Lloyd George: ‘Hold fast.’
LONDON, August 4. Mr Lloyd George has issued the following message: ‘‘The message I send to the people of the British Empire on the fourth anniversary of their entry into the war is: ‘Hold fast.’ We are in this war for no selfish ends; we are in it to recover freedom for a nation which was brutally attacked and despoiled, and to prove that no people, however powerful, can surrender itself to the lawless ambitions of militarism without meeting with retribution, swift, certain, and disastrous, at the hands of the free nations of the world.
To stop short of victory for this cause would be to compromise the future of mankind.
‘‘I say ‘Hold fast’, because our prospects of victory were never so bright as they are today. Six months ago the rulers of Germany deliberately rejected a just and reasonable settlement proposed by the Allies. Throwing aside the last mask of moderation, they partitioned Russia, enslaved Rumania, and attempted to seize supreme power by overwhelming the Allies in a final desperate attack. Thanks to the invincible bravery of all the Allied armies, it is now evident that all this dream of universal conquest, for the sake of which they wantonly prolonged the war, can never be fulfilled. But the battle is not yet won.
‘‘The great autocracy of Prussia will still endeavour by violence and guile to avoid defeat, and so give militarism a new lease of life. We cannot seek to escape the horrors of war for ourselves by laying them up for our
children. Having set our hands to the task, we must see it through till a just and lasting settlement is achieved. In no other way can we ensure a world set free from war. ‘Hold fast’.’’
Mr Winston Churchill (Minister of Munitions), replying to Lord Lansdowne, says: To enter a struggle like this; to proclaim that vital and sacred issues are at stake; to cast the flower of the nation’s manhood into the furnace for four devastating years, and then to discover that the foe is so stiff that reasonable accommodation should be arranged, is not the way to an honourable peace.