At the Mansion House on Thursday Lord Salisbury dealt with
the two points—the questions of foreign intervention and the future of the Republics—on which the public were anxious to hear the voice of the Prime Minister, and dealt with them in exactly the right way. After noting that it was not fair to say that the Government did not make their preparations early enough, because if they had begun their preparations two months earlier they would only have received the Boer ultimatum two months earlier than they did, Lord Salisbury declared most emphatically that we desired neither gold nor territory, but only "equal rights for' all men of all races and security for our fellow-subjects and for the Empire." As to intervention by foreign Powers we will quote Lord Salisbury textually I have seen it suggested —it seems to be a wild suggestion—that other foreign Powers will interfere in this conflict, and will, in some form or other, dictate to those who are concerned in it what its upshot' should be. Do not let any man think that it is in that fashion that the conflict will be concluded. We shall have to carry it through ourselves. The interference of nobody else will have any effect upon it—in the first place, because we should not accept of an interference by anybody; and, in the second place, because I am convinced that no such idea is present to the mind of any Government in the world." Those are words entirely adequate and worthy of the occasion, and we shall not attempt to look behind them, or to inquire whether they are in any sense a warning,—in its politest form.
