The Annual Register 1914: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914Anonymous
History
The Annual Register 1914: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914
Anonymous
History, Modern; History, Modern -- Periodicals; World War, 1914-1918
coming forward with splendid spirit to risk their lives.
Parliament did not sit again till September 14; but on September
11 a great demonstration to aid recruiting was held at the London
Opera House, under the joint auspices of the National Liberal and
Constitutional Clubs. The First Lord of the Admiralty, while warning
his audience that the war would be long and sombre, declared that the
situation was far better than could have been expected at this early
stage, and he was certain that it could be brought to a victorious
conclusion. We were building on a sure foundation. The Navy had
searched the so-called German Ocean without discovering the German
flag; the attrition on which the Germans had counted had been only on
their side; the health of the Fleet was better than during peace; and
our naval control and sea power might be kept up indefinitely. "By one
of those dispensations of Providence which appeal so strongly to the
German Emperor, the nose of the bulldog has been slanted backward so
that he can breathe in comfort without letting go." In the next twelve
months more than twice as many great ships and three or four times as
many cruisers would be completed for Great Britain as for Germany.
It was now necessary to make a great Army, an Army of a million men.
The Army in the field could be raised to 250,000, by the new year to
500,000, and by the early summer of 1915 to twenty-five Army Corps. An
Army so formed would be the finest in the world. Germany could draw on
no corresponding reserve of manhood. This would decide the issue. Let
the British people concentrate their warlike feeling on fighting the
enemy in the field, and let it be said, after the war was over, that
"they fought like gentlemen." Germany in her three great wars had been
the terror and bully of Europe. Let Great Britain fight for great and
sound principles for Europe, the first being nationality. The British
people and Empire were at last united, and while they remained so no
forces were strong enough to beat them down or break them up. Mr. F. E.
Smith declared that Great Britain was fighting for treaty obligations,
for self-preservation, and for the existence of international law.
Terms of peace would be arranged in London or Berlin, and we were
encouraged to believe it would be in Berlin by the extraordinary
spontaneity with which the whole Empire was springing to arms. There
had never been anything like it in history. Mr. Crooks said that the
fight was for liberty and home. "He would rather see every living soul
blotted off the face of the earth than see the Kaiser supreme anywhere."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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