Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/84

 RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

come here this afternoon to talk to my fellow-countrymen about the great war and the part we ought to take in it. I feel my task is easier after we have been listening to the greatest battlesong in the world. [Cheers.]

There is no man in this room who has always regarded the prospects of engaging in a great war with greater reluctance, with greater repugnance, than I have done throughout the whole of my political life. [Cheers.] There is no man either inside or outside of this room more convinced that we could not have avoided it without national dishonour. [Cheers.] I am fully alive to the fact that whenever a nation was engaged in any war she has always invoked the sacred name of honour. Many a crime has been committed in its name; there are some crimes being committed now. [Hear, hear.] But nevertheless, national honour is a great reality, and any nation that disregards it is doomed. [Hear, hear.]

Why is our honour as a country involved in this war? Because in the first place we are bound in an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty, the integrity of a small neighbour, that has lived peaceably. She could not have compelled us, because she was weak; but the man who declines to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard. [Cheers.]