It was a glorious Lord Mayor’s Day which was celebrated in London yesterday, when the air seemed to be quickened and vitalised by that sense of final triumph which thrills through the country and the Empire. The consummation of victory up to the furthest measure of our dreams and beyond them may be announced at any hour. But, in any case, we know that nothing could defer it long even if the enemy’s unexpected recalcitrance summoned us at the 11th hour to put forth – as at need we would with the whole strength of our united will and fibre – one last conquering effort.
Neither Chatham nor Pitt ever appeared in the centuried Guildhall at a greater hour than that which the prime minister interpreted, with all his animating and moving eloquence, in last night’s brilliant scene. His theme was what all expected it to be. He dwelt on the might and splendour of the effort made throughout the British Commonwealth during the last four years. He recalled the miracle of the contrast between the menace in spring and the triumph in autumn. He declared that “the issue is settled”…
Even now, when Britain begins to take full stock of its work, this people cannot begin rightly to measure what it has achieved in common with the self-governing Dominions and India. The effort, as we have shown again, has been naval and maritime – it has conducted military enterprises in all quarters of the globe, it has decided as it were with one hand the destinies of the East – it has been financial, manufacturing, agricultural; and all these aspects have been accompanied by that unprecedented outburst of social and charitable service in which women have played the chief part.
Overseas, the rally of the Dominions and India has been a world epic without its like at any other time in history. At home, the country which brought out the steam engine and the locomotive has shown all its old fertile capacity in its anti-submarine devices and in the masterful originality which developed the tank as a fighting machine…
For the fourth time since Elizabeth we have played a part second to none in saving not only ourselves but the world from universal monarchy grasping at an intolerable and fatal domination of the sea as well as the land. The Germans hoped to include even the air. We who have done these things – what may we not yet do if we are wisely guided? ...
In our peace effort, as in our war effort, we shall have pessimists and defeatists continually doubting whether we shall succeed, and in the most difficult hours proclaiming our success to be impossible. But as the country gets time to look back on all it has done in the last four years, it will realise that there is nothing in the huge task before us to make us afraid, or even doubtful. With courage, faith and the fortunate leadership which the war has given us, we shall win our fair and full part in the world’s peace of reconstruction. We shall win it as we have won our part of the Great War, and in less time.
