ourselves and because she makes herself beloved by all who know her.  But we entertained no hatred of Germany.  It is true that, in spite of the virtues which we believed her to possess but which were merely the mask of a spy, our hearts barely responded to her obsequiously treacherous advances.  For the German, of all the inhabitants of our planet, has this one and singular peculiarity, that he arouses in us, from the onset, a profound, instinctive, intuitive feeling of antipathy.  But, even so and wherever our preferences may have lain, our treaties, our pledged word, the very reason of our existence, all forbade us to take part in the conflict.  Then came the incredible ultimatum, the monstrous demand of which you know, which gave us twelve hours to choose between ruin and death or dishonour.  As you also know, we did not need twelve hours to make our choice.  This choice was no more than a cry of indignation and resolution, spontaneous, fierce and irresistible.  We did not stay for a moment to ponder the extenuating circumstances which our weakness might have invoked.  We did not for a moment consider the absolution which history would have granted us later, on realizing that a conflict between forces so completely disproportioned was futile, that we must inevitably be crushed, massacred and annihilated and that the sacrifice of a little people in its entirety could prevent nothing, could barely cause delay and would have no weight in the immense balance into which the world’s destinies were about to be flung.  There was no question of all this; we saw one thing only:  our plighted word.  For that word we must die; and since then we have been dying.  Trace the course of history as far back as you will; question the nations of the earth; then name those who have done or who would have done what we did.  How many will you find?  I am not judging those whom I pass over in silence, for to do so would be to enter into the secret of men’s hearts which I have not the right to violate; but in any case there is one which I can name aloud, without fear of being mistaken; and that is the British nation.  This people too entered into the conflict, not through interest or necessity or inherited hatred, but simply for a matter of honour.  It has not suffered what we have suffered; it has not risked what we have risked, which is all that we possessed beneath the arch of heaven; but it owes this immunity only to outside circumstances.  The principle and the quality of the act are the same.  We stand on the same plane, one step higher than the other combatants.  While the others are the soldiers of necessity, we are the volunteers of honour; and, without detracting from their merits, this title adds to ours all that a pure and disinterested idea adds to the noblest acts of courage.  There is not a doubt but that in our place you would have done precisely what we did.  You would have done it with the same simplicity, the same calm and confident ardour, the same good faith.  You would have thrown yourselves into the breach as whole-heartedly, with the same scorn of useless phrases and the same stubborn conscientiousness.  And the reason why I do not shrink from singing in your presence the praises of what we have done is that these praises also affect yourselves, who would not have hesitated to do the selfsame things.