international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.  I do not believe any nation ever entered into a great controversy—­and this is one of the greatest history will ever know—­with a clearer conscience and stronger conviction that it is fighting, not for aggression, not for the maintenance even of its own selfish interest, but that it is fighting in defence of principles, the maintenance of which is vital to the civilization of the world.  With a full conviction, not only of the wisdom and justice, but of the obligations which lay upon us to challenge this great issue, we are entering into the struggle.  Let us now make sure that all the resources, not only of this United Kingdom, but of the vast Empire of which it is the centre, shall be thrown into the scale, and it is that that object, may be adequately secured, that I am now about to ask this Committee—­to make the very unusual demand upon it—­to give the Government a Vote of Credit of L100,000,000.  I am not going, and I am sure the Committee do not wish it, into the technical distinctions between Votes of Credit and Supplementary Estimates and all the rarities and refinements which arise in that connexion.  There is a much higher point of view than that.  If it were necessary, I could justify, upon purely technical grounds, the course we propose to adopt, but I am not going to do so, because I think it would be foreign to the temper and disposition of the Committee.  There is one thing to which I do call attention, that is, the Title and Heading of the Bill.  As a rule, in the past Votes of this kind have been taken simply for naval and military operations, but we have thought, it right to ask the Committee to give us its confidence in the extension of the traditional area of Votes of Credit so that this money which we are asking them to allow us to expend may be applied not only for strictly naval and military operations, but to assist the food supplies, promote the continuance of trade, industry, business, and communications,—­whether by means of insurance or indemnity against risk or otherwise,—­for the relief of distress, and generally for all expenses arising out of the existence of a state of war.  I believe the Committee will agree with us that it was wise to extend the area of the Vote of Credit so as to include all these various matters.  It gives the Government a free hand.  Of course, the Treasury will account for it, and any expenditure that takes place will be subject to the approval of the House.  I think it would be a great pity—­in fact, a great disaster—­if, in a crisis of this magnitude, we were not enabled to make provision—­provision far more needed now than it was under the simpler conditions that prevailed in the old days—­for all the various ramifications and developments of expenditure which the existence of a state of war between the Great Powers of Europe must entail on any one of them.