I will give you first of all my reasons for coming to the conclusion that after this struggle victory must wait on our banners if we properly utilize our resources and opportunities.  The natural resources of the allied countries are overwhelmingly greater than those of their enemies.  In the man capable of bearing arms, in the financial and economic resources of these countries, in their accessibility to the markets of the world through the command of the sea for the purpose of obtaining material and munitions—­all these are preponderatingly in favor of the allied countries.  But there is a greater reason than all these.  Beyond all is the moral strength of our cause, and that counts in a struggle which involves sacrifices, suffering, and privation for all those engaged in it.  A nation cannot endure to the end that has on its soul the crimes of Belgium. [Loud cheers.] The allied powers have at their disposal more than twice the number of men which their enemies can command.  You may ask me why are not those overwhelming forces put into the field at once and this terrible war brought to a triumphant conclusion at the earliest possible moment.  In the answer to that question lies the cause of the war.  The reason why Germany declared war is in the answer to that question.

In the old days when a nation’s liberty was menaced by an aggressor a man took from the chimney corner his bow and arrow or his spear, or a sword which had been left to him by an ancestry of warriors, went to the gathering ground of his tribe, and the nation was fully equipped for war.  That is not the case now.  Now you fight with complicated, highly finished weapons, apart altogether from the huge artillery.  Every rifle which a man handles is a complicated and ingenious piece of mechanism, and it takes time.  The German arsenals were full of the machinery of horror and destruction.  The Russian arsenals were not, and that is the reason for the war.  Had Russia projected war, she also would have filled her arsenals, but she desired above everything peace. ["Hear, hear!”] I am not sure that Russia has ever been responsible for a war of aggression against any of her European neighbors.  Certainly this is not one of them.  She wanted peace, she needed peace, she meant peace, and she would have had peace had she been left alone.  She was at the beginning of a great industrial development, and she wanted peace in order to bring it to its full fructification.  She had repeatedly stood insolences at the hands of Germany up to the point of humiliation, all for peace, and anything for peace.

Whatever any one may say about her internal Government, Russia was essentially a peaceable nation.  The men at the head of her affairs were imbued with the spirit of peace.  The head of her army, the Grand Duke Nicholas, [cheers,] is about the best friend of peace in Europe.  Never was a nation so bent on preserving peace as Russia was.  It is true Germany six or seven years ago had threatened to march