Do we understand the necessity? Do we realize it? Belgium, once comfortably well-to-do, is now waste and weeping, and her children are living on the bread of charity sent them by neighbors far and near. And France—the German Army, like a wild beast, has fastened its claws deep into her soil, and every effort to drag them out rends and tears the living flesh of that beautiful land. The beast of prey has not leaped to our shores—not a hair of Britain's head has been touched by him. Why? Because of the vigilant watchdog that patrols the deep for us; and that is my complaint against the British Navy. It does not enable us to realize that Britain at the present moment is waging the most serious war it has ever been engaged in. We do not understand it. A few weeks ago I visited France. We had a conference of the Ministers of Finance of Russia, France, Great Britain, and Belgium. Paris is a changed city. Her gayety, her vivacity, is gone. You can see in the faces of every man there, and of every woman, that they know their country is in the grip of grim tragedy. They are resolved to overcome it, confident that they will overcome it, but only through a long agony.
No visitor to our shores would realize that we are engaged in exactly the same conflict, and that on the stricken fields of the Continent and along the broads and the narrows of the seas that encircle our islands is now being determined, not merely the fate of the British Empire, but the destiny of the human race for generations to come. [Cheers.] We are conducting a war as if there was no war. I have never been doubtful about the result of the war, [cheers,] and I will give you my reasons by and by. Nor have I been doubtful, I am sorry to say, about the length of the war and its seriousness. In all wars nations are apt to minimize their dangers and the duration. Men, after all, see the power of their own country; they cannot visualize the power of the enemy. I have been accounted as a pessimist among my friends in thinking the war would not be over before Christmas. I have always been convinced that the result is inevitably a triumph for this country. I have also been convinced that that result will not be secured without a prolonged struggle. I will tell you why. I shall do so not in order to indulge in vain and idle surmises as to the duration of the war, but in order to bring home to my countrymen what they are confronted with, so as to insure that they will leave nothing which is at their command undone in order, not merely to secure a triumph, but to secure it at the speediest possible moment. It is in their power to do so. It is also in their power, by neglect, by sloth, by heedlessness, to prolong their country's agony, and maybe to endanger at least the completeness of its triumphs. This is what I have come to talk to you about this afternoon, for it is a work of urgent necessity in the cause of human freedom, and I make no apology for discussing on a Sunday the best means of insuring human liberty. [Cheers.]
I will give you first of all my reasons for coming to the conclusion that after this struggle victory must wait on our banners if we properly utilize our resources and opportunities. The natural resources of the allied countries are overwhelmingly greater than those of their enemies. In the man capable of bearing arms, in the financial and economic resources of these countries, in their accessibility to the markets of the world through the command of the sea for the purpose of obtaining material and munitions—all these are preponderatingly in favor of the allied countries. But there is a greater reason than all these. Beyond all is the moral strength of our cause, and that counts in a struggle which involves sacrifices, suffering, and privation for all those engaged in it. A nation cannot endure to the end that has on its soul the crimes of Belgium. [Loud cheers.] The allied powers have at their disposal more than twice the number of men which their enemies can command. You may ask me why are not those overwhelming forces put into the field at once and this terrible war brought to a triumphant conclusion at the earliest possible moment. In the answer to that question lies the cause of the war. The reason why Germany declared war is in the answer to that question.
In the old days when a nation's liberty was menaced by an aggressor a man took from the chimney corner his bow and arrow or his spear, or a sword which had been left to him by an ancestry of warriors, went to the gathering ground of his tribe, and the nation was fully equipped for war. That is not the case now. Now you fight with complicated, highly finished weapons, apart altogether from the huge artillery. Every rifle which a man handles is a complicated and ingenious piece of mechanism, and it takes time. The German arsenals were full of the machinery of horror and destruction. The Russian arsenals were not, and that is the reason for the war. Had Russia projected war, she also would have filled her arsenals, but she desired above everything peace. ["Hear, hear!">[ I am not sure that Russia has ever been responsible for a war of aggression against any of her European neighbors. Certainly this is not one of them. She wanted peace, she needed peace, she meant peace, and she would have had peace had she been left alone. She was at the beginning of a great industrial development, and she wanted peace in order to bring it to its full fructification. She had repeatedly stood insolences at the hands of Germany up to the point of humiliation, all for peace, and anything for peace.
Whatever any one may say about her internal Government, Russia was essentially a peaceable nation. The men at the head of her affairs were imbued with the spirit of peace. The head of her army, the Grand Duke Nicholas, [cheers,] is about the best friend of peace in Europe. Never was a nation so bent on preserving peace as Russia was. It is true Germany six or seven years ago had threatened to march her legions across the Vistula and trample down Russia in the mud, and Russia, fearing a repetition of the same threat, was putting herself in a position of defense. But she was not preparing for any aggression, and Germany said, "This won't do. We don't like people who can defend themselves. We are fully prepared. Russia is not. This is the time to plant our dagger of tempered steel in her heart before her breastplates are forged." That is why we are at war. [Cheers.] Germany hurried her preparations, made ready for war. She made a quarrel with the same cool calculation as she had made a new gun. She hurled her warriors across the frontier. Why? Because she wanted to attack somebody, a country that could not defend herself. It was the purest piece of brigandage in history. [Cheers.] All the same there remains the fact that Russia was taken at a disadvantage, and is, therefore, unable to utilize beyond a fraction the enormous resources which she possesses to protect her soil against the invader. France was not expecting war, and she, therefore, was taken unawares.
What about Britain? We never contemplated any war of aggression against any of our neighbors, and therefore we never raised an army adequate to such sinister purposes. During the last thirty years the two great political parties in the State have been responsible for the policy of this country at home and abroad. For about the same period we have each been governing this country. For about fifteen years neither one party nor the other ever proposed to raise an army in this country that would enable us to confront on land a great Continental power. What does that mean? We never meant to invade any Continental country. [Cheers.] That is the proof of it. If we had we would have started our great armies years ago. We had a great navy, purely for protection, purely for the defense of our shores, and we had an army which was just enough to deal with any small raid that happened to get through the meshes of our navy, and perhaps to police the empire. That was all, no more. But now we have to assist neighbors becoming the victims of a power with millions of warriors at its command, and we have to improvise a great army, and gallantly have our men flocked to the standard. [Cheers.] We have raised the largest voluntary army that has been enrolled in any country or any century—the largest voluntary army, and it is going to be larger. [Cheers.]
I saw a very fine sample of that army this morning at Llandudno. I attended a service there, and I think it was about the most thrilling religious service I have ever been privileged to attend. There were men there of every class, every position, every calling, every condition of life. The peasant had left his plow, the workman had left his lathe and his loom, the clerk had left his desk, the trader and the business man had left their counting houses, the shepherd had left his sunlit hills, and the miner the darkness of the earth, the rich proprietor had left his palace, and the man earning his daily bread had quitted his humble cottage. There were men there of diverse and varied faiths who worshipped at different shrines—men who were in array against each other months ago in bitter conflict, and I saw them march with one step under one flag to fight for the same cause, and I saw them worship the same God. What has brought them together? The love of their native land, resentment for a cruel wrong inflicted upon the weak and defenseless. More than that, what brought them together was that instinct which comes to humanity at critical times when the moment has arrived to cross rivers of blood in order to rescue humanity from the grip of some strangling despotism. [Cheers.] They have done nobly. That is what has brought them together, but we want more, [cheers,] and I have no doubt we will get more.
If this country had produced an army which was equal in proportion to its population to the number of men under arms in France and in Germany at the present moment there would be three millions and a half in this country and 1,200,000 in the Colonies. [Cheers.] That is what I mean when I say our resources are quite adequate to the task. It is not our fight merely—it is the fight of humanity. [Cheers.] The allied countries between them could raise armies of over twenty millions of men. Our enemies can put in the field barely half that number.
Much as I should like to talk about the need for more men, that is not the point of my special appeal today. We stand more in need of equipment than we do of men. This is an engineers' war, [cheers,] and it will be won or lost owing to the efforts or shortcomings of engineers. I have something to say about that, for it involves sacrifices for all of us. Unless we are able to equip our armies our predominance in men will avail us nothing. We need men, but we need arms more than men, and delay in producing them is full of peril for this country. You may say that I am saying things that ought to be kept from the enemy. I am not a believer in giving any information which is useful to him. You may depend on it he knows, but I do not believe in withholding from our own public information which they ought to possess, because unless you tell them you cannot invite their co-operation. The nation that cannot bear the truth is not fit for war, and may our young men be volunteers, while the unflinching pride of those they have left behind them in their deed of sacrifice ought to satisfy the most apprehensive that we are not a timid race, who cannot face unpleasant facts! The last thing in the world John Bull wants is to be mollycoddled. The people must be told exactly what the position is, and then we can ask them to help. We must appeal for the co-operation of employers, workmen, and the general public; the three must act and endure together, or we delay and maybe imperil victory. We ought to requisition the aid of every man who can handle metal. It means that the needs of the community in many respects will suffer acutely vexatious, and perhaps injurious, delay; but I feel sure that the public are prepared to put up with all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; we have none for complacency. Hope is the mainspring of efficiency; complacency is its rust.
We laugh at things in Germany that ought to terrify us. We say, "Look at the way they are making their bread—out of potatoes, ha, ha!" Aye, that potato-bread spirit is something which is more to dread than to mock at. I fear that more than I do even von Hindenburg's strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit in which a country should meet a great emergency, and instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it. I believe we are just as imbued with the spirit as Germany is, but we want it evoked. [Cheers.] The average Briton is too shy to be a hero until he is asked. The British temper is one of never wasting heroism on needless display, but there is plenty of it for the need. There is nothing Britishers would not give up for the honor of their country or for the cause of freedom. Indulgences, comforts, even the necessities of life they would willingly surrender. Why, there are two millions of them at this hour who have willingly tendered their lives for their country. What more could they do? If the absorption of all our engineering resources is demanded, no British citizen will grudge his share of inconvenience.