[Cheers.]
Meeting a Challenge.
Since I last spoke some faint attempts have been made in Germany to
dispute the accuracy and the sincerity of this statement of our attitude
and aim. It has been suggested, for instance, that our professed zeal
for treaty rights and for the interests of small States is a newborn and
simulated passion. What, we are asked, has Great Britain cared in the
past for treaties or for the smaller nationalities except when she had
some ulterior and selfish purpose of her own to serve? I am quite ready
to meet that challenge, and to meet it in the only way in which it could
be met, by reference to history. And out of many illustrations which I
might take I will content myself here tonight with two, widely removed
in point of time, but both, as it happens, very apposite to the present
case.
I will go back first to the war carried on first against the
revolutionary Government of France and then against Napoleon, which
broke out in 1793, and which lasted for more than twenty years. We had
then at the head of the Government in this country one of the most
peace-loving Ministers who have ever presided over our fortunes--Mr.
Pitt. For three years, from 1789 to 1792, he resolutely refused to
interfere in any way with the revolutionary proceedings in France or in
the wars that sprang out of them, and as lately, I think, as February in
1792, in a memorable speech in the House of Commons, which shows among
other things the shortness of human foresight, he declared that there
never was a time when we in this country could more reasonably expect
fifteen years of peace.
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