Great Speeches of the War/Authors

“ Nothing can be more false. [Cheers.] I believed, and I was not alone in believing up till, let us say, certainly twenty years ago and less—I was not alone in believing that Germany, sated with glory, absolutely secure in her strength, her wealth, and her population, growing day by day with almost unparalleled rapidity, would have felt that her ideal would have been that of the great, peaceful, cultivated nation, strong enough to preserve her own honour and her own rights, anxious for the liberty of all other nations, and a determined ally of peace. ”

“ And sometimes in the silent hours of the night, when pondering these matters, I feel that perhaps when the roar of the cannon has died away, and the blood has ceased flowing, the scales may drop from our eyes; and that as we look back upon the ghastly scene we have left behind, we may find that mankind has passed the final milestone on the road of human destiny, and may see before us—I say it with all solemnity—a brighter and a clearer road, with the Prince of Peace at its end—pointing to the Star of Bethlehem, which leads us on to God. ”

“ Man's soul still remains unconquerable. Scatter into bleeding fragments millions of his bodies with your howitzers, Man's soul rises from the million corpses, in its everlasting youth, in its indestructible immortality. These spiritual forces, which your gospel of war ignores, are no more capable of being destroyed than a great river or the incarnardine sea. And of these spiritual forces there is none more indestructible than the principle of race and of nationality. ”

“ Not lightly have we engaged in this world battle, which not only involves forces which surpass in magnitude those of any warfare in the history of the world, but also places in jeopardy the interests and the very existence of mighty empires. And we shall not sheathe our sword until we have laid the grim and remorseless monster of German militarism, which has dominated Europe and threatened the world for over forty years, till the cause of freedom and an enduring peace is established. ”

“ We are in a struggle which for us, not less than for Belgium, not less than for France, not less than for any other Power engaged, is a struggle of life or death—and unless we carry it to a victorious conclusion, not merely would all our sacrifices have been in vain, not merely would the gallant and precious lives that have been lost have been sacrificed in vain; we ourselves should fall from our great estate; Great Britain would cease to count as a great nation in the counsels of the world. ”

“ I am shocked when I hear people talking airily about the war being over by Christmas, and of our soldiers being welcomed back to their homes. In my judgment more than one Christmas will pass before this war is over. We are fighting an enemy of desperate courage, of great tenacity, of overwhelming forces, with a power, especially in artillery, greater than anything dreamed of in the world before, and imbued with a national spirit quite as keen as our own. The whole German people seem to be inoculated with the poison which has been poured into their veins by the German philosophers. ”

“ I shall not live to see the day when all wars shall cease and ancient strife shall end, but in this dark hour I am sustained by the unshaken conviction that peace will ultimately reign from pole to pole, and I pray that you and I may work to hasten that day—for Peace is the only sure foundation upon which we can secure the liberty and the happiness of humanity, and upon which the lasting glory and greatness of a nation can be built. ”

“ We knew that even while the paper boys cry along the streets the glorious tidings of British victory there comes to many a tender straining spirit the dread news that strikes desolation to the heart. And with these aims, aspirations, and beliefs, here we are, Mr. Stead, plunged into the most horrible war the world has ever known.
All the old causes you and I cherished so dearly set aside! Never in our lives, now, shall we see them advanced to the stage we had fondly hoped. The millions, so hard to get for education, housing, sounder health, greater comfort, they slip away! ”

“ The world has been divided by the divine and unerring hand of Nature into peoples who speak different tongues, profess different religions, the blood in whose veins comes from different sources, who dwell under different suns and till different earths. But the German soldier in his pickelhaube and the German professor in his spectacles come along, and declare Germany is wiser and more powerful than Nature. Nature deliberately created diversity; the Germans will substitute uniformity; and the uniformity means that every race, creed, and nation shall be all put into the German mould. ”

“ The horrors of this War have been touched with instances of the wistful tenderness with which the German soldier has taken the little children of his enemy on his knee, and pressed them to his lips and to his eyes, hungry, perchance, with his memories of like children left in his desolate and weeping home, far away in a German street or far-off village. But what I do contend is that the gospel of war, the gospel that war is a high, a noble, an inspiring, an elevating thing, which the Prussian militarist philosophy teaches, must be judged by its fruits; must be judged by its inevitable results. ”

“ We knew the cost would be heavy; we knew our great enemy was strong, perfectly prepared, utterly ruthless, but we had none the less the fixed assurance of ultimate victory—an assurance not lessened but confirmed by the honour which both our Army and our Navy have already won by their gallant services. For we believe that neither the new siege guns of Herr Krupp, nor Zeppelins dealing wanton and useless destruction, nor millions of armed men, nor long-matured organization, nor the brutality which seeks to strike terror into the defenceless, can overcome the unconquerable spirit of freedom. ”

“ We should have been watching as detached spectators the siege of Liège, the steady and manful resistance of a small Army, the occupation of the capital, with its splendid traditions and memories, the gradual forcing back of the patriotic defenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp, countless outrages suffered by, and buccaneering levies exacted from, the unoffending civil population, and finally the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years' War—the sack of Louvain. ”

“ He will come out of all this painfully conscious of the fact that his dreams of a German world-empire lie shattered amidst the Belgian ruins. After that, if he is wise, he'll forget Bernhardi and go back to Beethoven. There is no empire for the one; there is an empire for the other—a world-empire.
Germany reckoned without plucky Belgium's heroic stand. It reckoned without France's determination no longer to bend the knee to the bully of Europe. It reckoned without the stone-wall pluck and endurance of a little British Army. ”

“ We have been engaged in many struggles in our long history. Never has a Government been so free from criticism; never has a Government had reposed in it such absolute confidence; never has any British Government enjoyed such free and unrestricted power. No request that they have made to the House of Commons or to Parliament has been refused—and I cannot conceive any request that they might make for the successful prosecution of this war which would not be granted to them, if it complied, as I doubt not it would comply, with the ordinary canons of fairness and of justice. ”

“ It is to re-shape what we have failed to shape properly; to bring light where we have known darkness; to save the pure young soul from the sins that have soiled our own in life's bitter struggle with the world outside, and the more perilous world of passions, weaknesses, and appetites within ourselves; it is to re-make in our little way the world for this new being that has come through us on to its chequered life—this is the impulse that keeps the millions of the world, white or black, Western or Eastern, civilized or savage, storing yearly their little meed of wheat, or wine, or oil. ”

“ If the Allies win—if Germany, who has carried her military preparations to a pitch heretofore unknown, finds herself beaten—I do not imagine any nation in the future will be likely to pin its faith to armaments. If Germany, armed as she was armed, could not win, how could any nation hope to win by means of arms? I am hopeful that the world as a result of this war will get rid of at least a part of the burden of armaments. I am hopeful that civilization is going to do something to defend itself against war. ”

“ France knows now that she is not what she was in the days of the Empire. Her nerves are steel; her resolves are fixed; her spirit steady and calm ; her soul clad with the panoply of courage, fortitude, and faith. She refuses to drift, and is master of herself. Russia saw the true course and took, in one stride of splendid sacrifice of imperial revenue, a leap right away from self-indulgence and intemperance to sobriety, a virile manhood, and a larger freedom. Germany is preparing to recast her estimate of herself ”

“ This is a time when principles whose foundations rest on sand cannot endure, but those which are built upon the eternal rock of justice and liberty stand, though the earth shake and hurricanes of blood and fire beat upon them. It is the faith that somehow good will be the final goal of ill which sustains us in these days when the powers of Darkness seem to be triumphant. ”

“ There is not a writer or student of current history who does not stand in deep wonderment at the unity and splendid patriotic rally which characterizes every unit to-day of the great British Empire, [Hear, hear.] It is that distinction which goes to the root of this great struggle. It is that distinction of temperament and character which makes the German State a mechanical entity, producing machines, and the British state a human reality, producing human beings. It is that which makes the Germans cry, "Let Deutschland be a great nation," and the British, "Let every Britisher be a free man." ”

“ What has been accomplished by this sword-clanking bully? He has sacked Louvain; laid the great cathedral of Rheims in ruins; destroyed right and left in Belgium for the mere savage joy of destruction; terrified, tortured, and murdered old men and women; outraged young women and girls; mopped up countless Jeroboams of champagne; maimed and killed women and little children in English seaside resorts.
It is a fine foundation on which to build an empire. ”

“ Wales has a special interest in the causes of this war. No part of the country has a deeper or more intimate interest. We have declared as an Empire war on the barbarous, brutal doctrine, cynically avowed by Germany, that nations have no rights unless they are powerful enough to enforce them, and that the strong can only be expected to concede justice when it is to their interest to do so. Every sentiment, whether of sympathy, of fellow feeling, every sense of chivalry and fair play, bids Wales to take her part in a warfare which has been so initiated. ”

“ Nor need I keep out of this category of certainties, after the experience of these five months, the fact that neutrality for Great Britain was and is simply and absolutely impossible. We could do no other ; we can do no other than commit ourselves out and out, and with all we are and have, and to the bitter end to this strife; not for our own sake, nor merely for the sake of our country, but for those just causes that are greater than nation, land, or empire, and embrace the well-being of the whole race. Force is, in short, the only method of resistance left to us. ”

“ Belgium represents the right of existence of small nations. In the name of what principle does a nation powerful in numbers and in armament seek to destroy or absorb a neighbouring nation less strong and smaller? Is it because small nations have no spiritual qualities? Belgium by her customs, her institutions, her social progress, by the radiancy of her art and poetry fills a special niche in the concert of civilized nations. What right has this German Kultur to wish to impose itself on other cultures? ”

“ The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience; slavery they can have anywhere; it is a weed that grows in every soil; they may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of which you have the monopoly."
Ladies and gentlemen, that was 140 years ago, and it is because we have acted on that principle that we have this glorious spectacle which is now the wonder of the world. ”

“ It is for the Right that we fight, for it Belgium still fights, she who has given for this ideal all the blood of her veins— [all the deputies and senators rise and cheer loudly] —and others who are fighting for the Right are:—Unshaken England, faithful Russia, brave Servia, the bold Japanese Navy, the heroic Montenegrins. If this war be the greatest history has ever known, it is not because countries are fighting to conquer territories, water-ways, to gain increase of commerce, political and economic advantages, it is because they fight to determine the fate of the world. ”

“ It was a blessed day when the democracy of Britain trusted Ireland. That trust has done what force could never do. That trust has done what centuries of coercion failed to accomplish. It has bound two nations together in a unity of common interests and common rights and common liberties, and it has given to us for a watchword for the future the old classic motto, Imperium et libertas—Empire and liberty. ”

“ Judge, then, the wisdom and the veracity of this Prussian gospel by what has happened since this War begun; put, above all, in juxtaposition the conflicting ideals of the Prussian system and the system of the great free Empire to which we belong, for whose defence our soldiers are shedding their precious blood. There isn't a true Dane, a true Pole, a true Frenchman, within the broad dominions of the German Empire, that doesn't in his heart long for the hour when the blood-stained vulture-eagle of Prussia is stretched helpless, with broken wings and battered beak, on the ground. ”

“ Finally, we have to punish the enemy for his crime, to extirpate the curse of a false militarism that overhangs the Continent like a cloud, and to build up a new Europe that shall once again be free.
Thank God, we have certain advantages on our side. We are fighting under conditions more favourable than we had any right to expect. Our Navy is intact; we have loyal, valiant and capable allies. The spirit of our country is sound, and the courage of our soldiers incontestable. ”

“ But there can be no peace until Belgium is free—until she has had such compensation as can be given for the bitter cruel wrongs that Belgian citizens have suffered. No peace can be made till France has once again brought liberty, the right to think, to speak, to smile for her own provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. ”