Chapter VII: Part 7

Study these things for yourselves. Learn the history, talk to your friends from the Dominions, and get so lively a sense of what it stands for that you can talk to others about them and teach the real meaning of these great things. Many years ago no task could have seemed more impossible than the creation of a United States; yet the strength and perseverance of the settlers in that country, and the discoveries subsequently made, enabled them to bring into a United Empire or Commonwealth that great country with its three thousand miles' width of territory and with its varied climates. Some day it may well be that our dream may come true of an Empire whose ways are the great waterways of the world, and in which men shall move for their industry and for their homes from end to end with as little concern as to-day they move from the State of New York to that of California. These ideals have long been among the most cherished ideals of our party. We have attempted to teach the people what we believe would lead to the more speedy fruition of them. We have not yet wholly succeeded, but you have joined yourselves to us although you know that at times we have failed, bringing to us a new enthusiasm of youth and confidence that will carry everything before it.

* * * * * * * *

There is only one more subject on which I should like to say a few words, because it is one that I refer to nearly every time I speak, and by this time those who criticise my methods would call them platitudes. Platitudes they may be, but I am going on repeating them until they have some effect. I think it was Sir William Harcourt who said that you had to repeat a thing a dozen times before anyone took any notice. I shall be proud to follow the example of so distinguished a Liberal statesman. I want to speak on one aspect of peace in industry. Now much has been written, and much has been said on that subject. I will only touch on one point. I am convinced, and I am not without experience, that one of the chief things we want is more knowledge and more light--knowledge on the part of each party of the position of the other. Now, to a certain extent, that is not difficult to get. What is difficult to get, and what is of vital importance, is that the men should have knowledge about the industries in which, and for which, they work. What commended to me the miners' agreement was that there you have, in an agreement in one of the greatest trades of the country, that which gives you to a considerable extent what I have always wanted.

Let that example continue and flourish, and let it be modified wherever modifications may be found desirable in practice, but let us see that kind of knowledge made familiar throughout the great industries of the country. The men want to know for their own sakes just these points: something about costs, where the goods they make have to be sold, and in competition with whom they have to be sold, and the conditions under which those goods are produced, where they are produced in competition, and the wages paid. They should also have some knowledge of the amount a business should set aside to meet its repairs and its reserves, and when they have that knowledge they will then know when is the time that they may hope to improve their own condition, they will know then what the imponderables (as they have been called) are, and they can realise, in a way they cannot now, whether or not those who were arguing against them are basing their claims upon facts and are speaking in truth. In other words, it will tend to dissipate that horrible suspicion which causes an atmosphere in which no healthy plant can flourish, and give light and publicity by which alone men can tell whether they are getting a square deal.

Everyone of us here, we hope and believe, by throwing our influence into political life, may do something to better the conditions of our own country. We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.

It is an immense encouragement to me to see a gathering like this--the generosity, the enthusiasm--if we had it through all classes of our party we should be in office for life. You are showing in your youth that you mean to take up the burden, and I say "Good luck to you," for it is the only burden worth taking up. You realise that the State is no cold entity. It is just the sum of all the men and women of our country. If we look at it in that individual way, that it is the men and women of the country we are out to help and to serve, it will lend us enthusiasm. Nothing can help the men and women who compose the State to make the State worthy of this country--nothing can help them more than the kind of service which you are prepared to give--service that will relieve the burden, and service that will make straight the path, never losing in that the sense of the importance of the individual, and the responsibility of each one of us and of all of us to one another and to our Maker.

DISARMAMENT

FROM A SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

23_rd July_, 1923

Very little, if anything, has been said to-day about one of the greatest difficulties which we find facing us in dealing with this question, and that is that fighting instinct which is part of human nature. I propose to say a few words about that first, with a view to explaining how, in my view, we have to attempt to eradicate it, or, at least, to combat it, so as to produce that will to peace without which all efforts by legislation, arbitration, rule or otherwise, must be vain. That fighting instinct in man is the instinct of the tiger. It dates from his creation, and was probably given to him to enable him to fight for the survival of his species, for the provision of space in which to bring up his race, and to provide food for it; and we find through the ages that that instinct, whether in democracy or empire, or among individuals, has had full play. We find it even among men whose political views can be classed as pacifist, and that is the reason why we have often found in history that men of pacifist views were advocating policies which must end, if carried to their logical conclusion, in war.

I need only remind Hon. Members that there was a considerable agitation some little time ago, with which I personally had great sympathy, and which was conducted very largely by those who, in all other respects, were of a peculiarly pacific turn of mind, and that was that this country--if there is any work to be done in this world, it is always our country, and I am thankful for that--that this country should in some way or other rescue Armenia. The only means by which Armenia could have been rescued was at the point of the sword. I may remind Hon. Members that for the thirty years preceding one of the longest and bloodiest struggles in history, the Civil War in America, the anti-slavery agitation in the North-Eastern States was very largely, if not entirely, in the hands of professional pacifists and anti-militarists, and when the agitation had brought matters to the point that it meant either surrendering the principle of anti-slavery or going to war the pacifists, quite rightly in my view, said: "It shall be war," realising, as was said during the late War, that there are times when moral issues may even triumph over peace.

In the same way some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire, and I have merely mentioned these innate characteristics of human nature to make us realise, as I think we sometimes fail to do, what difficulties there are before us in carrying out a policy with which everyone in this House is in sympathy. We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will; and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.

But, taking into full consideration these points, on which I have touched somewhat summarily, I think there are compensations, and I think before I have finished I shall be able to show that the human race is progressing, though slowly, and is full of a conscious, though hardly as yet articulate, desire for further progress in the same direction.

I have often thought, with reference to the late War, that one of the most terrible effects of it--possibly a double effect--has been that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.

The conscience of the world is not stilled yet, but on the Government side of the House there rests a responsibility which cannot, in the nature of things, be felt by those who sit in opposition. We have to remember that a great deal of what has been said to-day, and if I may use the phrase in all good faith, some of the dreams which have been mentioned to-day are no new thing. We have to remember that in the French wars of Queen Anne's reign there was just the same longing for, and the same dream of, universal peace that so many of us feel to-day. One hundred years ago that same feeling, in different forms, animated many different breasts. Napoleon at St. Helena had dreams too late for him, but dreams of a united Europe with a united congress on the American model, of which he would be the chief and the dictator. At Vienna such dreams were heard of. The Tsar Alexander, a prototype of the late Tsar, whose dreams of peace were shattered only too cruelly, propounded a scheme of Holy Alliance which at that time came to nothing, because he spoke to a world that was not yet ready for it.

We believe that any attempt at this moment to convene an international conference would not only not lead to success, but would lead to the indefinite postponement of any possibility of achieving the ends which we all desire. In my view the moment cannot arise to approach this problem, with any chance of success, until the conditions of Europe with regard to Reparations and the security of frontiers is settled, and I feel that it would be hopeless to expect a definitely favourable answer--to give only two instances; and I do not wish on this occasion to be more explicit--from France, for instance, before she had obtained a settlement of Reparation and security, or from Poland until she could feel that her frontiers were secure against that gigantic and powerful neighbour along her eastern borders.

The first step to be taken is the step that we are taking now. That is, to attempt a settlement of these existing problems of Reparation, and in taking that step I am animated by as ardent a desire that it may lead ultimately, and at no distant date, to the consideration of these questions which we have been discussing to-day, as I am desirous of it leading to a discussion and settlement of those questions which have kept the countries of Europe apart during all the years which have succeeded the Great War. Let us never forget that sometimes in the darkest day the beginnings of better things are not only attempted but successfully achieved. It was in the darkest days of the struggle of the Thirty Years' War that Grotius worked on international law and led to the foundation of that science which, though it has not brought peace to the world, has yet brought into being a code which has helped the world in its peaceful development, and will continue to do so.

It has been during those dark days of the last three or four years that the Washington Conference was held, which has led to a limitation of naval armaments that, until that Conference was held, I am convinced the statesmen of all countries would have considered to have been impossible, impossible even to have been debated, and impossible in its fulfilment. This year, some of the most valuable exploratory work has been done, and is being done, by the League of Nations. The League of Nations has been occupied in considering this very question of disarmament, and the possibility of linking it up with guarantees of security, universal in their application as such guarantees must be: and such a universality is, indeed, a first and absolute essential to make any prospect hopeful of limitation of armaments.

Now, those efforts of the League of Nations are on the point of taking concrete form in the shape of proposed Treaties, which will be submitted to the Governments of Europe for their consideration, probably after the meeting in September of the General Assembly of the League of Nations. I can promise, at least for this Government, and I am certain that the same will be true of all the leading Governments of Europe, that the work that the League of Nations has done, the form in which their work will be presented, will be examined, not only with the sympathy and the interest that such work deserves, but with an earnest desire, at the first moment when it appears to be practicable, that the aims of the League, if not in the exact form in which they have suggested they should be brought about, shall be brought into effect in Europe.

As was well said by the Hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw), in the course of his speech, there is one great instrument of peace in this world, and that is the British Empire. It is a great instrument, not only in its size, and its population, and its wealth, but more than ever a great instrument in this, that it is not only an Empire, but it is a large assembly of free nations, not all of the same kin or the same tongue, but animated largely by a common purpose, and all alike equally desirous of seeing extended in every corner of that Empire or Commonwealth those ideas of liberty, and justice, and freedom which we believe are in our hearts, and which we hope to see spread throughout our Empire and throughout the world. In that collection of nations, which now spreads throughout the world, there is something of hope for the human race, because though it may seem a dream, it may yet some day be possible for peoples in so distracted a Continent as Europe to feel there may be something for them to learn from the development, from the union, and from the ideals of our great Empire, and we may possibly be able to show them a better way, which in years to come they may tread, and find the solution that to-day seems so difficult.

As I have tried to explain to the House we cannot see our way to accept this Motion and take immediate steps, believing as we do that such steps would be rather a bar to future progress than a help. Yet I do say this, that when we are sufficiently fortunate, as I pray we may be, to have seen brought about, with our aid, such a settlement in European conditions as I indicated earlier on, then the time will be ripe and we shall be ready to take our part, in so far as we can, whether through such schemes as have been proposed already or through others, in bringing about that limitation of armaments which we believe to be essential for the future progress of civilised mankind. It is an easy thing to say, as many men say to-day, that this country should cut herself adrift from Europe, but we must remember that our island story is told, and that with the advent of the aeroplane we ceased to be an island. Whether we like it or not, we are indissolubly bound to Europe, and we shall have to use, and continue to use, our best endeavours to bring to that Continent that peace in which we and millions of men up and down Europe have an equal belief and an equal faith.

_MISCELLANEOUS_

SCOTLAND

ST. ANDREW'S DAY FESTIVAL OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH
CORPORATION

30_th November_, 1925

It is a great honour for one who is not hundred per cent. a Scot to preside over the anniversary of the Corporation. The Charity goes back even further than 261 years. It goes back to the time when the throne was transferred from Edinburgh to London, and in the wake of that throne began the migration southwards which, in after years, attained such great proportions. It being a Scottish army, the casualties by the way were few, but it is a great tribute to the race that from the beginning they made preparations to deal with those casualties. Attempts were made to succour the fallen, attempts which have gained in force from generation to generation as the need becomes greater, so that, as the years go by, there is hardly a family which has attained prosperity in London whose name may not be found in the annals of the Corporation as having helped to make provision for their less fortunate brothers and sisters. In the face of a patriotism so insistent and so persistent it is not necessary for me this night to beg for this great organisation. You have responded to its call already with your traditional and your national generosity.

Now, I would like, as an Englishman, not without connection with a certain part of Scotland, to offer a few observations on the virtues of the Scot and on the impression that the Scot has made in England; and I think perhaps, speaking as an Englishman, that there is one thing above all others which we owe to you, and one thing in which the Scot has set an example, which we would do well to imitate. There is nothing that fills me with more admiration than the way in which your people for generations have held up that standard of plain living and high thinking--a lesson which to-day a world that would, if it could, be a world of high living and plain thinking, needs more than ever before. Nothing has made Scotland what she is more than the magnificent system of parochial education, which she had years before any other part of the British Isles. The picture of the Scottish student with his sack of oatmeal, leaving his work for part of the year, living and drawing on the frugality and self-sacrifice of father and mother, brother and sister, in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, is an example to the whole world, and what your Scots have to be mindful of is that in this age, when education is tending to become spoon-fed, you do not allow yourselves to lose sight of the ideals of the past generations.

When I think of all the lessons you have to give us, I am always struck by the fact that of Scotsmen, I think, perhaps alone, the English people are in no way either jealous or envious. Whatever be the reason, the English have always taken the Scots to their hearts as blood brothers. I do not think it is difficult to give the reason, and I think the reason may be traced to one man of genius. For a long time after the Union it would seem that the Union itself afforded no stimulus--whatever else it may have done--to Scottish literature. One of your own most famous writers in the last century said that at that time you had "theologic ink and Jacobite blood, with gall enough in both cases to have blotted out the intellect of the country"--and when David Hume and Adam Smith came they were still drawing from France rather than from their own soil. But a few years later, by the grace of God, you threw up two men of genius, Walter Scott and Robert Burns. You had, as no other nation ever has had, a man of yourselves to interpret you to the neighbouring kingdom--that was Walter Scott; for however ardent an admirer of Burns you may be, no one could call Burns an interpreter to Englishmen. Scott did a great deal for your country. There was, of course, patriotism before Scott appeared, but he deepened, enriched and ennobled it in a thousand ways for the Scots themselves. All that honours the ancestry of the Scot and the kindred of the Scot, the virtues and the noble deeds of your ancestors, the heroism of the common people--all that he gave you, and through that many in his generation, and in the generation that came after, have felt more than they had ever felt before that they had a country to live for, an ancestry to live up to. It was a tremendous stimulus.

But the greatest service he rendered was the interpretation of Scotland to England. Take myself as a typical Englishman. By the time I was ten I had read the _Tales of a Grandfather_, and had read all his poems and half his novels. Since then, I suppose, not a year goes by that I do not read some of them again, and whenever I go to Edinburgh I go down to Castle Street and look at the bay window where he stood and the door where he welcomed Pet Marjorie. He said when he first wrote that he wished to do for Scotland what Maria Edgeworth did for Ireland; but how many people of to-day outside those who love books--which is not the same thing as borrowing from Mudie's--ever read Maria Edgeworth? Had there been a Walter Scott for Ireland there would have been no Boundary Commission sitting to-day, and I should have been able to have devoted my week-end, as I had intended, to preparing a speech worthy of this occasion.

That is not all that Walter Scott did. How impossible it would have seemed to Boswell and Dr. Johnson, when they travelled in the Hebrides, if anyone had told them that within sixty years there would arise a genius who would bring the English King to Edinburgh and put him in a kilt, that a genius would arise under the spell of whose wand the Lowlander would adopt the garb of the robbers of the North. I remember when I was in Scotland this autumn I was asked humorously why I did not wear a kilt when in Scotland. I said the last time my ancestors wore a kilt was at Culloden, and I leave it for the English to wear it when they go to Scotland. If it had not been for Walter Scott you would never have seen the kilt south of the Grampians, and the result is that we English--a prosaic race--cannot look at Scotland or at a Scot except through those glasses tinted with romance and history, those glasses that Walter Scott made us wear; and, while we are looking at you with the vision of the Wizard of the North, wrapped in admiration, you attend strictly to business! When Scott wrote his first novel the "Forty-five" was only sixty years back. It seems long years away from us. The Industrial Revolution, which Scott hardly understood, has almost submerged us.

"The successor of Monkbarns does not exchange ideas with the successor of Edie Ochiltree. He meets his fellow lairds in a London club. Edie Ochiltree has left the bonny burnsides for the city slums; Mrs. Mucklebackit sells her ware to a London fishmonger; and Captain M'Intyre hires his moor to a wealthy American; while Mr. Blattergowl is not the unique minister of a unique parish."

And yet, though there is an element of truth in these things, there remains in you that indestructible love of your own people and your own soil; and, in my view at least, it is largely for this reason that you, in spite of a certain amount of industrialising of your country, have not yet been submerged by industrialism to the extent that a large part of the southern portion of Great Britain has been. So long as you keep your contact with nature, so long as the Highlands are left, so long as your great agricultural country is left, those roots are left in the soil which alone can propagate that plant of tradition which means so much to you, as it does to the countryman in England.

If you ask an Englishman what he thinks of Scotland in contradistinction to what comes in his mind when he thinks of England, we think of the heather and the moors, and we see your northern country as we should see it in June, ablaze with the glory of the broom. Those are the pictures that rise in our minds, and if I were asked what represents the soul of Scotland I could not answer better than by the reply which was given many years ago to a relative of mine in New Zealand by an old Scottish farmer. My relative asked him how long the traditions that your people bring from home last in a new country, and the old settler replied, "The porridge and the heather and the Psalms of David last to the third generation as a sustenance for body and spirit." And may they abide for ever, because--and I speak as an Englishman--were the Scot to pass, with his history, with his tradition, with his character, there would pass at the same time from earth a large part of the heroism and the romance of the world, those intangible qualities which, perhaps more than anything else, make us capable of plain living, high thinking and great deeds.

IRELAND

ST. PATRICK'S DAY BANQUET

17_th March_, 1926

No man can stand here to-night before an audience like this, occupying the position which I do, without asking himself what has happened that such a gathering, that such a company, is possible in London to-night. I feel, perhaps, it means that the secular struggle is drawing--has drawn--to a close; it means that you recognise too generously the little that I have been able to do with my colleagues to help Ireland over a stile.

Having safely surmounted the stile, two facts stand out before the statesmen of Ireland and the statesmen of England. It is not for me in my position to speak, as Mr. MacVeagh did, with the yearning of the Irish for an Ireland one and indivisible, but I still say this, that the fact that by that recent settlement it was recognised in Ireland that there was a problem in the North has, for the first time, rendered the solution at some time possible, because as the Minister for Justice of the Free State said, it is a problem not perhaps soluble at the present time, but one that possibly only time can solve. To solve any problem the first essential is the recognition of it.

Secondly, Ireland is governed to-day from Merrion Street, not from Dublin Castle or from Whitehall. That, I believe, marks the close, as I said, of a secular conflict; but before we glance at the future, in the few words I have to say to you to-night, I do not think we shall waste our time in dwelling for a few minutes on the paths that we have trodden in the past, and the paths we are treading to-day.

We have been too used through the generations and the centuries to conflict between our peoples and our nations, and we know--now that we can look at these things from afar, I trust--that the root of that conflict went deep down into the characters of the two peoples, and that those characters themselves were moulded by their very different histories. In Ireland you look back, as the Celt always will look back, to the golden age. You were nourished on memories of that time when Ireland was, according to the tradition of her historians and of folk-lore, the island of saint and scholar. You look back to the work of St. Patrick, who, I may remark, first converted Ulster before he took in hand the rest of Ireland. We have relics of those days in the luminous pages of your manuscripts and in the rare work of cross and chalice which now lie in your museums. All that time, while we in England were growing slowly into a united nation, with a consolidated government, in Ireland, whatever the reason, the great privilege was not yours because for centuries there was disunion, and the stable government which broadened from age to age, following precedent with us, had no such chance with you. This struggle for centuries culminated at a time when hell was let loose throughout the whole of Europe, and it is good that we should now forget those days. With you, as with the rest of Europe--to use the words of one of your own historians--"The soul of man was bloodied and bruised," but now murdering hate is a dead thing, and once more in this struggling world the love of God has some chance to contend against the eternal stupidity of mankind.

The rule of reason is slowly emerging from the riot of violence, and is throughout the world cleansing the foul parts of the infected world with its medicine. In that process the veil of illusion has been rent, but as compensation the rhetoricians are silent, and it always seems to me that, with the first sense of responsibility and the passage into full freedom, one of the most difficult times that can face the Celt confronts you. For the Celt of all nations is a man who has dwelt with his dreams, and to be plunged from his dreams into the white light of the twentieth century is indeed a staggering shock, and in that fierce light it is little wonder if with many another man he finds himself precipitated from the heights on which he fancied he dwelt into a pit of depression and of cynicism. But all these things will pass. They are but the consequent evils of the day, and the people will learn that salvation comes to them by the industry of their own hands and by the work of their own brains.

If they cannot achieve it in that way, they will be no more able to achieve it from Merrion Street than from Whitehall. The people must save themselves. It is a hard and painful task, as we all know, to build up. It is easy enough to destroy. It is easier to face death for an ideal than it is to face the daily duty and the daily drudgery against the forces of vice and ignorance, which have to be faced in the attainment of any ideal. But Ireland is fortunate in this, that in the North she has a statesman, an Irishman and a man of deep wisdom; and in Dublin, in the Free State, you have as statesmen men who have looked into the eyes of both life and death. They are facing an almost insuperable burden to-day with courage and honesty rare amongst statesmen.

We in England wish them well with all our hearts. We want the two Governments of Ireland to have fair play from the world. We want them to have a fair chance of settling down to their work, and so far as we are concerned I think we have given proof of the sincerity of our desires for the prosperity of Ireland. I have only one word more to add. I have been told that just as the virtue of truth, on which perhaps we English are apt to credit ourselves, is sometimes presented in a form not dissimilar from aggressiveness and insolence--I have been told that by those who do not love us--so I have been told that the Celtic virtue of courtesy is sometimes extended to a point where it almost becomes insincerity. As an illustration, I have been told that if you ask an Irish peasant how far you are from your destination, he is always more anxious to give you satisfaction than information, and the illimitable distance you have to travel before you reach your journey's end--the land of heart's desire--is to him only "just beyond the hill." That is a failing of all people with prophetic souls.

That ideal state, to which Mr. Cosgrave would lead his people along an Irish road, and to which I would lead mine along an English road, we tell each other is just over the hills. We know in our hearts we shall never reach it, but if we did not believe that it was only just over the hills we should never have the strength to go through that dreary, dusty walk in attending to the needs of the caravan on its journey day by day throughout this world. Our courses are set the same. Our goal is the same. Our method of travelling may be different, but it is because our paths run alongside, and because you have asked me here to-night, that I feel we may now fairly join hands as we proceed across that narrow strip of water, those of us who live on this side and you who live on that.

WALES

AT THE ST. DAVID'S DAY DINNER

2_nd March_, 1925

I suppose that when an Englishman comes to dine with you he tries to find some link by which he may explain his presence. In asking me you have asked one that was born and bred, and whose people have lived for a very long time, in those border counties where in the old days we knew a great deal about you. In Shropshire, whence my family migrated into Worcestershire to get a little farther from the border, there are still to-day, I believe, about one-fifth of all the castles that exist in England. Why they were crowded into that narrow area I have no idea. And when I do go home and look from my garden, four miles across the valley is the hill on which, according to tradition, Owen Glendower had his camp, on, I think, the last invasion of our county by the Welsh.

My family has some connection with Wales if you go back far enough. Long, long years ago there were two Baldwins who tossed a coin at some remote place on the Continent, and one went East, where he became King of Jerusalem, and thereby preceded by about a thousand years Sir Herbert Samuel, and another went West, crossed over, first into England and then into Wales, where his name was softened, as you soften everything in Wales, and he gave his name to what we in England call the county of Montgomery.

Another century slipped by, and an archbishop of my name, translated to Canterbury from Worcester, went on a pilgrimage into Wales. He went with a very specific object. He knew that the Welsh were devout, and he had been told that they made most admirable foot soldiers, so he tried to secure them for the Crusades, and he took with him an eloquent archdeacon and journalist by name Giraldus. I regret to say, however pure one's motives, the twelfth century differed little from the present. There were those who said that my ancestor, if I may call him so, really went to Wales because he wished by celebrating Mass at the High Altar of each of the four Welsh cathedrals to establish the supremacy of Canterbury. I don't know whether that was true, but some of the priests in Wales, thinking that it was, did their best to impede his progress, though without success, and the only part of Wales in which this holy man met with an unfavourable reception, I regret to say, was in the county of Carnarvon. It is a source of infinite regret to me that the distinguished representative of that part of Wales[1] is unable to be present to-night, for we might then have got to the bottom of this secular trouble. But so undisturbed am I by what happened all those centuries ago that I am thinking this summer of starting on a pilgrimage myself, not by palfrey, but by motor-car, and I shall leave Bewdley by what we still call the Welsh Gate and go to preside over--a word of ten letters signifying a national festival--to be held at a little town of eight letters.[2]

It is strange, indeed, to look at the border country to-day and to think that it was for so long by Severn and Wye a scene of interminable raids. Now there is no more peaceful part of England than that of which the Shropshire poet wrote:

In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
A country of pleasant livers,
The quietest under the sun.

We tried, it is true, in those days to keep you out of England, and now we come to do homage to you in our own capital, of which you have almost taken possession. Not for the first time in history have the Greeks defeated their conquerors, and, indeed, this country had a very narrow escape in the years immediately succeeding the War from the imposing of Welsh as the diplomatic language of Europe.

There are times in the life of a Prime Minister when he is able, not without difficulty, to get away from his arduous work and disappear for a short time unseen by the public and unknown to the Press. I had the good fortune so to disappear and find myself by accident in the studio of a Chelsea sculptor. When there I saw an exquisitely beautiful statue of a young shepherd, the original of the figure which now stands in a mountain village in Merionethshire--the figure of a poet (Hedd Wyn) who took his part in the Great War. You have all heard of the story of this private soldier in the trenches who had written a poem for your great festival at Birkenhead, and how he was killed on Pilkem Ridge before he received the crown that would have been given to him; and the sculptor explained to me that the poet's Hero had been composed of Prometheus and the Man of Nazareth--the energy that makes for kindliness and beauty; whenever I think of Wales, it is not of her industrial areas, but of the country, and I look upon that figure as a type of what our rural civilisation can produce. That poet has again proved the truth of the old saying that "The Celt goes forth to battle and has always fallen"; but there is the additional truth that there are some defeats which mean more than victories, and which are in themselves victories everlasting.

Finally, I would like to remind you of the beautiful words used by St. David the last time he spoke to his own people:

"Be joyful and keep your faith, and believe and perform the small things which you have heard and seen with me, and I will go the road which our fathers have travelled. Be courageous while you are upon the earth, for you will not see me any more in this world."

If that can still be a message to the people of these islands, and if they will listen to it, we shall have nothing to fear in the future, and the name of St. David will go down the ages blessed by the English as well as by the Welsh.

[1] Mr. Lloyd George.

[2] Pwllheli.

GLASGOW

AT GLASGOW

1_st October_, 1925

It is a matter of peculiar pride to become a burgess of a city which is one of the most famous in the world. There can be few corners of the world into which the fame and name of Glasgow have not penetrated, and where there cannot be found some product of your manifold energies, and, in these latter days, where the echoes of the voices of your Parliamentary representatives have not been heard. I know full well that the honour you have done me is to me as first Minister of the Crown, and I believe you have made me this presentation as a recognition that I have tried, at any rate, to discharge my duties as the chief servant of the people in no party spirit, and that you mean it as an encouragement to try to go forward and do better.

I am receiving the great honour from you at a time of very grave difficulty. No progressive country has ever been free or ever will be free from difficulties. We have come through a prolonged and terrific struggle for our very existence, we are borne down under a burden of taxation resulting from that struggle, we are perplexed by the changes occurring under our eyes in the channels of the world trade on which we are so dependent, and we are profoundly depressed at the thought of the numbers of unemployed, and of the continuance of unemployment.

Nothing could be easier than to paint a sombre picture full of shadows, and to ask ourselves: "Does Scotland stand where she did?" or "Is England played out?" But that would not be a true picture. The life of Glasgow is the story in miniature of the whole country--the gradual evolution, the increase in population, power and prosperity. It was not so long ago, as the generations of men are reckoned, that Glasgow was but a village, and almost before the people realised what was happening her traders began to go out over the seas of the world. The Clyde was deepened, coal and iron were discovered in your neighbourhood, your great series of pioneers and inventors from James Watt to Lord Kelvin made their names and the name of the city known throughout the world, and in two short centuries Glasgow passed from being a little country town into a mighty city of a million souls, which has drawn into its vortex not only the people from the glens of the North, but from the farming country and, indeed, from overseas, so that you now have a fourth part of the population of Scotland packed together in this area in a density greater than that which exists in most of our English towns. The story of Glasgow is thus a story of stupendous adventure and achievement, answering to some of the deepest instincts of human nature. Such a story has not been achieved without strain and conflict, and even loss. Past generations have left to us a city, and we have to maintain its character, noted particularly for the fierce energy of its people, the high quality of their workmanship, and the boldness of their municipal enterprise. It is true to say that the labours of Glasgow, industrial, commercial and municipal, have profoundly affected the current of modern civilisation in all parts of the world, and have affected it largely for good.

This has been done by the co-operation of mind and brain. There has been no standing still; there is no standing still to-day. We have to remember that while in the time of our fathers the changes that always came, came slowly, what is apt to disconcert us is the speed at which changes come to-day--changes social, industrial and commercial. To-day the chemist is revolutionising industry. We are beginning to make various things by artificial processes which might have seemed like miracles a quarter of a century ago. To-day I am to have the pleasure of seeing a great municipal experiment which you are making in order to learn whether you cannot light your city, dye your clothes, clear your atmosphere and drive your motor cars out of coal. It is this ceaseless activity that has made Glasgow what she is, and that is the hope of her future.

What Burke said of the State is true of the city. We have a partnership, not only between those who are living, but a partnership over many generations with those who have gone before us and with those who will follow us. The life of a city is a continuous thing, a living organisation, and its citizens are members not only of one another but heirs of those who went before. And so, while we inherit a civilised way of life and opportunities and comforts and pleasures far beyond the dreams of our ancestors, it is also true that we cannot escape inheriting the very texture of city life, the results of the failings of good men and of the sins of evil men.

No problem which faces Glasgow is greater than that of housing, our inheritance from an age when the Industrial Revolution swept so quickly through the land that it had done its work before people realised that it had come at all. Quite apart from the essential wrong of such conditions of housing as still exist to-day, there is no doubt that those conditions are the most fertile source of that social discontent which is known so well in this city, as in other congested parts of the kingdom. Grievous as it may be to see social discontent, it is yet a better thing than cynical indifference or lazy acquiescence in conditions such as I saw in this city yesterday afternoon. I know how aggravated the problem is here, particularly through the tenement-house system and through the rush of immigration. It is not for us to apportion blame; it is a waste of time to do so. We are all to blame, and we have all come short of perfection. Let us see that our sympathy is not wasted in noisy declamation or in mere fault-finding. Let us rather wed the social enthusiasm that does exist here to experience and reason. The task of improving the worst quarters in our great cities is hard enough to demand the co-operation of the best men and women of all classes, and those who withstand such an aim, whether from a selfish regard for their wealth or property, or from a desire to monopolise their skill and exploit the city--these people, in whatever ranks of life they are found, are the worst enemies of the communal life.

I am convinced myself that the day will come when we shall have to eviscerate our great cities, a tremendous task, but one to which the imagination and the vision and the wisdom of the best of us may well be devoted. The task is enormous, and therefore it is all the better worth doing. I like to think that even at a time like this, when we are preoccupied with unemployment and the hardship arising out of it, we are yet giving our minds to try to raise up in this kingdom better, healthier, more beautiful communities than exist to-day, and I should like to think that I am becoming a burgess of your city at a time when the public conscience is stirred on these matters as never before, and when in Glasgow there are those who are striving might and main to make Glasgow what she once was and might be again, namely, one of the fairest cities in the kingdom. In that high task I would fain be associated with my fellow-burgesses. I shall follow you in your struggle to solve the problems that surround you, knowing that as you accomplish them you are not only making Glasgow better, happier, healthier and more prosperous, but are contributing in large measure to the security, prosperity and happiness of the people at large in these islands which are our home.

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP

THE ANNUAL RE-UNION DINNER OF THE BRITISH
WAR MISSIONS TO THE UNITED STATES

29_th April_, 1925

Looking back, I think that if there was one thing that struck our delegates, on whatever task they were engaged in America, it was the amazing and the generous hospitality showered on all alike by their new friends in every part of the United States. Apart from the personal side they were struck by the immense effort that the United States made in those early days of the war, when they showed an example of enthusiasm, of hard work, and of receptiveness to ideas--when they showed that natural characteristic of hero-worship, and came forward to do everything in their power to help their Allies to bring to a successful issue the terrible undertaking in which they were engaged.

Living as I was at that time in London, and working at the Treasury, I cannot help in a gathering of this kind recalling the day when the first American troops appeared in London. I do not know how the reception of those troops affected the Americans themselves. The outlook was different to them from what it was to us, but I shall never forget standing on the Horse Guards Parade watching them marching by, not to a storm of cheers, which perhaps some had expected, but in a deep, profound silence, which to me was far more moving than any cheers.

Speaking for myself, I understand what was passing through the minds and hearts of that crowd. As we looked at these young men, the pick of their nation, so fresh, so keen, so enthusiastic, with their fine military bearing, the thought that was prominent in my mind was how they had come three thousand, four thousand and five thousand miles to Europe to help us.

I wondered how it looked to them. I thought of the homes from which they had come, the strangeness of the surroundings to them, their feeling of fresh enthusiasm, of our feeling of worn but grim determination begotten of the three years of hell through which we had passed, and I could not help thinking how little, in the triumph of that march, they could realise what that fiery furnace was towards which they were going, and from which few of those early regiments could ever hope to return. It seemed to me then as impossible to cheer as I always find it impossible to applaud when I have heard the most beautiful music that stirs the soul rather than the head.