National honour

Great battle for humanity

Chancellor’s inspiring speech

Great Britain’s greatest chancellor, the nation’s greatest social reformer and most fearless orator yesterday denounced in unmeasurable terms, the Kaiser and all his works.

It was described as an answer to the professors of German culture and it was flung scornfully, violently with stinging contempt straight into their insolent faces , by the most democratic statesman in all Europe.

Every seat in the Queen’s Hall was occupied and the organ was draped with the flag of the allies.

Before the meeting commenced the London Welsh choir sang the national anthem. The chancellor stood beside a little red table and the little grey man with the flags of the free nations behind him, made a great figure. From the first word to the last he spoke as a may whose courage is high and whose soul is moved to the utmost depths.

Mr Lloyd George’s speech: “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this afternoon to talk to my fellow countrymen about the Great War and the path we ought to take in it.

“There is no man in this room who has 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. There is no man either inside or outside of this room more convinced that we could not have avoided it without national dishonour. I am fully alive to the fact that whenever a nation has been engaged in any war it has always involved the sacred name of honour, and many crimes have been committed in its name and there are crimes being committed now, but all the same national honour is a reality and any nation that disregards it is doomed.

Fight against barbarism “We are fighting against barbarism, but there is only one way of putting it right . If there are nations who will only respect treaties when it is their interest to do so we must make it their interest to do so for the future. What is the enemy’s defence? Just look at the interview that took place between our ambassador and great German officials when their attention was called to the treaty to which they were partners, they said, we cannot help that, rapidity of action was their asset but there is a greater asset for a nation than rapidity of action, and that is honest dealing.

“What are her excuses? She said Belgium was plotting against her and that Belgium was involved in a greater conspiracy with Britain and with France to attack her. Not merely is that not true, Germany knows that it is not true.

The shooting of civilians “I am not going to enter into these tales, war is a grim, ghastly business at best and I am also not saying that all that has been said in the way of tales of courage, is true.

The coming rewards “Those who have fallen have consecrated deaths. They have taken their part in the making of a new Europe, a new world. I can see signs of it coming in the glare of the battlefield, the people will gain more by this struggle and be rid of the menace to their freedom. That is not all, there is something infinitely greater and more enduring emerging out of this great conflict, a new patriotism, richer, nobler.

"I see a new recognition amongst all classes, shedding themselves of selfishness and a new recognition that the honour of a country does not depend merely on the maintenance of its glory in the stricken field. A new Britain is appearing.”