This fortuitous aggregation [laughter and cheers] which goes by the name of the British Empire was supposed to be so insecurely founded, and so loosely knit together, that at the first touch of serious menace from without it would fall to pieces and tumble to the ground. [Cheers.]
Our great dominions were getting heartily tired of the imperial connection. India, [loud cheers,] it was notorious to every German traveler, [laughter,] was on the verge of open revolt, and here at home we, the people of this United Kingdom, were riven by dissension so deep and so fierce that our energies, whether for resistance or for attack, would be completely paralyzed.
What a fantastic dream, ["Hear, hear!"] and what a rude awakening! [Laughter and cheers.] And in this vast and grotesque and yet tragic miscalculation is to be found one of the roots, perhaps the main root, of the present war.
But let us go one step more. It has been said, "By their fruits ye shall know them," and history will record that when the die was cast and the struggle began, it was the disciples of that same creed who revived methods of warfare which have for centuries past been condemned by the common sense as well as by the humanity of the great mass of the civilized world. [Cheers.]
Louvain, Malines, Termonde--these are names which will henceforward be branded on the brow of German culture. The ruthless sacking of the ancient and famous towns of Belgium is fitly supplemented by the story that reaches us only today from our own headquarters in France of the proclamation issued less than a week ago by the German authorities, who were for a moment, and happily for little more than a moment, in occupation of the venerable city of Rheims.
Mr. Asquith then read the concluding paragraph of the proclamation which appeared in these columns yesterday.
Do not let it be forgotten that it is from a power whose intellectual leaders are imbued with the idea that I have described, and whose Generals in the field sanction and even direct those practices--it is from that power the claim proceeds to impose its culture, its spirit, which means its domination, upon the rest of Europe. That is a claim, I say to you, to all my fellow-countrymen, to every citizen and subject of the British Empire whose ears and eyes my words can reach--that is a claim that everything that is great in our past and everything that promises hope or progress in our future summons us to resist to the end. [Loud cheers.]