Lrt\ND & WATFR 
JaHtiaiT 10. iQiS 
The Prime Minister's Speech 
By Hilaire Belloc 
define!; 
whi'rli 
inert\- 
THE Prime Miniilor's. speecli upon iln- aim-, which Um^ 
British Government and people have put before 
iliemselves: in this war is a docunient of soinc im- 
portance ; not because there- is niucli tliat is new 
-that could' hardly be tiie case but because it 
and leaves upon "record certain ffeneral j)rinciples 
the mass of discussion recentlv i.rovoked by the 
had confused. I'urther, the speech not being an 
indi\-idual pronouncement, but clearly the recital of an 
instrument drawn up bv many han<ls and long discussed 
down to its most minute plirasin.i; is virtually a general 
declaration on the part of the WesUun Allies. The duel 
defect of the spo(H?h— and it is a grave one— is a failure to 
recognise* the recent erection, of that great Central State 
now standing in Europe, the destruction of which is our 
immediate, positive and concrete necessity, and the mainte- 
nance of which necessarilv means tlie decline of this country-. 
To that })oint— by far the most important jxilitical matter of 
our time- I shall' return. It is also, i)erhai)s, a defect in the 
speech that it did not emphasise the necessary dependence ol 
the objetits it mentioned n})on either a military victory or at 
second best, an internal collapse within the Central Empires. 
To; this it'niav be answered that the jwint was fairly obvious 
and did not" need reiteration. With that answer most 
observers of the present European situation would differ. 
The immediate object for which men light is victory, but if 
that object be not clearly presented, the strain of a war may 
teem to, outweigh thu value of victon,-. It is surely incon- 
ceivable — apart from the present existence of her great 
newly established State in Central JCurop*— that Prussia 
would yield any of the points summarised in tlu- speech so 
long as her armies were intact, so long, tliat is, as she was a 
military power still innocent of military defeat. 
The speech contained, ap.Tirt from its general positive 
points, certain elements new to such pronouncements and of 
considerable \'alue. 
For instance, there was well brought out in it the fact that 
'Pnissia, while clamouring for precise terms from her enemies, 
has never put forward precise terms herself. That is a s\nip- 
toni of the whole debate upon which insistence has been laid 
over and o\'er again in these columns. Those who have been 
working for the enemy, consciously and unconsciously, those 
who merely desire peace and are, therefore, doing the enemy's 
work indirectly, those who are his emissaries or moral allies, 
and those who ire by c^•el■y test most j)robably his jiaid agents. 
haVe clamoured tor months that the civilisation of Europe 
should enter into a bargain ^nth Pnissia and Ix'gin by stating 
a iiilraDer of specific terms. I'pon no element in the intrigue 
lor surrender have the supporters of that policy insisted more. 
and, from their point of view, they were quite right : for that 
party which first begins a parley is not only admitting its 
inferiority and probable submission to its enemy, but is also 
relaxing the strain of war which it may never be able to re- 
impose. Yet it was remarkable that while the enemj- and 
liis -abettors, conscious and unconscious, were f;till clamouring 
for a statement of specific terms — which process of higgling 
would liave masked the actual presence of u truce preparatory 
to a peace — the enemy never gave us even the \aguest idea <>f 
his own claims. The nearest thing to it was that which the 
Prime Minister himself alluded to, the speech of Count Czernin 
on Christmas Day. liut that speech was a thousand miles 
away from any definite pronowicement. ■ It should in this 
connection be noted that though the speech wisely avoided 
detailed and specific terms yet, in pro|K)rtion as it approached 
such detail it at once provoked that divergence of,\iew within 
the alliance which it isthe object of the enemy to create. 
Another point in the speech which deserves "special attention 
is the very jiist declaration that the Prime Uinister was speak- 
ing, not only for the Allied "statesmen, or for the political 
machinery to which they are attached, but for M/.s nation as a 
wlJole. Grcirt bodies of men are not vocal, but their common 
dct<ermination is none the less api)rociable, and there is no 
doiU)t,at all that the determination of this countrv, of its 
civilians, aiml of its soldiers, to carry the war to a successful 
conclusion stands firm in its fourth vcar. 
th(; mociem world has not created any organs of strong 
national expression such as the older i^uro'pean societies once 
possessed. Perhaps it is too complex, perhaps it is too big for 
such orgams to be possible. At anv rate, they do not exist. 
No one can pretend that the modern Xewspa'pet Trusts arc 
reprcsentath-c of general opinion, still less that the moribund 
Parliamentary systems of Western Europe are so. We can 
onh^ judge to-day of a uatipn's will by travel and by 
talking on the supreme national matter with men of e\:ery 
class. The common experience, the general impression 
left upon any man who travels widely and talks to many 
people on many occasions, lea\'es ho doubt upon the general 
intention of the British in this crisis of their fate. The Prime 
Minister was wise to associate the nation as a whole with 
his particular pronouncement. 
Our .Mlies, iioth those organised in the field, and those 
unhappily still subject to the enemy, will turn with anxiety to 
till' ])ositi\e jjoints in the speech, and ujion the whole they 
will not be disajipointed. 
The matter of Alsace-Lorraine was put in very general 
terms, but those terms, though general, were not ambiguous. 
What happened in the case of the I'rench Provinces 40 years 
ago is forgotten or confused by those who are, naturalh- 
enough, little interested in a question which was until quite 
recently foreign to their lives. It is worth recalling. This 
European district, verv wealthy and densely populated, 
counting about two million souls," was forcibly taken, altera 
successful war, by the conc|ueror from tlie conquered. It was 
taken with such brutal disregard lor the wishes of its own 
|)eople that their protest was not only unanimous, but was 
carried on for a generation by all tlie channels of expression 
open to them, that it had to be ruled despotically, and most 
significant of all that the act provoked a vast ernigration of 
those who preferred exile and grievous material loss to the 
toreign go\ernnient imposed upon them by force. Not only 
was there no consultation of the people, but those who 
annexed them regarded the v\hole idea of consulting popular 
wishes with dejision, and expressed their derision not only in 
this circumstance, but with regard to every experiment of 
self-government in Europe. 
.\ p(Tit)d of time covering ;!ll the useful life cf u uk'H has 
elapsed since that crime was committed. Dui-iii^ all tT^vsc 
years evciy effort has been made b\- a Stall' rapidlv increasing 
in wealth and pojnilation, despotic in acticm and" ruthless iii 
method, to destroy the spirit which they found in these dis- 
tricts upon tiieir annexation. An immensely powerful 
bureaucracy has stified every free expression of opinion, 
education has been directed "to the destruction of all old 
memories and the creation of a new tradition. A rigid system 
ol passports and a universal system of espionage have checked 
<'\-ery tendency to reunion with those who were the fellow- 
citizens of the families thus seized. The place has been 
flooded with new colonists, and i-verv single appointment 
from a village postmaster to a bishop and from a bishop to the 
head of a province has been an appointment despotically 
imposed from above and designed to further the interests 
of those who stole the land. 
If aft<'r such a process the original thief shall mildly be told 
that his present work is the only test of his original crime, 
and that if he has succeeded in "uprooting a European thing 
and killing it, he sliaH be forgiven, then it is no good talking 
about the immorality of annexation or the priuciple of sclf- 
go\-cruinent. To suggest such a thing, as too many honest 
people ignorant of the origin:d conditions have suggested it , 
is a direct premium upon forcible theft of jjeople and of land,' 
and what is perhaps worse, of pers(-cution, expatriation, and 
artificial colonising b\- the conquering power in order to con- 
solidate the original crime. Before leaving this point we must 
remember that valuable as are the pronouncements of one ally 
w-ith regard to the aims of anotiier, the .\lliance as a whole 
depends upon mutual loyalty. Each member of the Alliance 
is, necessarily comparatively indifferent to national traditions 
and claims which are most "vital to other members. The Sea 
IS life and death to this Island, but this Island alone of the 
Alliance feels that. All North Italy, and especially the dis- 
tricts east of .Milan, are aHame with the desire to recover 
what is Italian from a foreign- rule, but to other members of 
the Alliance the matter was, until the war broke out, literary 
or academic; and even now they cannot feel what the Italian 
feels. So it is with Alsace-Lorraine. But it is just to sa\- 
that after so prolonged a war the necessity of mutual compn - 
lieiisioii is now fairh' clear. I'pon it the moral strength of the 
.\lhance depends. If that mutual ser\-ice fails the Alliance 
fails with It, and with the Alliance the future of England. 
Next we niay note the satisfactory and sensible declaration 
upon the ]5olitical. group now holdingpower in North- Western 
Russia. It is perfectly impossible to have any definite policy 
ol adherence or even compromise here, because we lia\-e no res"- 
l)onsible and permanent force to deal with. But even if we had, 
neither this country nor any member of the Alliance in defence 
of civilisation can support a programme of which the first 
principle is the neglect 4)f all the aims for which the West met 
the Prussian challenge. England and Trance, the (vij^a^ 
