Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/41

 RT. HON. H. H. ASQUITH


 * —It is three years and a half since I last had the honour of addressing in this hall a gathering of the citizens. We were then met under the presidency, my Lord Mayor, of one of your predecessors—men of all creeds and parties—to celebrate and approve the joint declaration of the two great English-speaking States that for the future any differences between them should be settled, if not by agreement, at least by judicial inquiry and arbitration, and never in any circumstances by war. [Cheers.]

Those of us who hailed that eirenicon between the United States and ourselves as a landmark on the road of progress were not sanguine enough to think or even to hope that the era of war was drawing to a close—still less were we prepared to anticipate the terrible spectacle which now confronts us—a contest which for the number and importance of the Powers engaged, the scale of their armaments and arms, the width of the theatre of conflict, the outpouring of blood and the loss of life, the incalculable toll of suffering levied upon non-combatants, the material and moral loss accumulating day by day to the higher interests of civilized mankind—a contest which in every one of these aspects is without precedent in the annals of the world.

We were very confident three years ago in the rightness of our position when we welcomed the new securities for peace. We are equally confident in it to-day, when reluctantly and against our will, but with a clear judgment and a clean conscience [cheers], we find ourselves involved with the whole strength of this Empire in a bloody arbitrament between 25