The Prime Minister moved the Vote of Credit (Aug. 5) in a speech continuing the noblest traditions of Parliamentary eloquence. After an emphatic tribute to the unremitting efforts of the Foreign Secretary to preserve peace both in the Balkan crisis and to the very last stage of the recent negotiations, he quoted from the German Chancellor's communication to the British Ambassador at Berlin the appeal for British neutrality, the refusal to undertake to respect the integrity of the French colonies, and the treatment of what, to himself personally, had always been a crucial and almost the governing consideration--the position of the small States. The proposal, Mr. Asquith said, amounted to this--as regarded France, free licence to Germany to annex, if successful, the whole of the French possessions outside Europe; as to Belgium, the British reply to the pathetic appeal of the King of the Belgians would have been that "without her knowledge, we should have bartered away to the Power that was threatening her our obligation to keep our plighted word." He characterised the German proposal as infamous; and in return Great Britain was to get a promise--nothing more--from a Power "which was at that very moment announcing its intention to violate its own treaty obligations and inviting us to do the same. Had we even dallied or temporised with such an offer, we, as a Government, should have covered ourselves with dishonour." He quoted at length from Sir E. Grey's reply, which showed that the Foreign Secretary, who had already earned the title of the peacemaker of Europe, persisted to the last in his efforts for peace. "The war has been forced upon us." Every member of the Government had had before him throughout the vision of the almost unequalled suffering entailed by war, not only to the present generation, but to posterity and the whole prospects of European civilisation. Nevertheless, they had thought it to be the duty as well as the interest of Great Britain to go to war. They were fighting, first, to fulfil a solemn international obligation; secondly, to vindicate the principle that small nationalities were not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. He believed no nation ever entered into a great struggle--and this was one of the greatest in history--with a clearer conscience and stronger conviction that it was fighting, not for aggression or the maintenance of its own interest, but for principles whose maintenance was vital to the civilised world. "With the full conviction not only of the wisdom and justice, but of the obligation to challenge this great issue," and in order to ensure that the whole resources of the Empire should be thrown into the scale, he asked for a Vote of Credit of 100,000,000_l._ not only for naval and military operations, but to assist the food supplies, promote the continuance of trade, industry, business, and communications, relieve