Every tie that can bind one people to another binds the American people to the English. Most of us are of the Anglo-Saxon race and have the same blood coursing through our veins. To the great majority of Americans, England has ever been the mother country. We speak the same language, read the same literature, strive for the same ideals, are governed by the same principles of politics and jurisprudence, and entertain the same fundamental conceptions of right and wrong and justice as among men and among nations. The greater part of England's history is our history; her Magna Carta is our Magna Carta, and the immortal deeds of valor of the English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh are our heritage and the source of our inspiration. Our hearts, therefore, cannot but beat faster day after day as we read of the splendid heroism and noble self-sacrifice of your great race. To our minds the noblest and the most truly glorious page in the history of England was written by Sir Edward Grey when, on behalf of your government, my Lord, he refused to break the plighted faith of England to avoid involving his country in the greatest and most disastrous war in the history of the world, a war for which England was not prepared, for which Sir Edward and his colleagues knew she was not prepared, and which threatened and might involve the ruin of the British Empire. There is a nobility and sublimity, inexpressible by mere words, in the act of sending that small but now immortal British army to Belgium in August of last year, to face tenfold its number, to die for strangers--for a mere "scrap of paper," as a treaty was cynically and immorally called--solely that the honor of England might be kept inviolate. England has never been grander or nobler than on that day. The glory she then gained cannot fade. Gentlemen, the Anglo-Saxon race never rose to higher renown than when the British statesmen of to-day showed on such a grand scale that the spirit of the Light Brigade at Balaclava still lives: "Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die." And we Americans were then prouder than ever before to belong to the Anglo-Saxon race. England may prevail in this war, or she may fail. But whatever may happen, whatever may be decreed by Providence, your magnificent and unselfish heroism in springing to the defense of Belgium has added to England's renown and to our race a glory which is priceless and infinitely beyond the whole cost of the war, a glory worth dying for, a glory that will thrill and uplift generations of men for all time, a glory that will ever inspire acts of patriotic service and valorous self-sacrifice, of chivalry and honor.