Memorable and Glorious Example of Belgium.

It would be a criminal mistake to underestimate either the magnitude, the fighting quality, or the staying power of the forces which are arrayed against us.  But it would be equally foolish and equally indefensible to belittle our own resources, whether for resistance or attack. [Cheers.] Belgium has shown us by a memorable and a glorious example what can be done by a relatively small State when its citizens are animated and fired by the spirit of patriotism.  In France and Russia we have as allies two of the greatest powers of the world engaged with us in a common cause, who do not mean to separate themselves from us any more than we mean to separate ourselves from them. [Cheers.] We have upon the seas the strongest and most magnificent fleet that has ever been seen.  The expeditionary force which left our shores less than a month ago has never been surpassed, as its glorious achievements in the field have already made clear, not only in material and equipment but in the physical and the moral quality of its constituents. [Cheers.]

Work of the Navy.

As regards the navy, I am sure my right honorable friend (Mr. Winston Churchill) will tell you there is happily little more to be done.  I do not flatter it when I say that its superiority is equally marked in every department and sphere of its activity. [Cheers.] We rely on it with the most absolute confidence, not only to guard our shores against the possibility of invasion, not only to seal up the gigantic battleships of the enemy in the inglorious seclusion of his own ports [laughter] whence, from time to time, he furtively steals forth to sow the seeds of murderous snares, which are more full of menace to neutral ships than to the British fleet.  Our navy does all this, and while it is thirsting, I do not doubt, for that trial of strength in a fair and open fight, which is so far prudently denied it, it does a great deal more.  It has hunted the German mercantile marine from the high seas.  It has kept open our own sources of food supply and has largely curtailed those of the enemy, and when the few German cruisers which still infest the more distant ocean routes have been disposed of, as they will be disposed of very soon, [cheers,] it will achieve for British and neutral commerce passing backward and forward, from and to every part of our empire, a security as complete as it has ever enjoyed in the days of unbroken peace.  Let us honor the memory of the gallant seamen who, in the pursuit of one or another of these varied and responsible duties, have already laid down their lives for their country.

Call for United Effort.