Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/250

 RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
 * — It is well that the force and spirit of all classes and interests in the British Empire are all flowing together into one great channel, and moves forward to the realization of the whole strength of the British people. The times in which we live are terrible; the course of events has passed outside the boundaries of the most daring imagination. The actual facts are so stunning, the scale of all the phenomena presented to our view so vast, that we can only feel, each one of us, that we must just lay hold of the next obvious simple step which duty indicates. [Cheers.] How we shall reach the end we cannot see now. But the immediate step before us we can see quite plainly. [Cheers.]

I have not come here to ask you for your cheers: I have come to ask you for a million men for the gallant Army of Sir John French—a million of the flower of our manhood, nothing but the best, every man a volunteer—[cheers]—a million men maintained in the field and equipped with everything that science can invent or money can buy, maintained and supported by the resources which, while we maintain command of the seas, we can draw from every quarter of the globe and feed up steadily to their full strength until this war is settled in the only way. [Loud cheers.] I come to ask you for this with great confidence, because it can quite easily be done as long as we continue all of the same mind. [Cheers.]

My friendship with Mr. F. E. Smith is one of the most cherished possessions of my life, and I am glad to be on this platform with him. In a few days he is off to the war—[great cheering]—and I join with you in wishing that he may come back when matters have been satisfactorily adjusted. [Cheers.] I have only one song to sing. These are days of action rather than of speech. You have no need to be anxious about the 216