If France is really in danger, if as the result of all this we are going to have the power, civilization and genius of France removed in European history, let the right honorable gentleman say so. It is an absolutely impossible conception.
So far as we are concerned, whatever attacks may be made upon us, whatever may be said about us, we will take the action that he will take by saying that this country ought to have remained neutral [Labor cheers] because in the deepest parts of our hearts we believe that that was right and that that alone was consistent with the honor of the country and the traditions of the party that are now in office.
MR. MACDONALD REPENTS.
But Does Not Recant—Accusation of The London Times.
It is to be noted that while Mr. Macdonald has never withdrawn his accusations of bad faith against the Government—while he allows them still to be circulated as a broadsheet—he ventures to pose as having abandoned them. Belgian neutrality was, he said in The Labour Leader, and in effect in the House of Commons also, being used as an excuse—it was "a pretty game of hypocrisy." But writing in The Leicester Daily Post on Sept. 24 in vindication of his attitude he said:
On one point I wish to be quite clear.... We could not afford, either from the point of view of honor or of interest, to see Germany occupy Belgium. The war that comes nearest having a Divine justification is the war in which a great and mighty State engages to protect a small nation. From that position I have never receded. In the controversies that have been raised I have doubted whether, when our diplomacy is judged with the whole of the facts before the judges, it will come well out of its trial on this point, but that when the popular sentiment of the country is judged it will come out clean and fine, so far as Belgium is concerned, I am quite convinced.
This is the man who charges the Government with dragging the country into war because it would not acquiesce in the German armies marching through Belgium on the condition that the integrity and independence of Belgium were respected!
And will it be believed that Mr. Macdonald, whose indictment of the Government for deliberately dragging us into an unnecessary war is still in circulation, has actually ventured to associate himself with the recruiting movement?
In the House of Commons on Aug. 3 Mr. Macdonald predicted that Sir Edward Grey's statement "would not persuade a large section of the country." That prediction having been falsified, it has been necessary for the prophet to hedge. So when a recruiting meeting was held in Leicester on Sept. 11, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald wrote a letter to the Mayor expressing his regret that he could not be present, and saying: