tain stands for peace, security, and
prosperity. We have used the force of arms to conquer the forces of
barbarism and semi-civilisation, but the most hostile of our critics may
be safely challenged to point to any country or province upon which we
have imposed the Pax Britannica, which is not now the better for it. It
is no idle boast, sir, to say that all the world over, the rule of His
Majesty means the rule of peace and prosperity. There are only two
causes in which a nation or an empire may justly go to war. One, is to
make peace where strife was before, and the other is to defend that
which has been won, and made secure by patient toil and endeavour, no
less than by blood and suffering. It is that which the challenge of
Europe calls upon us now to defend. Our answer to the leagued nations is
this: What we have fought for and worked for and won is ours. Take it
from us if you can.

"And, sir, I believe that I can say with perfect confidence, that what
His Majesty's Government has done His Majesty's subjects will enforce to
a man, and, if necessary, countersign the declaration of war in their
own blood.

"Let us remember, too, those weighty words of warning which the Laureate
of the Empire wrote nearly twenty years ago, of this Imperial
inheritance of ours:

"'It is not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep,
Men, not gods, devised it, men, not gods, must keep.
Men not children, servants, or kinsfolk called from afar,
But each man born in the island broke to the matter of war.

'So ye shall bide, sure-guarded, when the restless lightnings wake,
In the boom of the blotting war-cloud, and the pallid nations quake.
So, at the haggard trumpets, instant your soul shall leap,
Forthright, accoutred, accepting--alert from the walls of sleep.
So at the threat ye shall summon--so at the need ye shall send,
Men, not children, or servants, tempered and taught to the end.'

"Sir, it has been said that poets are prophets. The hour of the
fulfilment of that prophecy has now come, and I shall be much mistaken
in my estimate of the temper of my countrymen and fellow-subjects of His
Majesty here in Britain, and in the greater Britains over sea, if,
granted the possibility of an armed invasion of the Motherland, every
man, soldier or civilian, who is able to use a rifle, will not, if
necessary, use it in the defence of his country and his home."

The Prime Mini