Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who addressed a meeting of his con=
stituents yesterday week at Crawshawbooth, near Rawten stall, strongly reprobated the naval scaremongering of a section of the Press. In order to avoid being organised as- a great military nation with a people in arms, it was essential that our shores should be secure against invasion. That security we had got now, and- we were determined to maintain it in the future. "So long as the world remained what it was, be would not offer to other nations the temptation which would be afforded by a defenceless England." But, having said this, lie denied that there was a shadow of founda- tion for those half-craven, half-Chauvinist alhtms which had been turning the yellow Press white in a single 'night. Nothing but the "diseased imagination of inferior minds" could see' in the German naval programme any ()Vert menace to the peace of the world, and "there bad not been any period in the last ten or fifteen years in which our relittions with Germany, commercial, colonial, political, and dynastic, bad been on a firmer and more friendly footing than they were to-day." Mr. Harcourt's reivarks abort the " footPads of politics" and the " yapping of 'pariah curs," who for selfish and unpatriotic ends desired t6 set nations at iurianee, go fai- t° discount and stultify his excellent advice that we should keep our heads cool, our Fleet 'ready, and our tongues civil. Violent optimism is almost as dangerous as the " blatant sensationalism " he so bitterly condemns.
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