Lord Roberts addressed a great meeting in support of the
National Service League at Manchester on Tuesday. The chief points in his most impressive address were that as Prussia controlled the action of Austria in 1866, so Germany constrained our action at the present day; that in pursuance of the policy relentlessly pursued by Bismarck and Moltke in 1866 and 1870 she would strike when her hour had struck; that we might stand still, but she always advanced towards the goal of a complete supremacy by land and sea. Proposals for the limitation of armaments must always be regarded with distrust when they emanated from an Empire like ours, which was founded on war and conquest. There was only one way in which Britain could have peace, not only with Germany but with every other Power, national or imperial, and that was "to present such a battle-front by sea and land that no Power, or probable combination of Powers, shall dare to attack us without the certainty of disaster." That was the only reply worthy of our past, and "safe for the future. But there was a way in which Britain could have war, a way in which she was certain to have war and its horrors and calamities—" by persisting in her present course of unpre- paredness, apathy, unintelligence, and blindness, and in her disregard of the most ordinary political _insight as well as of the examples of history:" We are in most hearty agreement with Lord Roberts.
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