How could they imagine that this little country,
rather than allow her neutrality to be violated and her independence
insulted and menaced, was prepared that her fields should be drenched
with the blood of her soldiers, her towns and villages devastated by
marauders, her splendid heritage of monuments and of treasures, built up
for her by the piety, art, and learning of the past, ruthlessly laid in
ruins? The passionate attachment of a numerically small population to
the bit of territory, which looks so little upon the map, the pride and
the unconquerable devotion of a free people to their own free State,
these were things which apparently had never been dreamed of in the
philosophy of Potsdam. [Laughter and "Hear, hear!"] Rarely in history
has there been a greater material disparity between the invaders and the
invaded, but the moral disparity was at least equally great. [Cheers.]
For, gentlemen, the indomitable resistance of the Belgians did more than
change the whole face of the campaign. [Cheers.] It proved to the world
that ideas which cannot be weighed or measured by any material calculus
can still inspire and dominate mankind. [Cheers.] And that is the reason
why the whole sympathy of the civilized world at this moment is going
out to these small States--Belgium, Servia, and Montenegro--that have
played so worthy a part in this historic struggle.
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