now.

still. There are also times when it rushes along at a giddy pace, covering the track of centuries in a year. These are the times we are living in Six weeks ago Russia was an autocracy. She is now one of the most advanced democracies in the world. To-day we are waging the most devastating war that the world has even seen. Tomorrow-not perhaps a distant to-morrow-war may be abolished for ever from the categories of human crimes. This may be something like that fierce outburst of winter which we are now witnessing before the complete triumph of spring.

"With the Dawn."

It was written of those gallant men who won that victory on Monday-men from Canada, from Australia, and from this old country which has proved that in spite of its age it is not decrepit—it was written of those gallant men that they attacked with the dawn. Fitting work for the dawn to drive out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had defiled it for nearly three years. They attacked with the dawn. It is a significant phrase. The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for centuries has clouded the sunniest lands in the world, the freeing of Russia from the oppression which has covered it like a cloud for so long, the great declaration of President Wilson, coming with the might of the great nation he represents in the struggle for liberty, are heralds of the dawn.

"They attacked with the dawn"; and those men are marching forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and Americans, British, Italians, and Russians, yea, Serbians, Belgians, Montenegrins, and Rumanians, will march into the full light of perfect day.

THE WAR AND THE EMPIRE.

EXTRACTS FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE GUILDHALL, ON BEING PRESENTED WITH THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF

LONDON, APRIL 27TH, 1917.

I THANK the City of London, not merely for this great personal distinction which has been conferred upon me, but as the head of the Government in the greatest trial which a nation can pass through. I thank the City of London for its services to the nation during that period. I have had three years' experience in various offices in this war. I have always received the readiest and most patriotic support from the City. Not merely in money, but in but in men, have they contributed to the help of the country in this great war. You, Sir, referred in your kind and flattering observations to what occurred at the beginning of this war, when there was something in the nature of a financial panic, and when the whole complicated and apparently flimsy structure of credit seemed to have been shattered by one blow. We shall never forget those days. They were days of panic. There was something for the moment like consternation, stupefaction. But British credit survived that blow, in spite of many predictions to the contrary. And the City of London took an

honourable and leading part in the promotion of that last loan, which was the most remarkable financial exploit that has ever been witnessed in the history of the world.

The Turning of the Tide.

You referred also to the part I took in organising the resources of the country for the equipment of our armies in the field with the necessary material to give them, at any rate, a fair chance in the fight. You remember the dark and dreary time when our gallant fellows in shattered trenches had night and day to endure the mockery of the slaughtering tongues of the German cannon. And how they stood it! The way in which the British infantry stood the guns of Napoleon for one day is one of the epics of military history. Their descendants stood greater guns for days and nights and weeks and months, and never flinched. It is one of the greatest stories in the world, how they were never broken, and it is only those who met them and talked with them who can realise what they endured. Our gratitude goes for ever to them. And, let me say here, our gratitude ought to go to that brave little man who led them through all those trying months under very great difficulties, and was never beaten, and never lost heart-Lord French.

When I took the job in hand of organising the resources of this country, I did it in order to give those brave men a real chance in the fight. And,

thank God, they have got it. The tide has changed, thanks to the efforts put forth by the manufacturers of the country, the workmen of the country, and, let us not forget, by the women-the hundreds of thousands of women who flocked to the factories and asked what they could do to help their gallant kinsmen in the field. They have done it, and the story now is a very different one.

There is no better test of victory than guns and prisoners. Before June, 1915, we had lost 84 guns and a very considerable number of prisoners, and we had captured, so far as I can recollect, not one gun. Since that date we have not lost one, and we have captured 400, and when you come to the tale of prisoners, we have captured ten at least for every one. The tide has changed; our victory is becoming increasingly assured. Take, if you like, the difference between the Battle of the Somme and the last great battle, around Vimy Ridge. The Vimy Ridge had cost the French enormous losses. In spite of untold gallantry, they had only secured part of it. Entirely owing to the fact that we have superior equipmentand I have always said that better guns and more shells meant saving life, and this is the proof of it —we captured the whole of the Vimy Ridge, with about 200 guns, at something like one-fifth of what it cost the French Army in the days of inferior equipment to attack it and fail to capture it.

Take the first 18 days of the Battle of the Somme and the first 18 days of this battle. I have just had these figures. In the first 18 days of the