The Campaign Round LiègeKennedy, J. M. (John McFarland)
History
The Campaign Round Liège
Kennedy, J. M. (John McFarland)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Belgium
It would be a criminal mistake to under-estimate either the magnitude,
the fighting quality, or the staying power of the forces which are
arrayed against us. But it would be equally foolish and equally
indefensible to belittle our own resources whether for resistance
or attack. (Cheers.) Belgium has shown us by a memorable and a
glorious example what can be done by a relatively small State when
its citizens are animated and fired by the spirit of patriotism. In
France and Russia we have as allies two of the greatest Powers of the
world engaged with us in a common cause, who do not mean to separate
themselves from us any more than we mean to separate ourselves from
them, (Cheers.)
Having paid this tribute--how well deserved it was, and to what a
remarkable extent the German check at Liège influenced the subsequent
developments of the campaign, the world is now beginning to
realize--Mr. Asquith paid an equally warranted tribute to our own Fleet:
We have upon the seas the strongest and most magnificent Fleet which
has ever been seen. The Expeditionary Force which left our shores
less than a month ago has never been surpassed, as its glorious
achievements in the field have already made clear, not only in
material and equipment, but in the physical and the moral quality of
its constituents.
As regards the Navy, I am sure my right honourable friend (Mr.
Winston Churchill) will tell you there is happily little more to be
done. I do not flatter it when I say that its superiority is equally
marked in every department and sphere of its activity. We rely on
it with the most absolute confidence, not only to guard our shores
against the possibility of invasion, not only to seal up the gigantic
battleships of the enemy in the inglorious seclusion of their own
ports, whence from time to time he furtively steals forth to sow the
seeds of murderous snares which are more full of menace to neutral
ships than to the British Fleet--our Navy does all this, and while it
is thirsting, I do not doubt, for that trial of strength in a fair and
open fight which is so far prudently denied it, it does a great deal
more.
It has hunted the German mercantile marine from the high seas. It has
kept open our own sources of food supply and largely curtailed those
of the enemy, and when the few German cruisers which still infest
the more distant ocean routes have been disposed of, as they will be
very soon, it will achieve for British and neutral commerce passing
backwards and forwards from and to every part of our Empire a security
as complete as it has ever enjoyed in the days of unbroken peace. Let
us honour the memory of the gallant seamen who in the pursuit of one
or another of these varied and responsible duties have already laid
down their lives for their country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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