It was this same idea of freedom— the freedom of Europe in general and of Belgium in particular—which in 1914 Germany seemed to think Britain, and still more Greater Britain, had forgotten. Napoleon had dubbed' us "a nation of shopkeepers," but no one who remembers England in 1914 would think "that one in a thousand of those who burned to go to the help of "Little Belgium' was swayed by the least" consideration of trade or any other material advantage."
As to the Treaty of Ver: must not be forgotten that "it was the spirit not of British freedom, but of Prussien Cesarism temporarily lodged in France, that gained the ascendant."
The Statute of Westminster, the foundation of the Irish Free State and recent events in Egypt and India prove that freedom is still Britain's ideal.
And now, once again, Mankind has to choose between two ways, one of empire, which is now that of the Totalitarian Powers, the other of freedom, which is our British way, so long as Britain preserves that truth to herself which is the soul of her civilization. And in the pale of that civilization is included not only its Commonwealth of free nations and nations advancing to freedom, but the great Republic of the West that in-hents and shares its traditions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.