The particular passage is so important as well as so
eloquent and moving that we must quote it in full :—
"The strain which the war imposes on ourselves and our Allies, the hardsliips which we freely admit it involves to some of those who are not directly concerned in the struggle, the upheaval of trade, the devasta- tion of territory, the loss of irreplaceable lives ; this long and sombre procession of cruelty and suffering, lighted up as it is by deathless examples of heroism and chivalry, cannot be allowed to end in some patched-up, precarious, dishonouring compromise, masquerading under the name of peace. No one desires to prolong for a single unnecessary day the tragic spectacle of bloodshed and destruction, but we owe it to those who have given their lives for us in the flower of their youth, in the hope and promise of the future, that their supreme sacrifice shall not be in vain. The ends of the Allies are well known ; they have been frequently and precisely stated. They are not selfish ends, they are not vindictive ends, but they require that there should be adequate reparation for the past and adequate security for the future. On their achievement we in this country honestly believe depends the best hopes of humanity. For them we have given—we are giving— what we can least afford to give—without stint, without regret, not only as the price by which the world will purchase and surely hold in the years to come protection for the weak, supremacy of right over force, free development under equal conditions, and each in accordance with its own genius, of all tho States, great or small, which build up the family of civilized mankind."
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