BRITAIN AT WAR AN ADDRESS BY J. M. DENT, ESQ., OF LONDON, ENGLAND MR. PRESIDENT and GentlemeN,-It is a great pleasure to speak to my fellow-countrymen in Canada. A very great privilege it has been to me to travel through the United States; but when I cross this border I come home, and here there is no need to be an apologist for England, as I might have had to be were I in some foreign country. I know your hearts beat as warmly as mine for that little Island, for it is the centre of our Empire, and not only the country of the British, and I know I shall meet with your sympathy when I try to give you some little picture of the Homeland at this time. But indeed this is not very easy. I always envied Antony more than Brutus, for Antony told us that he could speak straight on," while Brutus was an orator; but I could do without eloquence could I have Antony's gift of speaking "straight on," that is with proper sequence and lucidity. I am afraid, therefore, that you will perhaps find it difficult to listen to me, and I ask your patience. I will not begin by reviling the Germans, though in my heart of hearts I condemn them, and put upon them and their rulers the responsibility for this terrible calamity. Nor need I go over the old ground, which I am quite sure you business men have followed as closely as I have myself; but I would like to point out one or two cases which have come to my own knowledge, and which may possibly have slipped your notice, which bear striking evidence to the long determination and preparation of Germany for the war in which they have involved the world. One incident I found in reading through the law news in the American courts, where a German ship was brought up for not deliver ing its cargo. It was sent over before the beginning of the war with specie for England from America, so many millions of gold. It turned back when war was declared and secured its cargo in an American port. For this dereliction of duty it has been condemned, I believe, in a very heavy fine. Why did it turn back? It was a German ship, and the captain confessed that he had had a sealed envelope containing instructions given to him when he went on his first vogage, which he was not to open until he received a wireless message with the word "Siegfried" in it; he was to understand when he received that, that he was to open the package and get the message interpreted. He did so, and he found it to be: "Germany at war with France, Russia, and England; turn back." Gentlemen, that letter was deposited with that ship in 1912, two years before the world ever thought or dreamed of war with Germany. You know, too, that when the Italian papers were published in 1913, we discovered again that Germany and Austria had both approached Italy with the desire that she should join them in the compulsion of the Balkan States, and especially of Servia, so that the war clearly and distinctly had been planned, not only against France, not only against Russia, but against this country. I give you this evidence as absolutely unbiassed, and I think it will help you to see clearly that we in England can conscientiously say that not only the people, but the government, were entirely ignorant of the machinations of the German government. If we had not been so we should to-day have been criminally responsible if we had not made very different preparation from that which we had done for an event which we expected and which we felt sure would come when the war opened. Nor could we, knowing that, have stood still and not prepared Belgium, as well as ourselves, to save it from the most horrible and devilish cruelty which any nation has ever suffered since Christianity came into the world. And now if I may talk a little about the inward life of England, I would like to go back to the beginning and tell you how it impressed us. You remember that the first Monday in August is a bank holiday in England; the banks are closed and no business is done, in fact, it is the last great holiday before Christmas, and, therefore, an exodus takes place from all the great towns to the open country. There had appeared on the Friday morning in The Daily News an article by the editor, Mr. A. G. Gardiner (impressed as he was by the coming danger that England should be involved in the war which Germany had declared against Russia, and which of course included France), praying the government not to be drawn into the vortex. It was an article full of eloquence, and full of a great patriotism. The author had no special love for Germany; but he wanted to save this great Empire from something that was to leave with us infinite pain and suffering, besides burdens, for many years to come. Another paper also followed in a similar strain. Gloom and fear were upon the country. It was not craven fear; but what man thinks of a great war, and remembers its consequences, who has not fear at such a time? England wanted no war, it was busy with its social questions of great import-it was almost looking forward with dread to some kind of civil trouble with Ireland-and our last thought was of a great European war. Like the rest of the great public, I went down to the sea for the week-end to meet my family, in great depression and fearing the worst. The people at the sea, too, were under the shadow, and there was nothing like a crowd; nor were the visitors so numerous as on an ordinary bank holiday. Indeed the people were too intent upon getting the news by telegram or newspaper to spend much time upon the beach. On Saturday the suspense was still hanging over us; we could get no news that was satisfactory; we only knew as the hours went by that the country had not yet gone to war. And then Sunday followed, and all round the little seaside town people neither went to church, nor enjoyed the saunter on the beach; but seemed restless and stood about in groups discussing what was to come. It was a terrible day. Remember that we had no preparation for this sudden dread. We went to look at the telegrams, we could get no newspapers, and we watched and wondered what the decision of the government would be. Numbers of anxious women I found looking there, they knew and felt the coming times as we men do not, and they knew the costs. At last on Monday we found a late telegram, saying that war had been declared on behalf of England against Germany, and we blamed the government. Then on Tuesday morning we had the report of Sir Edward Grey's speech, and our hearts and our minds were entirely changed, we felt that England had only one way, and that was to keep its word and honour. On Tuesday morning Mr. A. G. Gardiner withdrew his article, and said that, in the light of Grey's speech, England had but one duty, and that was not to escape from the terror; but to do its best for righteousness' sake. Well, the days passed like that; I never knew anything like the quiet unanimity in my time. I have lived through a good many wars with England, and of course the Boer War, when fully half the country was against it, and if the government that was in at that time had been changed I believe the war would have been stopped. You know there was in the House of Commons a strong disagreement on the government policy as to South Africa-the attempt to govern a colony against its will, and so on, was all against the sense of freedom in England-and in the Boer War there was constant contention between the government and the opposition and the people. But this time, in that great assembly, crowded to its uttermost, there was not a voice raised against the government's policy; not even a Quaker Friend rose up to say "No "-not one. Yes, there was one-one of the madmen, I am sorry to say, we still have in England-Mr. Keir Hardie. It would be a great relief if he and Bernard Shaw would leave their country for their country's good. Well, gentlemen, I never saw a country whose resolution was so calmly made. There were no fireworks. We understood how big a task it was before we started, and we knew that we could not go into this war without it involving tremendous military preparations and a great increase in our army. There was no Mafeking, there was no shouting, there was no fuss; but I tell you that from every office, from every workshop, from every church I was going to say, there issued men ready to fight who had never thought of fighting in their lives. Quietly and seriously and earnestly they went about it, without any bumptiousness or any pretence of anything but doing their simple duty, and there was no doubt about their duty. I am a pacifist, and all my friends are so; we never dreamed that we should ever again be drawn into a great Continental war, in spite of all the warnings and all the fears we had. But there was not one of us who did not give quietly all we could. In my own office, where there were about sixty people employed, twenty of them-every one who was able to go-went. I am glad to say my two boys went. From the works some forty more went. I know of a man who was a married man with a family, he had a boy old enough to go to war; he disguised himself and got into the army when he was forty-two, representing himself to be thirty-five. But his boy went into the army at close on twenty, so that he must have been born very early in his father's career. But there was one great question which we had not anticipated, and that was the difficulty of finance. No one, not even the great financiers, seemed to have realised what would happen when three great countries like Russia, France, and Germany were to be engaged in war. It seemed to bring the whole of the financial affairs of the different countries to a standstill. America owed England thousands of millions of dollars, which England wanted in gold, and the same occurred with every nation where they had been in the habit of exchanging their produce one with another, and when it came to war and gold was required instead, they could not at once pay their debts, so that monetary matters were paralysed for the moment. Fortunately we had in Mr. Lloyd George a man who-though he had never been a financier until he became Chancellor of the Exchequergrasped the situation in the boldest and strongest manner, and with hardly a day's hesitation he stepped into the breach and gave us the Moratorium-gave us paper money quickly and so relieved the tension and enabled us to tide over the time until things should settle down to something like a normal state again. In a week or two all the difficulties had disappeared, and trade went on in quite a normal way as you know it is now doing. But think of the strain of this kind of thing. Remember that the best army we could raise was something like 100,000 men, ready and free at any rate to go abroad. It was |