The Struggle For Peace

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commitments and to responsibilities for helping to defend
this or that part of the Empire. Therefore, when we speak
of our Defence Forces, and say they must be adequate, it is
upon that word defence that we lay stress.
" We do not need to build armaments in order to take
from anybody else anything that they now have, but we
should be failing in our duty to our own people if we were to
leave them without the means of resisting aggression from any
nation less peacefully disposed than our own. And I would
venture to add this: That it is the man who is conscious of
his own weakness who can least afford to be generous in his
dealings with others because he will always recoil from yielding
to the claims of justice lest his action should be attributed
to his fear of the consequences of resistance.
" Now it was inevitable that an experience such as that
which we have lately passed through should reveal short-
comings in our defensive system. Such defects, depend upon
it, exist in the defensive systems of other countries, although
they are not always advertised as publicly as they are here.
But it would be a profound error to think that if war had come
we should not have given a good account of ourselves. Our
task now is to remedy those defects, and the further measures
which we think necessary will in due course be laid before
Parliament in main outline, if not in all the details; and if
that should entail further efforts and further sacrifices upon
the nation, I have no doubt of the willingness of the nation
to undertake them, whether they be in services or in money,
" I think it is unnecessary for me to repeat here what I
have said on other occasions, that the whole business of piling
up armaments is utterly distasteful to me. It seems to me the
height of human folly to be thus dissipating resources which
can and should be used for purposes conducive to the health
and happiness of mankind. But for the time being I regard
it as an inevitable, but I hope only a temporary accompani-
ment of that other half of the policy to which I can turn
all my energies without qualification and without misgiving—
the policy of understanding and good will which is desired
by all the peoples, the policy to which I invite the co-operation
of all the nations.
" The aims that I have described are not to be achieved