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

that reason I have come down, after long deliberation and thought, careful and searching, on behalf of the Government of this country to submit to the House of Commons, and through the House of Commons to the nation, proposals which I hope the Commons will approve, and which I hope the nation will carry out with an unflinching and an ungrudging heart.

"SOWING THE WINTER WHEAT."

SPEECH DELIVERED AT CARNARVON, TO A MEETING OF CONSTITUENTS, AFTER BECOMING PRIME MINISTER, FEBRUARY 3RD, 1917.

THIS is a strictly non-party gathering, and I wish to emphasise that aspect of it, because, whatever our views may be on the political questions which divide us in times of peace, there can be but one opinion about the desirability of our sinking all our differences in order to unite for the paramount national duty of carrying through to victory the great cause which this country has championed with its blood.

The National Government.

Two great men have spoken this week from nonparty platforms-one of them the eminent statesman who has taken charge in this trying hour of the important office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and whose brilliant memorandum attached to the Allied reply to America is one of the most striking documents of the war; the other the distinguished leader of the Liberal Partyboth of them appealing to the nation to sink differences and disputes, party and personal, and to unite for the common great end that the nation is

putting its strength into achieving. I have the honour of being called to the leadership of the national Government-a non-party Government, none the less a Government in which three parties are represented, and in which I am perfectly certain it is a matter of regret for every member of the three parties that the fourth has not been able to join. And although we can recognise no party during the war, the people of this country have the party habit so thoroughly ingrained in their na、 ture that even in order to attain national unity it was desirable that the three parties should be represented in any national Government, and they are fully and substantially represented.

Labour's Part.

I am glad that, although some of my late colleagues, for reasons which I have no right to canvass, have not joined the present Government, there are just as many Liberals in the present Administration as in the old. There are Unionists and there are Labour men, and I specially congratulate the nation on the fact that Labour has finally and firmly decided to abandon its attitude of criticism and censure of Governments, as it had already abandoned long ago its attitude of blind adhesion to any party, and that it has decided to take its share in the responsibility of governing the Empire. A distinguished contribution it has already made. The statesmanship displayed by Mr. Henderson during the period in which he has

been a member of an Imperial Government has shown the value of the adhesion of Labour in the task of administering the affairs of this Empire, and I am glad that in the present Government, for the first time, Labour has a seat in the inner council that settles and decides the affairs of the country in the greatest emergency which has ever befallen it. It has twice as many representatives as it ever had in any Government before. I congratulate the country on the fact that all parties in the State-with the exception of the Irish Party, whose absence from our counsels we all regret-have united for the purpose of directing the concerns of the Empire in its hour of trial.

Treading Gladstone's Path.

The Liberal Party has special interest in the causes for which we are struggling in this great war. The principle that the rights of nations, however small, are as sacred as the rights of the biggest empire-that is the principle which I was taught as a lad among those mountains which surround us. The principle that international right is the basis of international peace-that is another. The doctrine that the Turk is incapable of governing any other race justly, and even his own race well-that is another which I was taught. I remember very well as a boy having to walk some miles to the nearest railway station in order to buy Mr. Gladstone's famous speech on the expelling of the Turk, bag and baggage, from Eu