My recent speech in Manchester has been so widely discussed, and, in certain quarters, so gravely misrepresented or misunderstood, that, in the interests of the cause which I there defended, I am impelled to place before the public a complete text of that speech with such notes and supplementary matter as seem necessary to make my meaning unmistakable except to faction or to prejudice.

No one who has followed with attention the efforts of the National Service League has any right to imagine that we desire a strong army solely in order to invade the territory of European or more distant States; or that we wish to root out the Territorial Force in order to establish in its place an army system modelled on the army system of Germany; or, again, that we have the ambition of resuscitating once more medieval blood-lust, anarchic plunder, and delight in war!

What, then, are our aims?

We desire, in the first place, that all patriotic men within this Empire should be made to see and to feel that from one cause or another England, by neglecting her armaments, has drifted into a position which it is impossible to describe otherwise than as a position of danger. We desire further that all patriotic men should, without either insincerity or delay, put to themselves the questions: How are we to arrest that drifting, and how are we to evade or overcome that danger? And, in the third place, with regard to foreign nations or empires, our ambition is simply that States well-disposed towards us, whether near or distant, may have it in their power to mix with their friendliness respect, and with their goodwill esteem.

In the following pages I have stated in brief the solutions of these problems which, after some experience of peace and war and after some deliberation not free from anxiety, I have come to look upon as the only workable solutions, as the only solutions consonant with our honour and our continuance as an Empire.

And in view of the discussion and criticism which this speech has provoked, and still provokes, I may be permitted to add, that, in whatever I have said in this speech as in other speeches, I have had in sight but one purpose—the good of this nation and the safety and greatness of this Empire. It is for my fellow-countrymen to judge between me and those who, during these past few weeks, have willingly or unwillingly misinterpreted my purpose or misstated my words. It is also for my countrymen to decide upon a far mightier issue; for in this self-governed, free, and democratic State of England it is for all its citizens to assert whether, in this matter of war and preparedness for war, they shall face the facts, resolute to see things as they are, or whether they shall continue indifferent to the history of the past and obstinately blind to the warnings of the present, even to such beacons as are now aflame on every hill from the Balkans to the Dardanelles!

And I appeal above all to the young men of this nation, to our young men of every rank and social status, to the young men of every trade and profession and calling of any kind; for it is they who, in victory or in disaster, will have to meet the consequences of this tremendous decision. It is they, in a word, who now are England.

Young men, young men of British birth, is it possible that you can shirk the issue, that you can fail to hear, or that, hearing, you can fail to respond to your country's summons, to the memories of the past, to the hopes of the future?