derive some advantage from the breach of it. What is to be said to that small and valiant, but most deeply wounded nation which, relying on this scrap of paper, paid but little attention to the formation of a military machine at all comparable in scale or efficiency to the great conscript armies of the modern world? That small nation believed that when the Powers of Europe entered into a solemn guarantee they meant what they said, and that the maintenance of their integrity so guaranteed would not be made an excuse for the barbarities which have now disgraced civilization [Cheers.]
With a valour that will never be forgotten while the deeds of brave men are written about in the annals of warfare, and under every conceivable discouragement, feeling bitterly that they were not receiving the succour and sustenance to which they thought they were entitled from their Allies, the Belgians valiantly played their part and maintained a quarrel into which they had no desire to enter, and it is a paramount obligation in which the honour of this country is involved that, as far as is humanly possible, they should be put back in the position which they occupied before the war. [Cheers.] When the British forces are reinforced, as they will be reinforced in the future, I trust that they may be privileged in soldierly fashion to avenge themselves on those who have done these dire wrongs to Belgium. [Cheers.]
The second justification of the war is that our very existence as an Imperial Power depended on our participation in this war. [Cheers.] Not content with an Army which numerically overwhelmed every sort of professional soldier that we could immediately put into the field, during the past six years Germany has been building up a powerful Navy with the sole object, at the proper moment, of challenging the naval supremacy of this country. We could allow challenges in the military field, but we never have allowed, and we never can allow, challenges in the naval field. [Cheers.] From the moment that it became clear that it was the desperate and calculated object of German policy to challenge the supremacy of the British Navy the issue was bound to come. [Cheers.] Germany thought that we were a decadent nation and that at the convenient moment we ought to give way to the great apostles of culture. [Laughter.] If they had not believed that, how could they have made the dishonourable proposal that we should stand by while Belgium perished, and while innocent and unaggressive France was robbed of her Colonies
