Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
History
Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
Great Britain -- Foreign relations; Speeches, addresses, etc., English
Gentlemen, it is impossible for me to do more to-day than to attempt
very slight illustrations of those principles. But in uttering those
principles, I have put myself in a position in which no one is
entitled to tell me--you will bear me out in what I say--that I simply
object to the acts of others, and lay down no rules of action myself.
I am not only prepared to show what are the rules of action which in
my judgement are the right rules, but I am prepared to apply them, nor
will I shrink from their application. I will take, gentlemen, the name
which, most of all others, is associated with suspicion, and with
alarm, and with hatred in the minds of many Englishmen--I will take
the name of Russia, and at once I will tell you what I think about
Russia, and how I am prepared as a member of Parliament to proceed in
anything that respects Russia. You have heard me, gentlemen, denounced
sometimes, I believe, as a Russian spy, sometimes as a Russian agent,
sometimes as perhaps a Russian fool, which is not so bad, but still
not very desirable. But, gentlemen, when you come to evidence, the
worst thing that I have ever seen quoted out of any speech or writing
of mine about Russia is that I did one day say, or, I believe, I
wrote, these terrible words: I recommended Englishmen to imitate
Russia in her good deeds. Was not that a terrible proposition? I
cannot recede from it. I think we ought to imitate Russia in her good
deeds, and if the good deeds be few, I am sorry for it, but I am not
the less disposed on that account to imitate them when they come. I
will now tell you what I think just about Russia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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