EMPIRE CLUB OF CANADA

CANADA AND THE GREAT WAR

AN ADDRESS BY RT. HON. SIR ROBERT L. BORDEN, PRIME MINISTER

Before the Canadian and Empire Clubs, at Toronto, on December 5, 1914

YOUR HONOUR, MR. MAYOR, AND GENTLEMEN,-I appreciate very much the opportunity afforded me to-day of speaking to the members of these two clubs. As the Mayor has fortunately observed, recent months have afforded the opportunity rather for work than for speech-making. It does seem very proper that the first public utterance that I have made since the outbreak of the war, except in the course of the parliamentary session, should be made in this city of Toronto; and I am very glad indeed to acknowledge here in the outset the great feeling of appreciation that is entertained, I am sure, by all the people of Canada for what has been done in Toronto and what will still be done, I am sure. When the Mayor spoke of the spirit of cooperation and mutual helpfulness which pervades all the people of this city, I feel that the like spirit prevails all through this country. I am perhaps a little at a loss for words to describe it-"Faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." I believe that the word" charity" is translated in the New Version as "love." But neither the word charity nor "love expresses precisely the spirit which I feel pervades the people of Canada at the present time. It may be described as the desire to help, sympathy, co-operation, self-sacrifice, the spirit which pervades men and women alike-and God bless the women of Canada for all they have done in these days of trial and stress!

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It is fitting I should speak to you of that which is uppermost in the hearts of men, the great trial and stress through which this Dominion is passing, in common with all the Dominions of the Empire at the present time. And I desire to emphasise in the first place my conviction, my supreme conviction, that the statesmen of Great Britain strove most earnestly to find an honourable way by which peace might be preserved and war avoided. And I believe no people more earnestly desired to avoid war than the people and nations that compose this vast Empire. Why is it that war has been forced upon it? The public journals to-day, the information you have got from many sources, make it unnecessary that I should say much about this. But I do desire to say this: it seems to me this war was inevitable. The policy of the German Empire under Prussian domination is foreshadowed in the words which found expression by the great Prussian statesman Bismarck in 1862, "These great questions are not to be settled by speeches and majority votes, but by blood and iron." This policy of blood and iron seemed about to consummate the realisation of that which had been the dream of the German people for centuries; the German Empire was constituted, the King of Prussia became its Emperor; then followed in quick succession the attack on Denmark in 1864, the overthrow of Austria in 1866, and the downfall of France in 1870. From that time until the present, the policy-I will not say of the German Empire, in one respect, but of the oligarchy which dominated it has been to make Germany all-powerful on land and sea. And you will realise, gentlemen, what it would mean if the dominance of the German Empire upon the ocean were at all comparable to that which it has attained upon land. Make no mistake, gentlemen, you are face to face with the most highly-trained, most powerful military organisation the world has ever known, and you are at least impressed with the strength of that organisation which our men are going forth to fight. So, I say, we have to realise this great task we are undertaking, to realise as the world realises to-day, that the cause for which we are fighting is just, that it is the cause of democracy against a militarism which, if it does not meet its downfall in the next year or eighteen months, will

dominate the world, and throw back the work of civilisation for the next hundred years at least.

I don't know if you are all familiar, as those who are obliged to study the matter are, with the astonishing teaching to which the German people have listened for the last fifty years. Men who have exercised unbounded influence upon the thought of the young men of Germany are the great historian Treitschke and his disciple Bernhardi. Let me read to you a little of the characteristic teaching which has gone forth through the universities, and has been preached by the War League and the Navy League and every organisation that studies to influence the German people:

"War," says Bernhardi, "is in itself a good thing. It is a biological necessity of the first importance. . . . War is the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power; efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental as soon as they influence politics. Efforts directed

toward the abolition of war are not only foolish but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatised as unworthy of the human race. Courts of arbitration are a pernicious delusion. The whole idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on natural laws of development which can only lead to the most disastrous consequences for humanity generally. . . ." It is almost impossible to believe that such teachings as these have gone abroad from institutions that are supposed to represent the highest culture and embody the most advanced phases of our modern civilisation! Further-" The maintenance of peace can never be, or may be, the goal of a policy. . . . Efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, lead to degeneration.. Huge armaments are in themselves desirable. They are the most necessary precondition of our national health."

Now the influence of this teaching upon the German people has been very manifest in the almost unanimous support which they have given to vast increases in the military forces of Germany, and particularly to the vast increases in the naval forces of Germany. You realise and know, as I do, that the German fleet law passed in 1900, although it did not expressly name the navy of England as the force with which it must try conclusions, described

it in most unmistakable terms. From that time to the present, and expressly in the last ten years, Germany has deliberately challenged the naval power of Great Britain; and notwithstanding the most persistent efforts of Great Britain to call a halt and bring about a condition in which the vast sum necessary to support this enormous outlay should not be imposed upon the people. I do not need to do more than refer to the ultimatum presented by the Austrian government to Servia, to which it was necessary to send a reply before the expiration of forty-eight hoursthe most extraordinary thing in all the records of history. And although Servia answered with an abject submission, except on one point, that answer was rejected almost immediately. That was done as Germany intended, as shown in the White Paper just presented, with her consent, as you shall find. I say again that the efforts of Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith, and the British government, can only be characterised as the most earnest possible, to find a way, any honourable way, in the conditions which presented themselves, except to take arms, because in 1839 and 1870 Great Britain had pledged herself to defend Belgian territory. In 1870 she signed two treaties, by which she was bound to attack Germany or France if they attacked Belgium. She put the same before France, and she put the same question to Germany. The answer was the same as to that put in 1870-the invasion of Belgian territory. I say, under the circumstances, Great Britain could have taken no other course! All doubt was swept aside, not only in the mind of the government, but in that of all the people, when Germany undertook to invade the soil of Belgium, which we had undertaken by treaty to protect. Now, the German ideal of government is absolutely different from our own. The unquestioned obedience of the German people in the past thirty years to constituted authority, is one of the most marked phenomena in its national life. They believe the individual exists for the state. They look with scorn, even with contempt, upon an ideal of government constituted by responsible ministers, and which must obey the voice of the people. They believe their ideal of the principles of government is the true one; and some sincerely believe it would be for the advantage

of the world as well as of Germany that these ideals should be imposed upon the world. They say, in so many words, as one of their historians puts it: "As the dominance of Prussia over the institutions and peoples of the German people has in the end wrought the greatest good to the German nation, so the dominance of Germans with German forms of government upon the whole world would bring about the greatest ideal of good for the whole world," and therefore justify as they do the dominance of Germans throughout the world to effect that, if necessary by the use of armed force. We will not say the statesmen, but writers, who studied the situation and spoke with great authority, said that war with Great Britain was inevitable. Great Britain occupies a marked place in the civilisation of the world. The British Empire extends over every sea, upon every continent; and we believe, we think we have good reason to believe, it has been a great force in the interests of civilisation, liberty, and humanity. We believe that the British idea of building up dominions throughout the world is the true idea, that is, the building up of dominions to whom is entrusted self-government, not of grace but as of right. Our dominions are built up almost altogether by their individual citizens, not by state undertaking. In Germany the state is ruled, not by the will and consent of the people, but by the influence of a military oligarchy.

The storm prophesied broke in Germany at last with startling suddenness. No one could predict the particular occasion which would be seized; but no one who was a close student of German ideals and ambitions could doubt that as Denmark had her lesson in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870, there was a very strong and pronounced feeling, in German military and naval circles at least, and I believe it pervaded the people to a great extent, that "The Day," to which the military representatives are said to have drunk, was at hand, and that as Great Britain occupied the place in the sun to which Germany aspired, it must be won by their formula, and that which was attained through centuries of national striving and development could be won by a few days or a few months by German military power.