om day to day. [Cheers.] Some thought there would be a German war,
some did not; but no one supposed that a great military nation would
exhibit all the vices of military organization without those redeeming
virtues which, God knows, are needed to redeem warlike operations from
the taint of shame. We have been confronted with an exhibition of
ruthlessness and outrage enforced upon the weak, enforced upon women and
children. We have been confronted with repeated breaches of the law of
enlightened warfare, practices analogous to those which in private life
are regarded as cheating, and which deprive persons or country adopting
them, or condoning them, of the credit and respect due to honorable
soldiers.

We have been confronted with all this. Let us not imitate it. [Cheers.]
Let us not try to make small retaliations and reprisals here and there.
Let us concentrate upon the simple, obvious task of creating a military
force so powerful that the war, even in default of any good fortune, can
certainly be ended and brought to a satisfactory conclusion. However the
war began, now that it is started it is a war of self-preservation for
us. Our civilization, our way of doing things, our political and
Parliamentary life, with its voting and its thinking, our party system,
our party warfare, the free and easy tolerance of British life, our
method of doing things and of keeping ourselves alive and
self-respecting in the world--all these are brought into contrast, into
collision, with the organized force of bureaucratic Prussian militarism.

That is the struggle which is opened now and which must go forward
without pause or abatement until it is settled decisively and finally
one way or the other. On that there can be no compromise or truce. It is
our life or it is theirs. We are bound, having gone so far, to go
forward without flinching to the very end. [Cheers.]

"The Terror of Europe."

This is the same great European war that would have fought in the year
1909 if Russia had not humbled herself and given way to German threats.
It is the same war that Sir Edward Grey stopped last year. [Loud
cheers.] Now it has come upon us. If you look back across the long
periods of European history to the original cause, you will, I am sure,
find it in the cruel terms enforced upon France in the year 1870,
["Hear, hear!"] and in the repeated bullyings and attempts to terrorize
France which have been the characteristic of German policy ever sin