Great Britain

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 54, 30 September 1916, Page 5

Great Britain

BRITAIN'S STANDMR LLOYD CEORCE SPEAKS OUT. THE TURM OF THE CAME. ONLY ONE PEACE POSSIBLE. Press Association— Copyright, Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. New York, September 28. In a striking interview given to the London press. Mr Lloyd George said the British soldier is a good sport*man . He enlisted for the .war m a 'sporting spirit, in order to see *air play in international dealings. He lias fought as a good sportsman, and by thousands be has died as a.sportsman. He has never asked anything more than a sporting chance, and he has not always had that, but when he couldn't ffet it be did not quit, he played the game. He has not squealed, and has not asked anyone to squeal for him ; and now that the fortunes of the game turn a bit towards the British, he is not disposed to stop because of the squealing of the Germans, or for the Germans by probablv well-meaning, but misguided, sympathisers and humanitarians. Lloyd George considered that the British soldier for two years had passed through a bad time. Nobody knows so well as he what a bad time it was. He had been sadly inferior in equipment, and on an average inferior in training. He saw the Allied cause beaten all about the ring, but did not appeal to the spectators or the referee to stop the fight on the ground that it was brutal, nor did he ask that the rules should be changed. The British soldier took his punishment, and even when beaten like a dog he was a game dog. When forced to take refuge in a trench, when too badly used up to carry the fight to the enemv, he hung on without whining, fought off every attack, bided his time and endured without wincing. He worked without flagKing, and at that time what was the whining German doing? Was he worrying over the terrible slaughter of his opponents? No. He was talking of annexing Belgium and Poland as the result of his victory; and while the German was "re-mak-ing the map of Europe" without the slightest regard for the wishes of its people, the British people were preparing to pay the price which we knew must be paid for the time'to get our army ready.

It was one thing to look back on the pounding the British soldier took during the first two years of the war, and it was a different thing to look forward, as that soldier then did, and know that beating could not be avoided during those months when it seemed that the finish of the British army might come quickly. Germany selected to make it a fight to a finish with England. The British soldier was at the outset ridiculed and held in contempt. Now Britain intended to see that Germany has her way, for the fight must be to a finish and to a knock-out. The whole world, including neutrals of the highest purpose and humanitarians with the best motives, must kno%v there cannot be any outside interference at this stage. Britain had not asked for intervention. When she was not prepared to fight she tolerated none, and now that she is prepared to fight until Prussian military despotism has been broken beyond repair, she will tolerate no interference. There had been no regret voiced in Germany over useless slaughter, no tears by German sympathisers, when a few thousand British citizens, who never expected to be soldiers, went out to be battered, bombed, and gased. Tbe people who were now moved to tears at the thought of what is to come, watched the early rounds of the unequal contest dry-eyed. None of the carnage that has to come can be worse than the sufferings of those Allied dead who stood the full shock of the Prussian war machine before it began to falter, but an British determination to carry the fight to a decisive finish there was something more than a natural demand for vengeance. The inhumanity and pitilessness of the fighting that must come before a lasting peace is possible is not comparable with the cruebr that would be involved by stopping the war while there rema.ns a possibility that civilisation might again be menaced from the same quarter. Concluding, Mr Lloyd George said: "Peace now, or any time before the final and complete elimination of this menace, is unthinkable. No nation with: the slightest understanding of the temper of the British citizen army, which took its terrible hammering without a whine or grumble, will attempt to call a halt now there is neither clock nor result that counts the time consumed in achieving. It took England twenty years to defeat Napoleon, the first fifteen of which was black with British defeat. It will not take twenty years to win this war, but whatever time it requires it will be done, and I say this while recognising that we have only begun to win. There is no disposition on our side to fix the hour of ultimate victory. We are under no delusion that the war is nearing its end; but we have not the slightest 'doubt how it is going to end. There will be no quitters among the Allies. 'Never again!' has become our battle 'cry. This ghastliness must never again be re-enacted on this earth. And one method, at least, of answering th->t end is the infliction of such iwnishment upon the perpetrators of this outrage against humanity that tlm temptation to emulate their exploits will be eliminated from tie hearts of the evil-minded among the rulers of men,"