Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/110

 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. Talk is in vain. We might as well speak to the winds. Appeals to right and conscience are wasted, when might determines what is right, and conscience is not allowed to speak in the presence of necessity. "War is a horrible method of resistance; but in this case there is no other. If you see a man trampling upon a woman you may walk away or you may knock him down. But it is in vain to argue the point with him while he tramples. Those who are for peace at any price are like the man who walks away. They are for peace, not on moral grounds; but so that they and their countrymen may not suffer from war. They have ignored morals, just as much as the nation which goes to war so that it may conquer." As President Wilson said in 1911: "No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong, and get peace out of his acquiescence. The most solid and satisfying peace is that which comes from this constant spiritual warfare, and there are times in the history of nations when they must take up the crude instruments of bloodshed in order to vindicate spiritual conceptions. For liberty is a spiritual conception and when men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare."

We may have been — in my judgment we were — guilty of serious dereliction of duty before the war; but when the die was cast as it was, there was only one course for us as men and brothers. That we took; and that course we must keep until the day of deliverance comes, bringing us a just and lasting peace.

Other certainties I pass over in order to speak of some aspects of the war of the last five months, on which we are not so likely to be agreed ; and the first is that an armed peace is one of the most sure methods of creating war. The doctrine that if you desire peace you must prepare for war is a ghastly futility and an irritating delusion. You create war by building gigantic armaments, staggering us by their size and cost. It is an insensate wastage of wealth: an actual economic