"When the issues of peace and war are trembling in the balance, and when an unguarded word might be productive of much mischief, everyone who is under any sense of responsibility is bound, for a time at least, to maintain a temporary reserve. All, therefore, that I will say, is that war, even a successful war, is so great a misfortune for all who are engaged in it that it is the highest obligation of a patriotic Government to exhaust every means of honourable and amiable settlement. (Hear, hear.) But if, when we have done that, we find ourselves face to face with a determined policy of aggression, and have to make an appeal to the loyalty and the support of the Empire, I believe that the summons will be responded to as it has been in past times, and that the English democracy will show that it is patient and resolute, and endurant to the end, and that it will exhibit that courage and tenacity which have always in past times distinguished the Anglo-Saxon race. (Cheers.)"
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomLiberal Party (UK) politiciansUnitariansFellows of the Royal SocietyPeople from London
Original Language: English
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Speech to the Eighty Club, London (28 April 1885), quoted The Times (29 April 1885), p. 10
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Chamberlain
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Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually served as a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. He split both major British parties in the course of his career. He was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
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