The future liberties of Europe depend upon regulating disputes between nations by justice and law; and upon maintaining the sanctity of treaties, and… - Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon

The strength of the House of Commons is dissipated, its time consumed, and its dignity and reputation are threatened by the attempt to manage in one Assembly the purely local interests of different parts of the United Kingdom. Without some large measure of Devolution in the United Kingdom the House of Commons cannot attend to Imperial affairs and matters which concern the country as a whole.

As far as the forces of the Crown are concerned, we are ready. I believe the Prime Minister and my right honorable friend, the First Lord of the Admiralty, have no doubt what ever that the readiness and the efficiency of those forces were never at a higher mark than they are today, and never was there a time when our confidence was more justified in the power of the Navy to protect our commerce and to protect our shores. The thought is with us always of the suffer and misery entailed, from which no country in Europe will escape by abstention, and from which no neutrality will save us. The amount of harm that must be done by an enemy ship to our trade is infinitesimal, compared with the amount of harm that must be done by the economic condition that is caused on the Continent.

A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week — he thinks it was on Monday, August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit in the space below... My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words, "The lamps are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."