Mr. President, Representatives of Free Townships and the Counties, Assembled Honored Gentlemen of Albion, I must here confess my humble origins and beg you pardon my boldness; yet I am compelled, for as there is a time keep silence, so too is there a time to speak, and I can no longer keep my tongue. Even so, I ask your forbearance, for I am born a ploughman and stand among learned men, and my words will fall coarse upon your ears. I ask only that you disregard, therefore, my lack of wit and rhetorical flourish; hear instead the truth of my message - we find ourselves at the point of crisis, the point at which speeches must end and action must be taken.
No longer can we sit, content in our homes, knowing that the enemy is not here, not now. He is elsewhere, plaguing another. He is not my problem. They are not my brethren. No longer can we hold in high esteem petty distinction and personal gain, forgoing our allegiance, no, our very duty, to our countrymen and coreligionists. Are we savages of darkest Africa, or are we strong men and Christian? Have we no thought beyond the midday meal and the bedchamber, beyond our local tribes and clans? I knew a land once, and a people, committed wholly to guarding fiercely that one spark of liberty which then existed in the world, the one scrap of land unclaimed by tyrants and strongmen. I knew men unafraid to stand for their God and Country and to face despots boldly, saying, "Up to our borders you have come, no further." These men knew that the Coastal Townships and Valley Counties were brothers, of one blood and mother, and they built something beautiful, something unheard of in the modern world - a free state.
Today, their hope, their dream, their love lies sundered by those who have not known her, who are late to the wedding, uninvited, crude, belligerent. Men who have seen a beauty and have neither the wit nor the charm, neither the determination nor the stamina to win her, rightly, and for all time; rather, being untaught by God and Man in matters spiritual and moral, they try to take her by force, against her will. And we, we so-called men, stand apart, all loudly proclaiming our own devotion to her chastity, and yet this man keeps her dress from tearing on the weeds, that tends to her hair as she is ravaged, and everywhere men worry themselves over her extremities while she lies helpless and wailing beneath the sweaty, overeager loins of a heathen prince.
Where are the Christians? Where are those passionate lovers of life and liberty, who have seen the folly of heretics ruin the heritage of Merrye Englonde, and built this land in memoriam Christi? Who told those Children of Darkness that they would not, they could not swallow up and extinguish the Light of Christ throughout the world entire, but that this one land would stand apart, unblemished by wayward priests and politicians? Hiding in their homes, more concerned with next year's corn than next year's country! Fight, I say, fight! Stand now, together, or stand alone on that not-so-distant day when the firing squads of Arcadia line every man here up against a wall for treason.
Oh ho! Now turn the reverend, aged heads of Albion in scandal! Not at the very rape of their tender charge, but at the thought of foreign domination and execution! What! Is this thought so far from your minds? You sit here thinking on whether you ought to send your sons to war. You are at war! Can you tell me, yea, even with honesty forced and practiced, that Bullworth and his thugs are anything more than puppets, ambassadors of evil acting on behalf of another? You have chosen your side; will you now refuse to defend it? Will you sit convicted by the false Directorate and fail to rise in your own defense? Will you fail to recognize your countrymen before it is too late?
And so I say again, we, we all, are at a crisis. Even now as in the time of Joshua, so do I say unto you, you have your choice: choose this day that which pleaseth you, whom you would rather serve, whether the gods and kings of heretics, or the Lord and Liberty, in whose land alone among all nations do you now dwell. As for me and mine, I shall not stand idly by while the land I love lies smothered in the seamy grasp of Satan. My sons and my wealth go to the Cause, and whatever these leathered hands are worth, God willing, they shall serve my Lord, my Church, and my Republic.
Thank you.