the future of the volunteers. [Cheers.] I do not say, and I can not say, under what precise form or organization, but I trust and believe, and indeed I am certain, that the volunteers will become a permanent part, an integral and a characteristic part, of the defensive forces of the Crown. [Cheers.] I have only one more thing to say to you. [Cries of "Go on.">[ If our need is great your opportunity is also great. [Cheers.] The call which I am making is, as you know well, backed by the sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the empire and the world. Old animosities between us are dead. [Loud and prolonged cheers.] Scattered like the Autumn leaves to the four winds of heaven, we are a united nation, [renewed cheers,] owing and paying to our sovereign the heartfelt allegiance of men who at home not only love but enjoy for themselves the liberty which our soldiers and our sailors are fighting by land and by sea to maintain and to extend for others. There is no question of compulsion or bribery. What we want we believe you are ready and eager to give as the free-will offering of a free people. [Great cheering.]
The Earl of Meath, Lord Lieutenant of County Dublin, who was next called on, declared that their gathering would be historic because for the first time in her history Irishmen of all classes, creeds, and politics had met on the same platform. The modern Attila might be known, as his predecessor was known, as the scourge of God. But for the constant vigilance of our army and our fleet Ireland might have met the fate of Belgium. He suggested that Earl Kitchener should, as far as possible, see that the Irish corps at the front should act together.
MR. ASQUITH AT CARDIFF.
Speech in the Skating Rink, Oct. 2.
In the course of the last month I have addressed meetings in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and now in the completion of the task which I set myself and which the kindness of our great municipalities has allowed me to perform I have come to Cardiff. [Cheers.] England, Scotland, and Ireland have each of them a definite and a well-established capital city, but I have always understood that there was some doubt where the capital of the Principality of Wales was to be found on the map. [Laughter.] Wales is a single and indivisible entity with a life of its own, drawing its vitality from an ancient past, and both, I believe, in the volume and in the reality of its activity, never more virile than it is today. [Cheers.] But I do not know that there is any general agreement among Welshmen as to where their capital is to be found, [laughter, and a voice, "Here,">[ and without attempting as an outsider to differentiate or to reconcile competing claims I stand here tonight on what I believe to be a safe coign of vantage under the hospitality and the authority of the Lord Mayor of Cardiff.
Though I am not altogether a stranger to Wales, you may nevertheless ask why I have requested your permission to address this great audience here tonight. I am not altogether an idle man, and during the last few months I can honestly say that there has hardly been a day, indeed there have been very few hours, which have not been preoccupied with grave cares and responsibility. But throughout them all I have been, and I am, sustained by a profound and unshakable belief in the righteousness of our cause [cheers] and by overwhelming evidence that in the pursuit and the maintenance of that cause the Government have behind them, without distinction of race, of party, or of class, the whole moral and material support of the British Empire. [Cheers.] Let me take the opportunity to acknowledge and to welcome the calm, reasoned, and dignified statement of our cause which the Christian Churches of the United Kingdom, through some of their most distinguished leaders and ministers, have this week presented to the world. [Cheers.]