The Russian Slav?  He challenges the supremacy of Germany and 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 hands.  Ah! more than that.  The new philosophy of Germany is to destroy Christianity.  Sickly sentimentalism about sacrifice for others—­poor pap for German digestion.  We will have a new diet.  We will force it on the world.  It will be made in Germany.  A diet of blood and iron.  What remains?  Treaties have gone; the honour of nations gone; liberty gone.  What is left?  Germany—­Germany is left—­Deutschland ueber Alles.  That is all that is left.

That is what we are fighting, that claim to predominancy of a civilization, a material one, a hard one, a civilization which if once it rules and sways the world, liberty goes, democracy vanishes, and unless Britain comes to the rescue, and her sons, it will be a dark day for humanity.  We are not fighting the German people.  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 artisan and trader when the military caste is broken.  You know his pretensions.  He gives himself the airs of a demi-god.  Walking the pavements —­civilians and their wives swept into the gutter; they have no right to stand in the way of the great Prussian junker.  Men, women, nations —­they have all got to go.  He thinks all he has got to say is, ’We are in a hurry.’  That 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 roads, with a 60-h.p. car.  He thinks the roads are made for him, and 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 hurled to the roadside, bleeding and broken; women and children crushed under the wheels of his cruel car.  Britain ordered out of his road.  All I can say is this:  if the old British spirit is alive in British hearts, that bully will be torn from his seat.  Were he to win it would be the greatest catastrophe that has befallen democracy since the days of the Holy Alliance and its ascendancy.  They think we cannot beat them.  It will not be easy.  It will be a long job.  It will be a terrible war.  But in the end we shall march through terror to triumph.  We shall need all our qualities, every quality that Britain and its people possess.  Prudence in council, daring in action, tenacity in purpose, courage in defeat, moderation in victory, in all things faith, and we shall win.