e no special
knowledge in order to ascertain that yourselves. A careful,
intelligent perusal of the published dispatches in the newspapers must
have caused you to come to the conclusion that this country is
engaging one of the most formidable enemies that it has ever waged war
against.

The issues are great, the perils are great, and nothing can pull us
through but the united effort of every man in the British Empire. If
you look at what our brave fellows are doing at the front you can see
the perils there facing them, the trials, the privations, and they are
doing it without flinching. ["Hear, hear!"] Never in the history of
this country have our men shown greater courage and endurance than
they have during this war. They have done all you can expect of mortal
man.

We who are comfortable at home, free from privations, free from
danger, let us, each of us, do his part as nobly as those heroes of
ours are doing it at the front. [Cheers.] It would be horrible for us
to think that those who fall fall through our neglect. It would be a
still more ghastly reflection to think that those who fell have given
their lives in vain through any slackness or selfishness on the part
of any one of us in this land.

Yesterday we had a very important gathering of the employers and the
representatives of labor in the great engineering firms in Manchester
and other parts of this great county. The response made to our appeal
was gratifying. Every man there showed a disposition to do all in his
power to assist the country to pull through its difficulties
triumphantly, and I feel perfectly certain that the same ready
response will be given to the same appeal which I am now about to make
to the men of Liverpool and the area surrounding it.

What makes Germany a formidable enemy is not merely its preparation
for war, it is not merely its organization, potent as that is, but it
is the spirit of every class and section of its population. You have
only got to read the papers to see that as far as they are concerned
they are all of them subordinating everything to the one great
national purpose of winning victory for their Fatherland. That is the
least we can do in this country for our land. [Cheers.]

I never doubted where ultimate victory would lie, never for a moment.
Nor have I ever underestimated the difficulties. But although I have
never doubted where victory would rest, all the same I know that
victory will come the sooner for recog