Mr. Balfour made two short speeches on Tuesday evening
to his constituents in East Manchester. In the first, at a conversazione held in the Christ Church Schools, Bradford, he took up the point that England bad before now begun badly in war, but refused to admit that the reverses we had hitherto suffered in the present campaign were serious or exceptional. Addressing a meeting in the Ardwick public hall later on, Mr. Balfour emphatically denied that either in their domestic or foreign policy the Government were animated by party motives or national greed. The charge that they were so actuated he stigmatised as a false -and stupid calumny. By no possibility could they have anything to gain by a war which, above much treasure, was costing them the expenditure of lives which no money could buy, at a cost of much pain and anxiety which no mere acquisition of territory could compensate them for. They were not the aggressors; they had been attacked ; and were resolved to carry the controversy through, not in a spirit of boasting or wounded pride, but because they knew in their hearts and consciences that the cause for which we were fighting was the cause of civilisation and of Empire, which it would be shameful to abandon. Mr. Balfour has been accused of understatement in regard to our reverses, and perhaps with some show of justice, but it is quite impossible within the limits of this short summary to render justice to the deep patriotic fervour which marked his second speech. The newspapers which accuse Mr. Balfour of "apathy" seem unable to realise that a statesman can be earnest without screaming.
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