"Guildhall’s tone is the tone of Mr. Asquith--’practicing the equanimity of our forefathers, the fluctuating fortunes of a great war will drive us neither into exaltation nor despondency.’ I thought that striking phrase of a brilliant peroration British character in composite. It was more than that. It was Guildhallian. The cheers for the Premier, like those for Balfour, Churchill and Kitchener, would have been more vociferous in my country. But my country is not British. We are not devoid of dignity, I hope, but we have no Guildhall." It was left to other hands to report in detail the speeches of the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of War. Each uttered phrases of golden significance. Mr. Churchill was evidently still his ebullient self, although he had not yet fulfilled his promise of September that the German navy, if it remained in port and refused to come out, would be "dug out like a rat from a hole," nor had his now acknowledged personal responsibility for the fiasco of the Antwerp naval expedition perceptibly staled his infinite buoyancy. "Six, nine, twelve months hence," he declared, "you will begin to see the results that will spell the doom of Germany." I had never heard "Winston" speak before, but I understood now the charm of his personality and the attractiveness of an oratorical style made even more magnetic by the suggestion of a combined stammer and lisp. "In spite of its losses," he continued, "our Navy is now stronger, and stronger relatively to the foe, than it was on the declaration of war." Asquith read his speech, and Kitchener was about to do the same, but Churchill, youthful, vibrant, tense, spoke extemporaneously, and the consequent effect was indubitably the most striking of all the oratory of the night. Lord Kitchener, in khaki and with a mourning band on his arm, was redolent of strength and impressiveness, but when he rose, clumsily adjusted a pair of huge horn-rimmed reading glasses, and began to chant his carefully-prepared "speech" in monotone from manuscript, he was far less convincing, and certainly not approximately so electrifying as Churchill. But he had messages of no less magnitude and cheer. "We may confidently rely on the ultimate success of the Allies in the west," he said simply. "But we want more men and still more men. We have now a million and a quarter in training." But it was Asquith’s peroration, at which my impressionistic sketch in _The Daily Mail_ only hinted, which was the nugget of the night. Englishmen still repeat it as something which puts in more terse and concrete words than anybody else has clothed it the solemn spirit in which they have consecrated themselves to the task now trying the Empire’s soul: