The annual gatherings at Bristol on Colston's Day were held
on Monday, and Mr. Crawford, Mr. K. D. Hodgson, Mr. S. Morley, Mr. Richard, and Sir George Jenkin' son, and other members made speeches. Mr. Richard wanted the people to rise in insurrection against war by refusing to be trained, that is, be wanted to make war inevitable and dreadful by leaving England defenceless ; and Sir G. Jenkinson talked the usual Tory pessimism about the state of the defences. Mr. Crawford held that the country ought to be prepared, but to avoid Continental complications; Mr. Morley hoped for the abolition of Univer- sity Tests ; and Mr. Hodgson averred that, though German in -sympathy at the beginning of the war, he thought the annexation -of Alsace and Lorraine as bad as the partition of Poland. "The fall of France was due to twenty years of absolute materialism." He utterly disbelieved in the possibility of a Republic in France, -the peasantry dreading its very name. The speeches, Mr. Richard's excepted, were all sensible enough, and Mr. Hodgson's 'was a notably good one ; but how old they all seem after the Russian Note.
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