It is very difficult for your attacking bully to imagine that a small
State--I mean small numerically, and weak physically--will ever have
the courage to stand up and resist the bully when he prepares to attack.
The Germans did not expect Belgium to keep them at bay while the other
countries involved prepared, but there is absolutely no doubt that the
plan was to press through Belgium, to take possession of Paris, and
then, having humiliated and crippled France, to cross the Channel and
defeat us. There is no doubt that was the plan; it is perfectly clear.
And that being so, we owe--civilization owes--to Belgium a debt which it
can never repay.

Then we have our duty to our ally, France. How much democracy owes to
France! France is the mother of European democracy. There is no doubt
about her claim to that. If there had been nothing else worth fighting
for in this war, in my opinion that alone would have been worth fighting
for, to preserve that spirit and that democracy--which France has given
to the world, and which would perish if France were destroyed. The
people of France are a people who never have been, and I believe never
will be, corrupted in the sense of thinking that material things are of
more value than spiritual things. The people of France have always been
ready to sacrifice themselves for ideals. They have been ready to
sacrifice life, they have been ready to sacrifice money, they have been
ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal.

You know the old saying, that men should work and women should weep?
That is not true, for it is for all of us to work and for all of us to
weep when there is occasion to do so. Therefore, it is because in the
French Nation you have splendid qualities combined in both sexes,
because the history of the French Nation is so magnificent, because the
French Nation has contributed so much to civilization, and so much in