their own convenience. And yet a question which we dare not
shirk, a question which a Carlyle, a Ruskin, a William Morris would not
have hesitated to formulate. Does Britain stand for an Idea? Is it true
that we are fighting in the main for the cause of Liberty and Democracy,
for progress in Europe and the world at large? And if this be really true
to-day, how can we best ensure that it shall still be true at the close
of this long war, if, as we hope and pray, victory crowns the arms of
the Allies? It was an Idea that nerved Britain for the struggle against
Napoleon. It was an Idea that inspired Germany in the great uprising of
1813 against Napoleon. It was an Idea that brought the Balkan League
into being and carried its armies in triumph to Salonica and Adrianople.
Freedom, Unity, Liberation, such were the forms which that Idea took: the
determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs
of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of
national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own
freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke.
In each of these struggles error and even crimes were committed by the
victors, and yet it is a thousand times true to assert that the victorious
Idea represented in each case the triumph of civilisation. To-day the
position is equally clear. In opposing Germany's claim to override
international treaty obligations to suit the convenience of her military
strategists, in associating ourselves with Belgium and Serbia in their
vindication of the rights of the smaller nations, we are not merely
resisting a fresh bid for world-dominion on the part of a single power, but
are challenging the theory that Might is superior to Right in the political
world.

Sec.2. _The Aims of British Statesmanship._--Mr. Asquith on September 19
defined as follows the three main aims of British statesmanship in entering
upon war: "(1) To vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and what is
properly called the public law of Europe, (2) to assert and to enforce
the independence of free States, relatively small and weak, against the
encroachments and the violence of the strong, and (3) to withstand, as
we believe in the best interests not only of our own Empire, but of
civilisation at large, the arrogant claim of a single Power to dominate the
development of the destinies of Europe." In speaking thus, Mr. Asquith had
no intentio