We, the British people, would at this moment have been standing by with folded arms, and with such countenance as we could command, while this small and unprotected State, in defence of her vital liberties, made an heroic stand against overweening and overwhelming force. We should have been admiring, as detached spectators, the siege of Liège, the steady and manful resistance of their small army; the occupation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and memories; the gradual forcing back of their patriotic defenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp; countless outrages suffered through buccaneering levies exacted from the unoffending civil population, and finally, the greatest crime committed against civilisation and culture since the Thirty Years' War--the sack of Louvain and its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations--shameless holocaust of irreplaceable treasures, lit up by blind barbarian vengeance. What account should we, the Government and the people of this country, have been able to render to the tribunal of our national conscience and sense of honour if, in defiance of our plighted and solemn obligations, we had endured, if we had not done our best to prevent--yes, and to avenge--these intolerable outrages? For my part I say that sooner than be a silent witness, which means in effect a willing accomplice, of this tragic triumph of force over law, and of brutality over freedom, I would see this country of ours blotted out of the page of history. Several German newspapers, distorting the facts of the case with remarkable disingenuousness, had roundly asserted that England had chosen to take part in the war for purely materialistic reasons, and that this country was not so anxious to vindicate the principle of Belgian neutrality as to secure the oversea trade of the German Empire. Even if Mr. Asquith had not spoken on the subject at all, it would have been realised sooner or later that there was no foundation for this assertion; for it was hardly likely, if we had had only this object in view, that a community of practical business men would have tolerated the enormous sacrifice of life and money involved in attempting by war to displace German exports to European and non-European countries.