I found there page after page of records of the same atrocities, the same brutal and barbarous conduct we have been witnessing in Belgium of late. When you see the illustrations we get every day of the methods this callous enemy adopts, I say there is a call to every British man who values the freedom of his country, and values the freedom and blessing of civilization, to go and help to put such a barbarous foe out of existence for all time. [Loud cheers.]
I am not going to dwell on the tragedy of poor, bleeding Belgium. I am not going to enlarge on the horrible atrocities which we all know have been committed there, in Flanders, and in Northern France. I am not going to dwell for more than a moment on the new method of warfare, which attacks an unfortified town like Scarborough, and gathers in a harvest of helpless, innocent women and children, and calls it a great military feat. But if that is one of the recognized methods of our new enemy, it would not be a bad idea if we distributed all the German prisoners we have among the unfortified coastal towns of the kingdom. And then, perhaps, their countrymen—Heaven knows whether they would or not—might possibly be more reluctant to attack us in the way they have done. [A voice: "Not they."] There is no question that we are dealing with a man in the Kaiser—[A voice: "A what?" and laughter.] Well, a man, shall I say, who is just on the borderland between humanity and barbarism; who inherits all the madness of his ancestors. Nobody knew better than the late King Edward how mad his nephew was. [Cheers.] And so long as he lived he was able to keep the fellow in order. [Laughter.] But from the time we lost that great king—that great ambassador of peace, who did more for the peace of Europe than all the statesmen who ever lived—[applause]—this man has been irresponsible, mad with ambition, only waiting for the opportunity, as he thought, by all sorts of subterfuge and hypocrisy, to catch us unawares, and to give full vent to that ambition, which undoubtedly will now, as Shakespeare says, "o'erleap itself." Let me ask young men there if they would not like, although they have not done much at the present, if they would not like to be in at the death. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the talons of the lion are already getting well into the neck of the vulture, and that you can almost hear the death rattle of his foul and black throat. I want the manhood of England—and London especially—to come forward, so that they will be able to say to their children, and to their child-
