We do not covet any people’s territory.  We have no desire to impose our rule upon alien populations.  The British Empire is enough for us. [Laughter and cheers.] All that we wished for, all that we wish for now, is to be allowed peaceably to consolidate our own resources, to raise within the empire the level of common opportunity, to draw closer the bond of affection and confidence between its parts, and to make it everywhere the worthy home of the best traditions of British liberty. [Cheers.] Does it not follow from that that nowhere in the world is there a people who have stronger motives to avoid war and to seek and ensue peace?  Why, then, are the British people throughout the length and breadth of our empire everywhere turning their plowshares into swords?  Why are the best of our ablebodied men leaving the fields and the factory and the counting house for the recruiting office and the training camp?

If, as I have said, we have no desire to add to our imperial burdens, either in area or in responsibility, it is equally true that in entering this war we had no ill-will to gratify nor wrongs of our own to avenge. ["Hear, hear!”] In regard to Germany in particular [groans] our policy—­repeatedly stated in Parliament, resolutely pursued year after year both in London and in Berlin—­our policy has been to remove one by one the outstanding causes of possible friction and so to establish a firm basis for cordial relations in the days to come.

We have said from the first—­I have said it over and over again, and so has Sir Edward Grey—­we have said from the first that our friendships with certain powers, with France, [cheers,] with Russia, and with Japan, were not to be construed as implying cold feelings and still less hostile purposes against any other power.  But at the same time we have always made it clear, to quote words used by Sir Edward Grey as far back as November, 1911—­I quote his exact words—­“One does not make new friendships worth having by deserting old ones.”  New friendships by all means let us have, but not at the expense of the ones we have.  That has been, and I trust will always be, the attitude of those whom the Kaiser in his now notorious proclamation describes as the treacherous English. [Laughter and “Oh, oh!”]

Germany’s Demand in 1912.

We laid down, and I wish to call not only your attention but the attention of the whole world to this, when so many false legends are now being invented and circulated, in the following year—­in the year 1912—­we laid down in terms carefully approved by the Cabinet, and which I will textually quote, what our relations with Germany ought in our view to be.  We said, and we communicated this to the German Government, “Britain declares that she will neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack upon Germany.  Aggression upon Germany is not the subject and forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object.”  There is nothing ambiguous or equivocal about that. ["Hear, hear!”]