There is no man in this room who has always regarded the prospects of engaging in a great war with greater reluctance, with greater repugnance, than I have done throughout the whole of my political life. There is no man, either inside or outside of this room, more convinced that we could not have avoided it without national dishonour. I am fully alive to the fact that whenever a nation has been engaged in any war she has always invoked the sacred name of honour. Many a crime has been committed in its name; there are some crimes being committed now. But, all the same, national honour is a reality, and any nation that disregards it is doomed.
Even after the stirring sound of ‘Men of Harlech’, which the audience had sung before he spoke, Lloyd George begins with a note that comes close to apology. Of all the people to make the case for war, he is in one sense the least likely. His early reputation as a politician had been forged in his opposition to the Boer War. He had only joined the war Cabinet after a great deal of anguished deliberation. When he did relent, he steered a middle way at first between those who had favoured intervention even before the demise of Belgium and those who opposed any intervention at all. He took a long time to acknowledge the threat of German aggression.
Not that you get any sense of doubt from this speech. Lloyd George commits himself to his case with characteristic gusto, using his previous scepticism to cast himself as the radical who came in from the cold. The case really needed the advocacy that Lloyd George offers. The standard picture of August 1914, with men rushing to join up, has been amended by more recent historical scholarship. Many men entertained the same doubts as Lloyd George. Here the zealous convert launches the task of persuading the reluctant that the cause is just.
Why is our honour as a country involved in this war? Because, in the first place, we are bound in an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty, the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably, but she could not have compelled us, because she was weak. The man who declines to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard. We entered into this treaty, a solemn treaty, a full treaty, to defend Belgium and her integrity. Our signatures are attached to the document. Our signatures do not stand alone there. This was not the only country to defend the integrity of Belgium. Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia – they are all there. Why did they not perform the obligation? It is suggested that if we quote this treaty it is purely an excuse on our part. It is our low craft and cunning, just to cloak our jealousy of a superior civilisation we are attempting to destroy.
This is a very Welsh speech. Lloyd George took his rhetorical lessons from his uncle, a Welsh preacher, who had brought him up. Throughout his long career as a speaker, Lloyd George retained an evangelical, nonconformist air. The audience was made up of three thousand of the Welsh community in London, and Lloyd George was, at the time, in the thick of a battle to persuade Kitchener, the war secretary, to allow the creation of a specifically Welsh army corps. Repeated references to Wales assert the speaker’s credentials by associating him with the nation, and the speech is thus constructed around the appeal to the honour of a small country, of which Wales is a resonant example.
This allows Lloyd George to hit his main motif, which is that the pike is about to consume the minnow. Wales, in effect, merges in the speech with Belgium, Serbia and the fraternity of small nations. Lloyd George’s description of Belgium as ‘peaceable, industrious, thrifty, hard-working, giving offence to no one’ is a description of the virtues the Welsh audience would itself have claimed. Defence of the little nations was a regular refrain in Lloyd George’s liberalism. The small nations must stand as one against this use of power. Britain gave an undertaking to Belgium to defend its honour, and that is the same, in effect, as our own honour, the honour of our own beloved small nation, Wales.
That Treaty Bond was this: we called upon the belligerent Powers to respect that treaty. We called upon France; we called upon Germany … It is now the interest of Prussia to break the treaty, and she has done it. Well, why? She avowed it with cynical contempt for every principle of justice. She says treaties only bind you when it is to your interest to keep them. ‘What is a treaty?’ says the German Chancellor. ‘A scrap of paper.’ Have you any five-pound notes about you? I am not calling for them. Have you any of those neat little Treasury pound notes? If you have, burn them; they are only ‘scraps of paper’. What are they made of? Rags. What are they worth? The whole credit of the British Empire. ‘Scraps of paper’ … Treaties are the currency of international statesmanship … This doctrine of the scrap of paper … that treaties only bind a nation as long as it is to its interest, goes to the root of public law. It is the straight road to barbarism and the whole machinery of civilisation will break down if this doctrine wins in this war. We are fighting against barbarism. But there is only one way of putting it right. If there are nations that say they will only respect treaties when it is to their interest to do so, we must make it to their interest to do so for the future.
Two characteristics of Lloyd George mingle here in a brilliantly minted passage. It is funny and it is devastatingly direct. The two attributes create a sort of profundity. Lloyd George was influenced by the music hall and was by no means averse to its tricks. There was laughter in the Queen’s Hall when Lloyd George asked the audience if anyone had any money on them. A joke in a speech needs to pass two tests. It must, of course, be funny but there is another requirement. The joke should be relevant and, like screenwriters concealing a plot point with a gag, should contribute to the argument of the text. Here the joke passes both tests. The laughter is genuine at the thought that the chancellor might like to borrow a fiver, but the passage also propounds an important metaphor.
Lloyd George came into this speech highly praised for his recent action in stabilising the monetary system. The currency, an international treaty; what are they but scraps of paper? The treaty is, says Lloyd George, a promissory note of a nation’s honour. France and Prussia had both pledged to protect the integrity of Belgium. The Prussians were now breaking the bond. See how much weight Lloyd George places on the memorable phrase ‘this doctrine of the scrap of paper’.
He makes a profound point about the nature of the rule of law, which is that it can only function if its subjects comply. Enforcement of the law is costly and difficult and demands sacrifice. Germany is violating this defining norm of compliance, and that justifies Lloyd George’s stringent verdict: this is barbarism and it has to be countered. Look how far he has travelled in this section. From a joke about money, to the tokens of commerce, to the sacred obligation of honouring a treaty, the breach of which is barbarism which has to be turned back, even if the cost is war. By the conclusion, no one is left laughing.
Belgium has been treated brutally, how brutally we shall not yet know. We know already too much. What has she done? Did she send an ultimatum to Germany? Did she challenge Germany? Was she preparing to make war on Germany? Had she ever inflicted any wrongs upon Germany which the Kaiser was bound to redress? She was one of the most unoffending little countries in Europe. She was peaceable, industrious, thrifty, hard-working, giving offence to no one … What is their crime? Their crime was that they trusted to the word of a Prussian King. I don’t know what the Kaiser hopes to achieve by this war. I have a shrewd idea of what he will get, but one thing is made certain, that no nation in future will ever commit that crime again. I am not going to enter into these tales. Many of them are untrue; war is a grim, ghastly business at best, and I am not going to say that all that has been said in the way of tales of outrage is true. I will go beyond that, and say that if you turn two millions of men forced, conscripted, and compelled and driven into the field, you will certainly get among them a certain number of men who will do things that the nation itself will be ashamed of. I am not depending on them. It is enough for me to have the story which the Germans themselves avow, admit, defend, proclaim. The burning and massacring, the shooting down of harmless people – why? Because, according to the Germans, they fired on German soldiers. What business had German soldiers there at all? Belgium was acting in pursuance of a most sacred right, the right to defend your own home.
In a war speech, home is not the only front. Lloyd George is determined to convey resolution to his adversary. There is no concession, no implicit
