7 JANUARY 1905, Page 11

Lord Selborne, who addressed a large meeting at Wolver- hampton

on Wednesday night, took for his text Mr. Chamber- lain's advice to the nation "to think Imperially." In this context, as the first Cabinet Minister speaking on a public platform since the news of the fall of Port Arthur, Lord Selborne very naturally and properly seized the opportunity to eulogise the splendid fortitude and patriotism of both victors and vanquished. We cannot, however, endorse his view that for the moment in regard to Russia "all we had to look at was the fact that here was this mighty nation showing itself to its humblest soldier conscious of its great Imperial strength and mission." It is impossible to reconcile this assertion with the facts that the war has never been popular in Russia, and that, speaking broadly, the Russian soldier does not understand why he is sent to fight the Japanese. Later on in his speech—which was boldly and militantly Chamberlainite throughout—Lord Selborne dwelt on the ideal of a united Empire, and said :—" Russia, France, and Germany were in the future going to be numbered by hundreds of millions of people; and if we were to remain at forty millions, how were we going to compare with these nations of hundreds of millions P We could not be in the same class with them. It was numbers that told." Lord Selborne forgot that he had just informed his hearers that the chief reason why the Japanese, who were a much smaller people—speaking roughly, forty millions—were able to fight Russia on apparently equal terms was because they were an island, which "was a lesson for us."