That is only a phase--a lurid and illuminating phase--in the contest in which we have been called, by the mandate of duty and of honour, to bear our part. The cynical violation of the neutrality of Belgium was, after all, but a step--a first step--in a deliberate policy of which, if not the immediate, the ultimate and the not far-distant aim was to crush the independence and the autonomy of the Free States of Europe. First Belgium, then Holland and Switzerland--countries, like our own, imbued and sustained with the spirit of liberty--were one after another to be bent to the yoke; and these ambitions were fed and fostered by a body of new doctrines, a new philosophy, preached by professors and learned men. Free and full self-development, which to these small States, to ourselves, to our great and growing Dominions over the seas, to our kinsmen across the Atlantic, is the well-spring and life-breath of national existence--that free self-development is the one capital offence in the code of those who have made force their supreme divinity, and upon its altars are prepared to sacrifice both the gathered fruits and the potential germs of the unfettered human spirit. I use this language advisedly. This is not merely a material; it is also a spiritual conflict. Upon its issue everything that contains promise and hope, that leads to emancipation, and a fuller liberty for the millions who make up the mass of mankind, will be found sooner or later to depend. The Prime Minister proceeded to combat the absurd suggestions that the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, and the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, were likely to prove a menace to the German Empire: Let me now just for a moment turn to the actual situation in Europe. How do we stand? For the last ten years, by what I believe to be happy and well-considered diplomatic arrangements, we have established friendly and increasingly intimate relations with the two Powers, France and Russia, with whom in days gone by we have had, in various parts of the world, occasions for constant friction, and now and again for possible conflict. Those new and better relations, based in the first instance upon business principles of give-and-take, have matured into a settled temper of confidence and goodwill. They were never in any sense or at any time, as I have frequently said in this hall, directed against other Powers.