It was amid these impressions that the Prime Minister addressed a great meeting at the Round Room of the Dublin Mansion House on September 25, the Lord Mayor in the chair. A small section of the National Volunteers had issued an anti-recruiting manifesto in the morning, and police and National Volunteers were ready to avert a disturbance, but these precautions were not needed. Mr. Asquith, who had an enthusiastic reception, said that he could base his title to speak on such service as he had tried throughout his political life to render Ireland. The Empire, as a family of nations, was united in defending principles vital to it and to civilisation and the progress of mankind. The proofs that Germany was responsible for the war were patent, manifold, and overwhelming; Germany had been preparing for a generation past, and had seized the opportunity of the Austro-Serbian dispute. But she made two profound miscalculations; as to the resistance of Belgium--to which he paid an eloquent tribute--and as to the attitude of England. She believed England to be paralysed by domestic disaffection and without interest in the conflict. But England had at stake her plighted word and the maintenance of the whole system of international goodwill. In 1870 Mr. Gladstone had said that "the greatest triumph of our time would be the enthronement of public right as the governing idea of European politics." That meant that the small nations must have as good a title as the large ones to a place in the sun, and finally the establishment of a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will. The victory of the Allies would bring this within the range of European statesmanship. The cause of the small nations specially appealed to Ireland. Let her take her share in the war. The British Empire had always been proud of its Irish regiments and their leaders; and he specially appealed to the National Volunteers (after a brief reference to the contests which had become unthinkable) to form an Irish Brigade, or, better still, an Irish Army Corps. Local associations would be maintained as far as possible, and officers of the Volunteers might receive commissions. He was certain that the Volunteers would become an integral part of the defensive forces of the Crown. Old animosities were dead; what was needed was the free-will offering of a free people.