The other day, speaking to my regiment near Edinburgh, I was reported to have said—but I beg to say there were no reporters there—that I would rather see Britain wiped out than one third-rate Power extinguished. I said nothing of the kind. I did not say it if only for this one reason, that I suppose the third-rate Power indicated was Belgium, and I for one would never call Belgium a third-rate Power. [Cheers.] In territory, in wealth, in population, in military and naval power she may not be more than third-rate, but in incomparable valour, in noble patriotism, in heroic resistance she has all the moral claims to be a first-rate Power that any country could possess. [Cheers.] But what I did say was this, that if we were to sink to a third-rate Power in the position I have described, I, for one, would from my heart and soul rather that all our people, as they now exist, were to pass into exile or into death, and leave this island vacant for some superior race. [Cheers.]
Well, gentlemen, I can end, at any rate, in a more cheerful vein. Make no mistake about it, we shall win. [Loud cheers.]
We are fighting with our back to the wall to prevent a shame and a defeat such as England has never sustained. We are fighting now with our backs to the wall to prevent an ignominy and a defeat such as Great Britain has never sustained, and is not prepared to endure. We are going to win because a nation and an Empire like ours cannot be extinguished by any such warfare as this. [Cheers.] We are going to win because we have our people united as they have never been before; we are going to win because our Dominions, our Empires outside these islands, vie with each other in generous emulation—[cheers]—as to which shall give us most support, in supplies and money and men; and, above all, we are going to win because we have a high, a pure, and a just cause—[cheers]—and we can appeal with humble but, I think, earnest confidence to Him Whom, in the words of our beautiful old Paraphrase, we recognize as the
God of Bethel, by whose hand
Our people still are fed.
