That document, in my opinion, states clearly, in temperate and convincing language, the attitude of this Government.  Can any one who reads it fail to appreciate the tone of obvious sincerity and earnestness which underlies it; can any one honestly doubt that the Government of this country, in spite of great provocation—­and I regard the proposals made to us as proposals which we might have thrown aside without consideration and almost without answer—­can any one doubt that in spite of great provocation the right hon.  Gentleman, who had already earned the title—­and no one ever more deserved it—­of Peace Maker of Europe, persisted to the very last moment of the last hour in that beneficent but unhappily frustrated purpose.  I am entitled to say, and I do so on behalf of this country—­I speak not for a party, I speak for the country as a whole—­that we made every effort any Government could possibly make for peace.  But this war has been forced upon us.  What is it we are fighting for?  Every one knows, and no one knows better than the Government, the terrible incalculable suffering, economic, social, personal and political, which war, and especially a war between the Great Powers of the world, must entail.  There is no man amongst us sitting upon this bench in these trying days—­more trying perhaps than any body of statesmen for a hundred years have had to pass through—­there is not a man amongst us who has not, during the whole of that time, had clearly before his vision the almost unequalled suffering which war, even in a just cause, must bring about, not only to the peoples who are for the moment living in this country and in the other countries of the world, but to posterity and to the whole prospects of European civilization.  Every step we took we took with that vision before our eyes, and with a sense of responsibility which it is impossible to describe.  Unhappily, if—­in spite of all our efforts to keep the peace, and with that full and overpowering consciousness of the result, if the issue be decided in favour of war,—­we have, nevertheless, thought it to be the duty as well as the interest of this country to go to war, the House may be well assured it was because we believe, and I am certain the country will believe, we are unsheathing our sword in a just cause.

If I am asked what we are fighting for, I reply in two sentences.  In the first place to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated.  I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle,—­which in these days when force, material force, sometimes seems to be the dominant influence and factor in the development of mankind,—­we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of