Do we understand the necessity?  Do we realize it?  Belgium, once comfortably well-to-do, is now waste and weeping, and her children are living on the bread of charity sent them by neighbors far and near.  And France—­the German Army, like a wild beast, has fastened its claws deep into her soil, and every effort to drag them out rends and tears the living flesh of that beautiful land.  The beast of prey has not leaped to our shores—­not a hair of Britain’s head has been touched by him.  Why?  Because of the vigilant watchdog that patrols the deep for us; and that is my complaint against the British Navy.  It does not enable us to realize that Britain at the present moment is waging the most serious war it has ever been engaged in.  We do not understand it.  A few weeks ago I visited France.  We had a conference of the Ministers of Finance of Russia, France, Great Britain, and Belgium.  Paris is a changed city.  Her gayety, her vivacity, is gone.  You can see in the faces of every man there, and of every woman, that they know their country is in the grip of grim tragedy.  They are resolved to overcome it, confident that they will overcome it, but only through a long agony.

No visitor to our shores would realize that we are engaged in exactly the same conflict, and that on the stricken fields of the Continent and along the broads and the narrows of the seas that encircle our islands is now being determined, not merely the fate of the British Empire, but the destiny of the human race for generations to come. [Cheers.] We are conducting a war as if there was no war.  I have never been doubtful about the result of the war, [cheers,] and I will give you my reasons by and by.  Nor have I been doubtful, I am sorry to say, about the length of the war and its seriousness.  In all wars nations are apt to minimize their dangers and the duration.  Men, after all, see the power of their own country; they cannot visualize the power of the enemy.  I have been accounted as a pessimist among my friends in thinking the war would not be over before Christmas.  I have always been convinced that the result is inevitably a triumph for this country.  I have also been convinced that that result will not be secured without a prolonged struggle.  I will tell you why.  I shall do so not in order to indulge in vain and idle surmises as to the duration of the war, but in order to bring home to my countrymen what they are confronted with, so as to insure that they will leave nothing which is at their command undone in order, not merely to secure a triumph, but to secure it at the speediest possible moment.  It is in their power to do so.  It is also in their power, by neglect, by sloth, by heedlessness, to prolong their country’s agony, and maybe to endanger at least the completeness of its triumphs.  This is what I have come to talk to you about this afternoon, for it is a work of urgent necessity in the cause of human freedom, and I make no apology for discussing on a Sunday the best means of insuring human liberty. [Cheers.]