And in view of the discussion and criticism which this speech has provoked, and still provokes, I may be permitted to add, that, in whatever I have said in this speech as in other speeches, I have had in sight but one purpose--the good of this nation and the safety and greatness of this Empire. It is for my fellow-countrymen to judge between me and those who, during these past few weeks, have willingly or unwillingly misinterpreted my purpose or misstated my words. It is also for my countrymen to decide upon a far mightier issue; for in this self-governed, free, and democratic State of England it is for all its citizens to assert whether, in this matter of war and preparedness for war, they shall face the facts, resolute to see things as they are, or whether they shall continue indifferent to the history of the past and obstinately blind to the warnings of the present, even to such beacons as are now aflame on every hill from the Balkans to the Dardanelles! And I appeal above all to the young men of this nation, to our young men of every rank and social status, to the young men of every trade and profession and calling of any kind; for it is they who, in victory or in disaster, will have to meet the consequences of this tremendous decision. It is they, in a word, who now are England. Young men, young men of British birth, is it possible that you can shirk the issue, that you can fail to hear, or that, hearing, you can fail to respond to your country's summons, to the memories of the past, to the hopes of the future? LORD ROBERTS' MESSAGE TO THE NATION PART I PEACE AND WAR A SPEECH TO THE CITIZENS OF MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1912. MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, This is only the second occasion in a long life on which I have had the privilege of speaking in your city; and it is with no inadequate sense of the value of that occasion and of the responsibility attaching to the position which, for the past ten years, I have taken up towards this Empire and its armies that I come before you this afternoon. For in the upbuilding of that Empire what city in our dominions has taken a more conspicuous part than this city, made illustrious almost since its foundation by commercial enterprise and by its political sagacity and spirit in affairs? In the eighteenth century your merchants aided the designs of the elder Pitt, and of the statesmen who followed him, in founding that power in India and the East which to-day is the envy and the admiration of the nations. In the nineteenth, within my own memory, your city, under the unforgotten leadership of John Bright, Richard Cobden, and Milner Gibson, gave a great watchword[1] to a great and still living party, and by its resolute effort forced through Parliament the repeal of the Corn Laws, one of the most momentous and revolutionary measures in this nation's history.