Next day the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke for a similar purpose at a meeting of Welshmen at the Queen's Hall, London. He said that no man detested war more than himself, but it could not have been avoided without national dishonour. France had respected Belgian neutrality at Sedan at the cost of her own ruin; Prussia's interest was to break the treaty, and she had done it. The German Chancellor called treaties "scraps of paper." Then let them burn their bank-notes; they were only scraps of paper. "What are they made of? Rags. What are they worth? The whole credit of the British Empire." The machinery of the world's commerce had stopped; it was moved by bills of exchange--wretched little scraps of paper, which yet moved great ships with precious cargoes across the world. What was the motive power behind them? The honour of commercial men. Treaties were the currency of international statesmanship. German merchants were as honourable as any, but if the currency of German commerce was to be debased to that of her statesmanship no trader would ever look at a German signature again. The German doctrine was the straight road to barbarism. It was as if one removed the magnetic pole whenever it was in the way of a German cruiser. The tales about conspiracy of France and Belgium had been vamped up afterwards. He dwelt on the outrages in Belgium, and on the Austrian treatment of Servia; and he remarked that, the greatest art, the most enduring literature, even the salvation of mankind had come through little nations. He contrasted the Russian action to free Bulgaria with Bismarck's saying that "Bulgaria was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." German civilisation was hard and material; the Emperor claimed to be God's Viceregent; "there has been nothing like it since the days of Mahomet." He did not mean all his speeches, but the men around him did. They meant to destroy Christianity; the new diet of the world they held was to be blood and iron. Britain was not fighting the German people, who were under the heel of the military caste. The Prussian Junker was "the road hog of Europe." If the old British spirit was alive, that bully would be torn from his seat. It would not be easy to beat them, but in the end we should march through terror to triumph. It was a great opportunity, and a greater blessing was emerging--a new patriotism, richer, nobler, more exalted than the old. We had been living in a sheltered valley; the stern hand of fate had scourged us to an elevation whence they could see the great peaks of honour--Duty, Patriotism, Sacrifice. We should descend again, but this generation would carry in their hearts "the image of those great mountain peaks whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war."