Mr. Chamberlain, M.P. for Birmingham, made a very clever speech
at West Bromwich, on Monday, at a meeting to promote the ends of the Liberal Association, on the domestic policy of Which we have said enough elsewhere. Treating on foreign policy, he explained the apparent desire of the Tories to inter- vene.in the war, as the desire of a man looking over a giddy Precipice to throw himself down is explained. He was as much
against peace at any price as any politician could be, and he thought there were wars in which it would be a duty for us to take a part ; but this, at least from the Turkish side,— he did not consider, what is not a practical question at pre- sent, the possible duty of aiding Russia—was assuredly not such a one. We had much graver duties to discharge to the Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and Bulgarians, than we had to the Turks ; England was the only Power that had not remonstrated gravely against the cruel manner in which the Turks were carrying on the war ; and to appeal to English interests as sufficient to outweigh such considerations—the English interest in the question being a railway line, that may never be made, by way of the Euphrates Valley to India,—was pure folly. It would be just as sensible to. make an enemy of Bulgaria, Austria, or Persia, through whose territories such a line must pass, as to make an enemy of Russia, only because she threatened to possess herself of some of the links in such a line. As for the danger to the Suez Canal, if Constantinople became Russian, it was 800 miles from the Suez Canal, and more than 400 from any part of our route to it, and to take time by the forelock in making war for suoh a contingency as this, was to exhaust resources on imaginary evils which we- might need for the remedy of real evils. The whole of Mr. Chamberlain's speech on the war was excellent, both in its spirit and its vivacity.
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