Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/18

 famous speech of Mr Lloyd George at the Mansion House, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer made this' plain declaration: "If a situation were to be forced on us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position which Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, where her interests were vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure."

Morocco gone, Mesopotamia remained; and, while recalling to your mind the story of German attempts to bluff us here, I shall be more than once tempted to repeat, on behalf of vital interests of Russia, the utterances of Mr Lloyd George on behalf of Great Britain.

Here we come to the Balkans, the Balkans as the only way to Mesopotamia. The German push to Mesopotamia has also got its geographical expression, and even two expressions: one for Austria-Hungary, from Vienna to Salonica, and another for Germany, from Berlin to Bagdad. This is an old story: it is not at all recent, but at the beginning it looked inoffensive, and it was called "economic penetration" of Asia Minor. In order to show you just how old that penetration is, I will give you a quotation from a famous pamphlet by Dr Sprenger, published in 1886 under the very telling title of "Babylonia, the richest land in antiquity and the most paying place for colonisation in the present." Among other things you can read there, is the following: "The east is the only region in the world which is not yet appropriated by any one of