and that of my fellow-countrymen to the end which in this war we ought to keep in view.  Forty-four years ago, at the time of the war of 1870, Mr. Gladstone used these words.  He said:  “The greatest triumph of our time will be the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics.”  Nearly fifty years have passed.  Little progress, it seems, has yet been made toward that good and beneficent change, but it seems to me to be now at this moment as good a definition as we can have of our European policy.  The idea of public right; what does it mean when translated into concrete terms?  It means, first and foremost, the clearing of the ground by the definite repudiation of militarism as the governing factor in the relation of States, and of the future molding of the European world.  It means, next, that room must be found and kept for the independent existence and the free development of the smaller nationalities, [cheers,] each with a corporate consciousness of its own.

The Recognition of Nationality.

Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, Greece, and the Balkan States, they must be recognized as having exactly as good a title as their more powerful neighbors—­more powerful in strength and in wealth—­exactly as good a title to a place in the sun. [Prolonged cheers and some laughter.] And it means, finally, or it ought to mean, perhaps by a slow and gradual process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing ambition, for grouping and alliances and a precarious equipoise, the substitution for all these things of a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will. [Cheers.] A year ago that would have sounded like a Utopian idea.  It is probably one that may not or will not be realized either today or tomorrow.  If and when this war is decided in favor of the Allies, it will at once come within the range, and, before long, within the grasp of European statesmanship. [Cheers.] I go back for a moment, if I am not keeping you too long, ["Go on,”] to the peculiar aspects of the actual case upon which I have dwelt, because it seems to me that they ought to make a special appeal to the people of Ireland.  Ireland is a loyal country, [cheers,] and she would, I know, respond with alacrity to any summons which called upon her to take her share in the assertion and the defense of our common interests.  But, gentlemen, the issues raised by this war are of such a kind that, unless I mistake her people and misrepresent her history, they touch a vibrating chord both in her imagination and in her conscience.  How can you Irishmen be deaf to the cry of the smaller nationalities to help them in their struggle for freedom [cheers] whether, as in the case of Belgium, in maintaining what she has won, or as in the case of Poland or the Balkan States in regaining what they have lost or in acquiring and putting upon a stable foundation what has never been fully theirs?