And it was in consequence of that stubborn and unyielding determination
to maintain treaties to defend small States, to resist the aggressive
domination of a single power, that we were involved in a war which we
had done everything to avoid, and which was carried on upon a scale,
both as to area and as to duration, up to then unexampled in the history
of mankind. That is one precedent. Let me give you one more.
I come down to 1870, when this very treaty to which we are parties, no
less than Germany, and which guarantees the integrity and independence
of Belgium, was threatened. Mr. Gladstone was then Prime Minister of
this country, [cheers,] and he was, if possible, a stronger and more
ardent advocate of peace even than Mr. Pitt himself. ["Hear, hear!"]
Mr. Gladstone's Dictum.
Mr. Gladstone, pacific as he was, felt so strongly the sanctity of our
obligations that--though here again we had no direct interest of any
kind at stake--he made agreements with France and Prussia to co-operate
with either of the belligerents if the other violated Belgian territory,
and I should like to read a passage from a speech ten years later,
delivered in 1880, by Mr. Gladstone himself in this city, in which he
reviewed that transaction and explained his reasons for it.
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