shed, massacred and annihilated
and that the sacrifice of a little people in its entirety could
prevent nothing, could barely cause delay and would have no weight in
the immense balance into which the world's destinies were about to be
flung. There was no question of all this; we saw one thing only: our
plighted word. For that word we must die; and since then we have been
dying. Trace the course of history as far back as you will; question
the nations of the earth; then name those who have done or who would
have done what we did. How many will you find? I am not judging those
whom I pass over in silence, for to do so would be to enter into the
secret of men's hearts which I have not the right to violate; but in
any case there is one which I can name aloud, without fear of being
mistaken; and that is the British nation. This people too entered into
the conflict, not through interest or necessity or inherited hatred,
but simply for a matter of honour. It has not suffered what we have
suffered; it has not risked what we have risked, which is all that we
possessed beneath the arch of heaven; but it owes this immunity only
to outside circumstances. The principle and the quality of the act are
the same. We stand on the same plane, one step higher than the other
combatants. While the others are the soldiers of necessity, we are the
volunteers of honour; and, without detracting from their merits, this
title adds to ours all that a pure and disinterested idea adds to the
noblest acts of courage. There is not a doubt but that in our place
you would have done precisely what we did. You would have done it with
the same simplicity, the same calm and confident ardour, the same good
faith. You would have thrown yourselves into the breach as
whole-heartedly, with the same scorn of useless phrases and the same
stubborn conscientiousness. And the reason why I do not shrink from
singing in your presence the praises of what we have done is that
these praises also affect yourselves, who would not have hesitated to
do the selfsame things.

3

In short, we have both the same conception of honour; and a like idea
must needs bear like fruits. In your eyes as in ours, a formal
promise, a word once given is the most sacred thing that can pass
between man and man. Now far more than the valour of a man--because it
rises to much greater heights and extends to much greater
distances--the valour of a people depends upon the conception of its
hono