Nov. 11
Our Tondon correspondent refers briefly to-day to the great speech at the Queen's Hall on September 19 with which Mr. Lloyd George broke the silence that the duties of Chancellorship of the Exchequer had imposed on him since the beginning of the war. It is not a speech which Britain's enemies will read with any pleasure. For there is no man in Britain who wields deadlier powers of oratory, none who can inspire himself and his audience with more glowing heat for the combat than Mr. Lloyd George; and never have those pewers been used more effectively. What he had to say may dimly be imagined from the following sentence: Many a crime has been committed in the sacred 471 name of honour. But, all the same, national honour is a reality, and any nation that disregards it is doomed." Again, we have the happy description of the Prussian militarist as ''the road hog of Enrope'—the over-riding tyrant who is in a hurry and tells the world to get out of his way or take the consequences. ''Rapidity of action," said Mr. Lloyd George, is the great German asset. There is a greater asset for a nation than rapidity of action and that is—honest dealing." And in dealing with the famous "'scrap of paper'' episode, he has the following wonderful _passage national statearnanship. (Applause.) Let "Treaties are the currency of inter-us be fair. German merchants, German de 7 tation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world. (Hear, hear) But if the currency of German commerce is to be debased to the level of that of her statesmanship, no trader from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look German at signature again. (Cheers) doctris 2 the scrap of paper, this doctrine superscribed by Bernhardi as treaties ich serve only as long as it is to its interest. goes to the root of public law. It is the straight road to bat 1, one the whole machinery of ization will break down if this doctrine wins in this Of treaty observance in the past, Mr. Lloyd George recalls a fact that many people have overlooked. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone invit-the belligerents to respect Relgian neutrality. Bismarck said it was superfluous to ask Prussia such a question in view of the treaties in force. France gave a similar answer. And Belgium returned her warm thanks to Great Britain for such timely intervention Three or four days after that document of thanks the wedged up against the Belgian frontier. Every means of escape was shut up by a ring of flame from Prussian cannon. There was one way of escape. What was that? By violating the neutrality of Belium. it did they do? The French on that occasion preferred ruin, humilia-Hon, to Oe freaking sot fa bond. 100,000 gallant Frenchmen in arms pre-, e" Frenc; Marshals, ferred to be carried captive to the strange land of their enemy rather than dishonour the name of their country. It wae the Army defeat. Had they violated Belgian neutrality the whole history of that war would have been changed. And yet it was the interest of France to break the treaty.
She did not do it."
That the German people can so utterly fail to understand Great Britain's joining in the present war is proof of the extraordinarily hardening effect of Prussianism, The Chancellor says would not say a word about the German people to disparage them. They are a great lo; have great alities of head, of hand and of heart.
believe, in spite of recent events, there
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.