Of all the principles, gentlemen, of foreign policy which I attach the greatest value is the principle of the equality of nations; because, without r… - William Ewart Gladstone

I name next a word that it requires some courage to utter these days—the word of economy. It is like a echo from the distant period of my early life. The wealth of the country, and the vast comparative diffusion of comfort, has, I am afraid, put public economy, at least in its more rigid and severe forms, sadly out of countenance.

[W]hat I call the ‘mad and drunk’ scheme of my colleagues on the naval estimates. ... [T]hat scheme (the most wanton contribution in my view to accursed militarism that has yet been made in any quarter, unless possibly by the Crispian Italy).

There is but one way of maintaining permanently what I may presume to call the great international policy and law of Europe—but one way of keeping within bounds any one of the Powers possessed of such strength as France, England, or Russia, if it be bent on an aggressive policy, and that is, by maintaining not so much great fleets, or other demonstrations of physical force, which I believe to be really an insignificant part of the case, but the moral union—the effective concord of Europe.