6
"A Scrap of Paper."
It is the interest of Prussia to-day to break the treaty, and she has done it. (Hisses.) She avows it with cynical contempt for every principle of justice. She says: "Treaties only bind you when it is your interest to keep them." (Laughter.) "What is a treaty?" says the German Chancellor, "A scrap of paper." Have you any £5 notes about you? (Laughter and applause.) I am not calling for them. (Laughter.) Have you any of those neat little Treasury £1 notes? (Laughter.) If you have, burn them; they are only scraps of paper. (Laughter and applause.) What are they made of? Rags. (Laughter.) What are they worth? The whole credit of the British Empire. (Loud applause.) Scraps of paper! I have been dealing with scraps of paper within the last month. One suddenly found the commerce of the world coming to a standstill. The machine had stopped. Why? I will tell you. We discovered—many of us for the first time, for I do not pretend that I do not know much more about the machinery of commerce to-day than I did six weeks ago, and there are many others like me—we discovered that the machinery of commerce was moved by bills of exchange. I have seen some of them—(Laughter)—wretched, crinkled, scrawled over, blotched, frowsy, and yet those wretched little scraps of paper move great ships laden with thousands of tons of precious cargo from one end of the world to the other. (Applause.) What is the motive power behind them? The honour of commercial men. (Applause.) Treaties are the currency of International statesmanship. (Applause.) Let us be fair: German merchants, German traders, have the reputation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world—(Hear, hear)—but if the currency of German commerce is to be debased to the level of that of her statesmanship, no trader from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look at a German signature again. (Loud applause.) This doctrine of the scrap of paper, this doctrine which, is proclaimed by Bernhardi, that treaties only bind a nation as long as it is to its Interest, goes under the root of all public law. It is the straight road to barbarism. (Hear, hear) It is as if you were to remove the Magnetic Pole because it was in the way of a German cruiser. (Laughter.) The whole navigation of the seas would become dangerous, difficult and impossible; and the whole machinery of civilisation will break down if this doctrine wins in this war. (Hear, hear.) We are fighting against barbarism—(Applause)—and there is only one way of putting it right. If there are nations that say they will only respect treaties when it is to their interest to do so, we must make it to their interest to do so for the future. (Applause.)
