EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON
[Speech delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow, on September 11, 1914.]
My Lord Provost and Gentlemen:—This is the fourth night in succession that I have been on a platform. Why is it that some of us, myself included, have embarked upon this tour of platform speaking? Not, for a moment, because we think that the spirit of our fellow-countrymen is weak, or that their courage is low, but because at a time of great international crisis like this it is good for all of us to meet and take counsel together, to try to grasp the principles for which we are fighting, to measure the forces against which we have to contend, and perhaps, most of all, to be convinced of the integrity of our cause. [Applause.] For, let us depend upon it, unless our cause is righteous, unless our faith is pure, unless we consecrate ourselves each in his own capacity, body and soul—and soul quite as much as body—to the cause for which we are fighting, and which we believe to be the highest cause for which humanity can contend—[applause]—we have no right, unless we do that, to ask the God above us with His right hand and His holy arm to give us the victory. [Applause.]
This is not the first time, as you may know, that I have spoken in St. Andrew's Hall. [Applause.] I have addressed political and quasi-political meetings here, but we do not think anything about any of those subjects now. [Hear, hear, and applause.] The breath of this war has blown politics out of our life, blown them over the cliffs of Dover into the sea, and as long as this war lasts I believe the old party spirit to be extinct, the old party issues it would be impossible to revive, that we are acting as a nation with one voice, and it may be even when all is over and we resume the ordinary business of life we shall find it a little difficult to accommodate ourselves—[laughter and applause]—to the altered situation, and perhaps some of us may entertain a more charitable vision of our neighbours than we hitherto have been supposed to do. [Laughter and applause,] For my own part, I appear with the
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