I say these are difficulties which any party or any man, who is prepared to do his duty by the electorate of this country, not merely to ingratiate himself with them for the moment, but to win their confidence by deserving it, by telling them the truth, by serving their permanent interests and not their passing moods, is bound to face.  For my own part, I have always been perfectly frank on these questions.  I have maintained on many platforms, I am prepared to maintain here to-night and shall always maintain, although this is a subject on which it may be long before my views are included in any party programme—­I say I shall always maintain that real security is not possible without citizen service, and that the training of every able-bodied man to be capable of taking part, if need be, in the defence of his country, is not only good for the country but good for the man—­and would materially assist in the solution of many other problems, social and economic.  But being, as I am, thus uncompromising, and quite prepared to find myself unpopular, on these vital questions of national security, and of our Imperial duties and responsibilities, I can perhaps afford to say, without being suspected of fawning or of wishing to play the demagogue myself, that in the matter of domestic reform I am not easy to frighten, and that I have a very great trust in the essential fair-mindedness and good sense of the great body of my fellow countrymen with regard to questions which come within their own direct cognisance.  And therefore it was most reassuring to me at any rate—­and I hope it was to you—­to observe, that that large section of the Unionist Party which met at Birmingham last week, not so much by any resolutions or formal programme—­for there was nothing very novel in these—­as by the whole tone and temper of its proceedings, affirmed in the most emphatic manner the essentially progressive and democratic character of Unionism.  The greatest danger I hold to the Unionist Party and to the nation is that the ideals of national strength and Imperial consolidation on the one hand, and of democratic progress and domestic reform on the other, should be dissevered, and that people should come to regard as antagonistic objects which are essentially related and complementary to one another.  The upholders of the Union, the upholders of the Empire, the upholders of the fundamental institutions of the State, must not only be, but must be seen and known to be, the strenuous and constant assailants of those two great related curses of our social system—­irregular employment and unhealthy conditions of life—­and of all the various causes which lead to them.