Taiev
Shadowglade's Speech
I see many of the peoples of Azeroth gathered here tonight.
Some of you I know, and many of you I have yet to meet, but
I am confident that we share at least one value: the search
for peace, which is the first and greatest goal of the Silvereye.
But there are three imperatives of peace - three requirements
that the prudent must face with unblinking realism:
The first imperative is the elementary necessity of maintaining
our own strength - both moral and military. Little has changed
since the Sundering in this regard, the compelling necessities
of our world leave us no alternative to the maintenance of
real and respectable strength - not only in our moral rectitude,
but in terms of adequate military power.
Moral strength is essential. We cannot collapse into the
pleasant trap of “peace at any cost” - but nor
can we allow ourselves to degenerate into bloodthirst and
barbarism. If we are too weak, we are overcome, if we become
too enamoured of war, we become no better than those we fight.
What each of us does, how each of us acts, has an influence
on this.
Now, the second imperative of peace is Collective Security.
We live in an open world, in which oceans are crossed in
hours, a world in which a powerful and militant Horde menaces
the freedoms of independent nations. To ensure the combined
strength of our Alliance is an elementary matter of self-preservation.
We are no stronger than the weakest amongst us. The Theramore
Compact is the bulwark of this Collective Security.
But we, better than any other people know the truest enemy
that threatens our peace. I am speaking, of course, of the
Minions of Liche King and the Burning Crusade – those
who wait upon our will to falter, so that they may strike.
And so the third imperative of peace is this:
Without for an instant relaxing our internal and collective
defenses, we must actively try to bridge the great chasm that
separates us from those warriors and heroes who stood with
us at Hyjal.We must find, if not peace together, then a common
understanding that we all have greater foes, and that if we
are ultimately to find peace in our time, we will only find
it together.
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