Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/93

Rh But there were men around him who meant every word of it. This was their religion. Treaties—they tangle the feet of Germany in her advance; cut them with the sword. Little nations—they hinder the advance of Germany; trample them in the mire under the German heel. The Russian Slav—he challenges the supremacy of Germany in Europe; hurl your legions at him and massacre him. Britain—she is a constant menace to the predominancy of Germany in the world; wrest the trident out of her hand.

More than that, the new philosophy of Germany is to destroy Christianity—sickly sentimentalism about sacrifice for others, poor pap for German mouths. We will have the new diet, we will force it on the world. It will be made in Germany—[laughter]—a diet of blood and iron. What remains? Treaties have gone; the honour of nations has gone, liberty gone; what is left? Germany! Germany is left—Deutschland über Alles!

That is what we are fighting—that claim of the predominancy of a civilization, a material one, a hard one, a civilization which at once rules and enslaves the world. Liberty goes, democracy vanishes, and unless Britain comes to the rescue with her sons, it will be a dark day for humanity!

Have you followed the Prussian Junker and his doings? We are not fighting the Germans. The German people are just as much under the heel of this Prussian military caste, and more so, thank God, than any other nation in Europe. It will be a day of rejoicing for the German peasant and artizan and trader when the military caste is broken. You know their pretensions. They give themselves the airs of demigods, walking the pavements, civilians and their wives swept into the gutter. They have no right to stand in the way of a great Prussian soldier. Men, women, nations, have all got to go. This is all he has to say: "We are in a hurry." This is the answer he gave to Belgium: "Rapidity of action is Germany's greatest asset," which means "I am in a hurry; clear out of my way." You know the type of motorist, the terror of the road, with a 60 h.p. car, who thinks the roads were made for him. Anybody who impedes the action of his car by a single mile is knocked down.

The Prussian Junker is the road-hog of Europe. Small nationalities in his way are flung to the roadside bleeding and broken; women and children thrust under the wheel of his cruel car. Britain ordered out of his road. All I can say is