which goes by the name of the British Empire—[laughter]—was supposed to be so insecurely founded, and so loosely knit together, that at the first touch of serious menace from without it would fall to pieces and tumble to the ground. [Laughter.] Our great Dominions were getting heartily tired of the Imperial connection. India—[loud cheers]—it was notorious to every German traveller—[laughter]—was on the verge of open revolt, and here at home we, the people of this United Kingdom, were riven by dissensions so deep and so fierce that our energies, whether for resistance or for attack, would be completely paralysed. Gentlemen, what a fantastic dream! [Laughter and cheers.] And what a rude awakening! [Renewed cheers.] And in this vast and grotesque and yet tragic miscalculation is to be found one of the roots—perhaps the main root—of the present war.
But let us go one step more. It has been said "by their fruits ye shall know them"—[cheers]—and history will record that when the die was cast and the struggle began it was the disciples of this same creed who revived methods of warfare which have for centuries past been condemned by the common-sense as well as by the humanity of the great masses of the civilized world. [Cheers.] Louvain, Malines, Termonde—these are names which will henceforward be branded on the brow of German culture. [Hear, hear, and cheers]. The ruthless sacking of ancient and famous towns of Belgium is fitly supplemented by the story which reaches us only to-day from our own head quarters in France of the Proclamation issued less than a week ago by the German authorities, who were for a moment unhappily, for little more than a moment, in occupation of the venerable city of Reims. Gentlemen, it ought to be put on record. Let me read a very short, the concluding, paragraph of that Proclamation:
[Hisses.]
