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PRIME MINISTER'S LETTER.

Addressed to the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh,
the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and the Lord Mayor of Cardiff.

My Lords: The time has come for combined effort to stimulate and
organize public opinion and public effort in the greatest
conflict in which our people has ever been engaged.

No one who can contribute anything to the accomplishment of this
supremely urgent task is justified in standing aside.

I propose, as a first step, that meetings should be held without
delay, not only in our great centres of population and industry,
but in every district, urban and rural, throughout the United
Kingdom, at which the justice of our cause should be made plain,
and the duty of every man to do his part should be enforced.

I venture to suggest to your lordships that the four principal
cities over which you respectively preside should lead the way.

I am ready myself, so far as the exigencies of public duty
permit, to render such help as I can, and I should be glad, with
that object, to address my fellow-subjects in your cities.

I have reason to know that I can count upon the co-operation of
the leaders of every section of organized political opinion. Your
faithful servant,

H.H. ASQUITH.

28th August, 1914.

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MR. ASQUITH IN LONDON.

Speech at the Guildhall, Sept. 5.

My Lord Mayor and Citizens of London: It is three and a half years since
I last had the honor of addressing in this hall a gathering of the
citizens. We were then met under the Presidency of one of your
predecessors, men of all creeds and parties, to celebrate and approve
the joint declaration of the two great English-speaking States that for
the future any differences between them should be settled, if not by
agreement, at least by judicial inquiry and arbitration, and never in
any circumstances by war. [Cheers.] Those of us who hailed that great
Eirenicon between the United States and ourselves as a landmark on the
road of progress were not sanguine enough to think, or even to hope,
that the era of war was drawing to a close. But still less were we
prepared to anticipate the terrible spectacle which now confronts us of
a contest which for the number and importance of the powers engaged, the
scale of their armaments and armies, the width of t