yourselves and your children should be to help those gallant young men of ours who have tendered their lives for the cause of humanity. The more we get the surer the victory. The more we get the shorter the war. The more we get the less it will cost in treasure, and the greatest treasure of all, brave blood. The more we give the more will the nation gain. You will enrich it by your contributions-by your sacrifices. Extravagance I want to bring this home to every man and woman throughout these islands-extravagance during the war costs blood-costs blood! And what blood! Valiant blood-the blood of heroes. It would be worth millions to save one of them. A big loan will save myriads of them. Help them not merely to win; help them to come home to shout for the victory which they have won!

"Equipment for the Allies."

It means better equipment for our troops. It means better equipment for the Allies as well, and this and I say it now for the fiftieth if not the hundredth time is a war of equipment. Why are the Germans pressing back our gallant Allies in Roumania? It is not that they are better fighters. They are certainly not. The Roumanian peasant has proved himself to be one of the doughtiest fighters in the field when he has a chance, poor fellow, and he never had much. As for the Russian, the way in which with bare breast he has fought for two years and a half, with inferior

guns, insufficient rifles, inadequate supplies of ammunition, is one of the world's tales of heroism. Let us help to equip them, and there will be another story to tell soon.

"A Safe Investment.”

That is why I am glad to follow the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the appeal which he has made to the patriotism of our race-but with true Scottish instinct he put the appeal to prudence first! He laid it down as a good foundation for patriotism and reserved that for his peroration. I shall reverse the order, belonging to a less canny race. I want to say it is a good investment. After all, the old country is the best investment in the world. It was a sound concern before the war; it will be sounder and safer than ever after the war, and especially safer. I do not know the nation that will care to touch it after the war. They had forgotten what we were like, but it will take them a long time to forget this lesson.

Have you been watching what has been going on? Before the war we had a good many shortcomings in our business, our commerce, and our industry. The war is setting them all right in the most marvellous way. You ask great business men what is going on in the factories throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Old machinery scrapped, the newest and the best set up; slipshod, wasteful methods also scrapped, hampering customs discontinued; millions brought into the

labour market to help to produce who before were merely consumers. I do not know what the National Debt will be at the end of this war, but I will make this prediction. Whatever it is, what is added in real assets to the real riches of the nation will be infinitely greater than any debt that we shall ever acquire. The resources of the nation in every direction will have been developed, directed, perfected, the nation itself disciplined, braced up, quickened. We have become a more alert people. We have thrown off useless tissues. We are a nation that has been taking exercise. We are a different people.

"The Path of Gold."

I will tell you another difference. The Prussian menace was a running mortgage which detracted from the value of our national security. Nobody knew what it meant. We know pretty well now. You could not tell whether it meant a mortgage of hundreds of millions, or thousands of millions, and I know you could not tell that it would not mean ruin. That mortgage will be cleared off for ever, and there will be a better security, a better, sounder, safer security, at a better rate of interest. The world will then be able, when the war is over, to attend to its business. There will be no war or rumours of war to disturb and to distract it. We can build up; we can reconstruct; we can till and cultivate and enrich; and the burden and terror and waste of war will have gone.

The best security for peace will be that nations will band themselves together to punish the first peacebreaker. In the armouries of Europe every weapon will be a sword of justice. In the government of men every army will be the constabulary

of peace.

There were men who hoped to see this achieved in the ways of peace. We were disappointed. It was ordained that we should not reach that golden era except along a path which itself was paved with gold, yea, and cemented with valiant blood. There are myriads who have given the latter, and there are myriads more ready for the sacrifice if their country needs it. It is for us to contribute the former. Let no man and no woman, in this crisis of their nation's fate, through indolence, greed, avarice, or selfishness, fail. And if they do their part, then, when the time comes for the triumphal march through the darkness and the terror of night into the bright dawn of the morning of the new age, they will each feel that they have their share in it.

SACRIFICE AT HOME.

EXTRACTS FROM SPEECH ON THE COUNTRY'S FOOD SUPPLIES, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 23RD, 1917.

If all this programme is carried out; if all those who can help us with production do help; if all those who are called upon to suffer restrictions and limitations will suffer without complaint, then honestly I say we can face the worst that the enemy can do the worst! And that is what we ought to be prepared for. If we are not,-if it were conceivable that the nation was not prepared to do and endure all these things,-then I say with all solemnity I do not know the body of honourable men who would undertake for one hour to be responsible for the conduct of this terrible war. It is essential. There are millions of gallant young men in France, in Salonika, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, facing torture, terror, death. They are the flower of our race. Unless the nation at home is prepared to take its share of the sacrifice, theirs would be in vain, and I say it would be a crime—a black crime—for any Government to ask them to risk their brave lives in the coming conflict if they knew that the nation behind them were faint-hearted or selfish. Their sacrifice would be thrown away. We have no right to ask it. For