my soul do I believe the words of those verses, which I understand have been recited to you, that we are witnessing something more than a war to-day; that we ought to be hearing, if we don't, a call to the human race, upon the answer to which depends the destiny of that race and of the great branch of it to which we belong, and which, to my mind, will be made or marred for ever, according to our right or wrong conception of the hidden meaning and purpose of the great days through which we are passing.
Now, my mind instinctively reverts to that other meeting; and when I picture it again before my eyes, and when I recall the things which were then said, I begin to wonder whether the nation has not been asleep for the last six years. I marvel how it comes about that, with all the evidences of mischief and of menace which were then before us, and every one of which, as I said at the time, constituted in my view a premonitory declaration of war against the peace of the world, we have waited for the convenience of our enemy until she thought she was in the position to strike a mortal blow at the foundations of our empire, and of the peace and the civilization of mankind. We have waited while she has equipped a Navy, into the possession of which she ought never to have been permitted to enter—[cheers]—for the equipment of a colossal Army, of such a character that there was no justification that could be urged for it; for the widening and deepening of the sinister waterway which to-day affords such welcome refuge to her much-vaunted Fleet. She has exploited and explored the innermost secrets of our own defences and fortifications; appropriated our best horses; misappropriated many of our best inventions; filled her arsenals with munitions and material of war, and stocked her granaries with corn—with the result that to-day, although the end must ever be the same, we have to fight our way through seas of blood and tears, which might have been averted, if we had not closed our eyes to the signs and portents which were written on the skies for every one to read. [Cheers.]
But, ladies and gentlemen, to night I am not here to blame anybody. This is not a time for internal dissension or for domestic discord, and the man who does aught—by word or deed, by pen or tongue—to stir it up ought to be carried off without ceremony or trial, as a traitor, to the Tower—[applause]—or, better still, perhaps, be put into the front of the firing line, there to have a practical demonstration of the
