unoffending little countries in Europe. [Hear, hear.] She was peaceable, industrious, thrifty, hard-working, giving offence to no one, and her cornfields have been trampled down, her villages have been burned to the ground, her art treasures have been destroyed, her men have been slaughtered—aye, and her women and children, too. [Shame!]
What had Belgium done? Hundreds of thousands of her people have had their quiet, comfortable little homes burned to the dust, and are wandering homeless in their own land. What is their crime? Their crime was that they trusted to the word of a Prussian King. [Applause.] I don't know what the Kaiser hopes to achieve by this war. I have a shrewd idea of what he will get; but one thing is made certain, that no nation in future will ever commit that crime again.
I am not going to enter into these tales. Many of them are untrue. War is a grim, ghastly business at best or at worst, and I am not going to say that all that has been said in the way of tales of outrage must necessarily be true. I will go beyond that and say that if you turn two millions of men, forced, conscripted, and compelled and driven, into the field, you will certainly get amongst them a certain number of men who will do things that the nation itself will be ashamed of.
It is enough for me to have the story which the Germans themselves avow, admit, defend, proclaim—the burning and massacring, the shooting down of harmless people—why? Because, according to the Germans, they fired on German soldiers. What business had German soldiers there at all? [Cheers.] Belgium was acting in pursuance of a most sacred right—the right to defend your own home. But they were not in uniform when they shot. If a burglar broke into the Kaiser's palace at Potsdam, destroyed his furniture, shot down his servants, ruined his art treasures, especially those he made himself—[laughter and cheers]—burned his precious manuscripts, do you think he would wait until he got into uniform before he shot him down? [Laughter.]
German perfidy has already failed. They entered Belgium to save time; the time has gone. [Cheers.] They have not gained time, but they have lost their good name.
But Belgium was not the only little nation that has been attacked in this war, and I make no excuse for referring to the case of the other little nation, the case of Servia. The history of Servia is not unblotted. What history in the category of nations is unblotted? The first nation that is without
