Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/89

Rh sin let her cast a stone at Servia. A nation trained in a horrible school, she won her freedom with her tenacious valour, and she has maintained it by the same courage. If any Servians were mixed up in the assassination of the Grand Duke they ought to be punished. Servia admits that. The Servian Government had nothing to do with it. Not even Austria claimed that. The Servian Prime Minister is one of the most capable and honoured men in Europe. Servia was willing to punish any one of her subjects who had been proved to have any complicity in that assassination. What more could you expect?

What were the Austrian demands? Servia sympathized with her fellow-countrymen in Bosnia. That was one of her crimes. She must do so no more. Her newspapers were saying nasty things about Austria. They must do so no longer. That is the Austrian spirit. You had it in Zabern. How dare you criticize a Prussian official, and if you laugh—[laughter]—it is a capital offence. The Colonel threatened to shoot them if they repeated it. Servian newspapers must not criticize Austria. I wonder what would have happened had we taken the same line about German newspapers.

Servia said: "Very well, we will give orders to the newspapers that they must not criticize Austria in future; neither Austria nor Hungary, nor anything that is theirs." [Laughter.] Who can doubt the valour of Servia when she undertook to tackle her newspaper editors? [Laughter.] She promised not to sympathize with Bosnia, promised to write no critical articles about Austria. She would have no public meetings at which anything unkind was said about Austria.

That was not enough. Servia must dismiss from her army officers whom Austria should subsequently name. But these officers had just emerged from a war where they were adding lustre to the Servian arms—gallant, brave, efficient. [Cheers.] I wonder whether it was their guilt or their efficiency that prompted Austria's action. But mark, the officers were not named; Servia was to undertake in advance to dismiss them from the Army, the names to be sent on subsequently.

Can you name a country in the world that would have stood that? Supposing Austria or Germany had issued an ultimatum of that kind to this country: "You must dismiss from your Army and from your Navy all those officers whom we shall subsequently name!" Well, I think I could name them now. Lord Kitchener—[cheers]—would go. Sir John