[In Germany] we are represented as the Power which is anxious to continue the war and to prevent the possibility either of a separate or a general peace. […] It is difficult for us here to imagine that this can be regarded as a plausible or even a credible hypothesis – for us, who know with much bitter knowledge what the war actually means to us day by day […]. Who has greater reason than we have t long and to pray for peace?
Peace, yes; but on one condition only – that the war with its waste and sacrifices, its untold sufferings, its glorious and undying examples of courage and unselfishness – shall not have been in vain. [T]he peace when it comes must be…a free future for all the world.
9th November 1916. A Free Future for the World. A Speech by the Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister, at the Guildhall, on the 9th November, 1916. [SPEC S/D525 (P.C.128)]. This week’s war: 119.
