after some persuasion I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, my colleague has called your attention to the fact that we are not a mere parochial or parish pump kind of delegation. We represent those vast imperial interests of the British Empire to which you are all proud to belong." It went just as flat. And then I added, "But what in the name of God would have become of the British Empire if it had not been for the village pump?" [Laughter and applause] The fact of the matter is, we are all out in this war. The man at the forge, in the mine, in the field, in the foundry, and the factory, even the Johnny in Rotten Row—they are all taking their little part. How many times have I poked fun at the Johnny in Rotten Row! One said to me once, "Do you know, Cwooks, you don't speak pwoperly. You were not pwoperly twained. You drop your h's." I said to him, "That's nothing, you drop your r's, so between the two of us we shall drop the alphabet." [Laughter.] Where is Algy to-night? In the trenches fighting for his King, his country. [Cheers.] You say you have no land, no money, and it doesn't matter if you are under the Kaiser. You have more than money, more than land—you have liberty. [Cheers.] Liberty to say that your soul is your own. Why hold it so cheap? I can tell you why. It is because you have never fought for it. You Welshmen inherited it. It was won by our fathers and grandfathers on many a bloody battlefield. They gave us liberty. [Cheers.] Can it be that we Britishers shall hand it down less pure than we received it? After all, we have more than a life interest in it. We have to think what generations yet unborn shall say about us. Shall it be that on the little mountain-side home, where the mother is nursing her little children, she shall have to say, "Hush, children. The military will be here, and yet our fathers and grandfathers in 1915 might have settled this military monster for all time. They did not do it. Curses on their memory"? How different will it be if you line up and do your bit now. [Cheers.]
You cheered the brave lads when they went away, how you glorified the men who joined the colours. You sent one man into the trenches where there ought to have been three. You cheer them as they go. Are you going to leave them there? It is murder if you do. You are bound to go and help them. Cannot you hear the mothers of the future saying to their little children, "Aye, it was glorious, the deeds that were performed in those days. We had men with wrists of
