Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/70

52 What is that crime? It is the crime of a nation which has resolved not merely to be great, to be powerful, to be prosperous, but a nation which says, "All these things are valueless to me unless I can also dominate and coerce the whole civilized world." [Hear, hear.]

That is the root difficulty which we have got to face. That is a circumstance which can never be forgotten, either by those who take part in this war, or by those who will have something to say of the settlement after this war is concluded. [Cheers.] My public life does not go quite back to the Franco-German war of 1870, though my memory does, and I well remember the general feeling in this country towards the growth of the German Empire. The Germans themselves—or, at any rate, the writings of those Germans I happen to be acquainted with—always talk as if Germany had been the perpetual subject of irritable envy to the people of this country. Nothing can be more false. [Cheers.] I believed, and I was not alone in believing up till, let us say, certainly twenty years ago and less—I was not alone in believing that Germany, sated with glory, absolutely secure in her strength, her wealth, and her population, growing day by day with almost unparalleled rapidity, would have felt that her ideal would have been that of the great, peaceful, cultivated nation, strong enough to preserve her own honour and her own rights, anxious for the liberty of all other nations, and a determined ally of peace. That has not been the course of German thought. Germany's ideas have not progressed, have not developed, upon those lines. Unhappily for herself, unhappily for mankind, she has apparently felt that it is not enough to be great, honoured, wealthy, and secure, but that any nation worthy of the name, having domination within its grasp, ought, by all means, fair and foul alike, to pursue domination until it is secured.

Now I think that is one of the greatest, if not the greatest tragedy of history. It almost looks as if the war of 1870 and the unexampled outburst of prosperity which succeeded it turned the heads of a great nation and polluted the consciences of a mighty people. They speak of themselves, of their culture, of their valour, and of their greatness in terms which I should have thought any one with a sense of humour [cheers] would not have for an instant thought of describing their own performances. I have seen, not in the reckless literature of the German press, but in the writings of quite able and apparently quite sober German statesmen and thinkers, views