But we want not less urgently a larger supply of ex-non-commissioned officers, and the pick of the men with whom in past days they served, men, therefore, whom in most cases we shall be asking to give up regular employment and to return to the work of the State, which they alone are competent to do. The appeal we make is addressed quite as much to their employers as to the men themselves. The men ought to be absolutely assured of reinstatement in their business at the end of the war. Finally, there are numbers of commissioned officers now in retirement, who are much experienced in the handling of troops and have served their country in the past. Let them come forward, too, and show their willingness, if need be, to train bodies of men for whom at the moment no cadre or unit can be found. Mr. Asquith concluded one of the most eloquent speeches he had ever delivered with a warning to the optimists who had predicted a too easy task for the allied forces, and recommended those present--and, through them, the British Empire generally--to cultivate the virtue of patience: I have little more to say. Of the actual progress of the war I will not say anything, except that, in my judgment, in whatever direction we look there is abundant ground for pride and for confidence. I say nothing more, because I think we should all bear in mind that we are at present watching the fluctuations of fortune only in the early stages of what is going to be a protracted struggle. We must learn to take long views, and to cultivate, above all other faculties, those of patience, endurance, and steadfastness. Meanwhile, let us go, each of us, to his or her appropriate place in the great common task. Never had a people more or richer sources of encouragement and inspiration. Let us realise first of all that we are fighting as a united Empire in a cause worthy of the highest traditions of our race; let us keep in mind the patient and indomitable seamen, who never relax for a moment, night or day, their stern vigil of the lonely sea; let us keep in mind our gallant troops, who to-day, after a fortnight's continuous fighting, under conditions which would try the mettle of the best army that ever took the field, maintain not only an undefeated, but an unbroken front. Finally, let us recall the memories of the great men and the great deeds of the past, commemorated, some of them, in the monuments which we see around us on these walls; nor forgetting the dying message of the younger Pitt, his last public utterance, made at the table of one of your predecessors, my Lord Mayor, in this very hall: England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example. The England of those days gave a noble answer to his appeal, and did not sheath the sword until after nearly twenty years of fighting the freedom of Europe was secured. Let us go and do likewise.