Mr. Otway addressed his constituents at Chatham on Friday week
chiefly upon foreign policy, though he remarked in passing on the smallness of the Army we obtain for our expenditure. He believed, "unlike Mr. Grant Duff," that the present state of Europe was pregnant with danger. He held the policy of non-in- tervention to be fatal to empire, would not surrender Gibraltar ; mentioned that Mr. Layard was the original person to suggest the election of King Amadeus of Spain—a most indiscreet remark from a whilom Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs—believed that Lord Clarendon averted war on the Belgian Railway ques- tion, and declared that diplomacy was like railway manage- ment, "you always heard of the smashes, and never of the escapes." He thought no intervention of ours would have averted war between France and Prussia, for our 34,000 men would have been lost amid such vast armies,—a remark to which we might reply by asking if a man's fist is lost in his body as a weapon of war? The argument that if we had joined either aide the belligerents would have patched up a peace and divided Belgium and Holland is a better one, but rather far- reaching. He yearned for a reconciliation with the United States, but could not imagine how our negotiators had so blundered by drawing an " order of reference "which admitted of such absurd claims. He was not 04 ou sure that the step
taken in the interests of peace would not lead to still more bitter dissensions.
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