in this conflict?  Could any nation, least of all the cold, calculating, phlegmatic, egotistic British nation, [laughter,] embark upon a costly and bloody contest from which it had nothing in the hope of profit to expect? ["Hear, hear!”] They forgot—­they forgot that we, like the Belgians, had something at stake which cannot be translated into what one of our poets has called “The law of nicely calculated less or more.”  What was it we had at stake?  First and foremost, the fulfillment to the small and relatively weak country of our plighted word [cheers] and behind and beyond that the maintenance of the whole system of international good-will which is the moral bond of the civilized world. [Cheers.] Here again they were wrong in thinking that the reign of ideas, Old World ideas like those of duty and good faith, had been superseded by the ascendency of force.  My Lord Mayor, war is at all times a hideous thing; at the best an evil to be chosen in preference to worse evils, and at the worst little better than the letting loose of hell upon earth.  The prophet of old spoke of the “confused noise of battle and the garments rolled in blood,” but in these modern days, with the gigantic scale of the opposing armies and the scientific developments of the instruments of destruction, war has become an infinitely more devastating thing than it ever was before.  The hope that the general recognition of a humaner code would soften or abate some of its worst brutalities has been rudely dispelled by the events of the last few weeks. ["Shame!”]

Shameful and Cynical Desecration.

The German invasion of Belgium and France contributes, indeed, some of the blackest pages to its sombre annals.  Rarely has a non-combatant population suffered more severely, and rarely, if ever, have the monuments of piety and of learning and those sentiments of religion and national association, of which they are the permanent embodiment, even in the worst times of the most ruthless warriors, been so shamefully and cynically desecrated; and behind the actual theatre of conflict with its smoke and its carnage there are the sufferings of those who are left behind, the waste of wealth, the economic dislocation, the heritage, the long heritage of enmities and misunderstanding which war brings in its train.  Why do I dwell upon these things?  It is to say this, that great indeed is the responsibility of those who allow their country—­as we have done—­to be drawn into such a welter; but there is one thing much worse than to take such a responsibility, and that is, upon a fitting occasion, to shirk it. [Cheers.] Our record in the matter is clear.  We strove up to the last moment for peace [cheers] and only when we were satisfied that the price of peace was the betrayal of other countries and the dishonor and degradation of our own we took up the sword. [Prolonged cheers.] I should like, if I might for a moment, beyond this inquiry into causes and motives, to ask your attention