The only reason from beginning to end is that our foreign office is anti-German and that the Admiralty was anxious to seize any opportunity for using… - Ramsay MacDonald

We will endeavour to unite the whole country in opposing French aggression... We cannot stand by and allow the resources of Germany to be deteriorated by French action. The British occupation of the Rhine, if it is part of the French policy, cannot be allowed to continue.

I can assure you that, whatever your political colour may be, in the Old Country political parties, even in the heat of battle, never obscure national or Imperial interests.

The idea that a lax administration of the Poor Law is Socialistic, that putting an unemployed man on a farm for six weeks at the public expense is Socialistic, that feeding school children is the beginning of the Socialistic State, is absurd. We can deal with our unemployed, our sweated workers, our derelicts, only by attacking the causes of unemployment, of sweating, of human deterioration and though at a crisis our humanitarianism will compel us to resort to palliatives and give temporary relief, our action at such times should not be a willing and proud thing but one which is hesitating and temporary.