Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/72

 RT. HON. SIR JOHN SIMON


 * —A meeting like this great gathering would not be possible if we did not all realize that we were meeting in a good and necessary cause. This war is none of our choosing; it has been forced upon us as certainly as any war has ever been forced on a peaceful people, because there was no choice except taking part in it or exposing ourselves to undying shame. [Cheers.] This war, I say with certain confidence, has been forced upon us, and it is in that spirit we are determined to see it through. [Cheers.] There is one cause—I am not so sure I am not such a friend of peace that I do not think it is the only cause—in which the people of this country ought to take an active part in a European war, and it is when they are compelled to keep their pledged word to a small community which has been most wantonly attacked, in breach of the most solemn promise, by a powerful and a remorseless neighbour. [Cheers.]

It is that cause which has produced a consequence which twelve months ago none of us who stand on this platform to-night would have conceived possible—namely, that we should all be here endeavouring to assert the same thing. Our conviction is that if Britain had stood aside when that appeal was made to us by the people of Belgium we should have been as false to our word as Germany has been false to her word, and we should have been in the future as clearly condemned by the civilized world as Germany is by the whole civilized world to-day.

And is it not a wonderful thing that with all their spying the Germans never found it out? [Laughter.] That is the worst of spying—you always discover the wrong thing. [Laughter.] The Germans were perfectly satisfied that if we were involved in some domestic confusion allegiances would 54