War has come, and we are fighting for our life as truly as Belgium or France, where the tide of battle, with all its horrors, is rolling on. As Cromwell said of his Ironsides we can say with equal truth to-day: "We know what we are fighting for, and we love what we know." We are fighting for our national existence, for everything which nations have always held most dear. But we are fighting for something more--we are fighting for the moral forces of humanity. We are fighting for respect for public law, and for the right of public justice, which are the foundation of civilisation. We are fighting, as the Prime Minister has said, for Right against Might. I do not attempt what Burke has declared to be impossible--to draw up an indictment against a whole people--but this I do say, that the German nation has allowed itself to be organised as a military machine which recognises no law except the law of force, which knows no right except the right of the strongest. It is against that we are fighting to-day. The spirit in which this war was entered into was shown clearly in the words addressed to our Ambassador at Berlin by the German Chancellor. "You are going to war," he said, "for a scrap of paper." (Cries of "Shame!") Yes, but a "scrap of paper" with which was bound up the solemn obligation, and with that obligation the honour, of a great nation--a "scrap of paper" in which was involved also the right to independence, to liberty, the right even of existence, of all the small nations of the world. It is for that "scrap of paper" that the Belgian soldiers have fought and died, that the Belgian people, by what they have done, and by what they have endured, have won for themselves immortal fame. It is for that "scrap of paper," and all that it means, that we, too, have already watered with the blood of our sons the fair fields of France, and for which we shall conquer or perish. Like Mr. Asquith, Mr. Bonar Law emphasised the fact that the war was a spiritual and not a materialistic conflict; and he denounced in no less vigorous terms the atrocities which had been perpetrated by the German Army on its way through a friendly country. After his reference to the "scrap of paper," he went on to say: The words which I have quoted show not merely the spirit in which the war was entered into, but the spirit in which it is being conducted to-day. When reports first reached us of German atrocities in Belgium I hoped for the sake of our common humanity that they were untrue, or at least exaggerated. We can entertain that hope no longer. The destruction of Louvain has proclaimed to the world in trumpet tones what German methods are. It has fixed upon German honour an indelible stain, and the explanations which it has been attempted to give of it have only made that stain the deeper.