The difficulties which we are encountering with the Sultan over
the Egyptian boundary question will, we trust, prove a useful lesson to our "humanitarians," and make them recon- sider their aspirations for reducing our naval and military forces. Unquestionably one of the reasons why the Sultan is showing such deep and dangerous hostility to us at the present moment is the fact that we have persistently bullied him— as we think, rightly bullied him—over his treatment of the Armenians and the Macedonians. What chance, we may ask, should we now have of bringing the Sultan to reason if we did not possess a strong naval and military force P.— Cromwell would not have stopped the massacre of Vaudois if he had not been able to warn the Pope that he might bear Blake's cannon at the Vatican.—With the world con- stituted as it is, it is just possible that a purely selfish and cynical national policy might be carried on without arma- ments; but if this nation is to take the line which we are sure it will take, and ought to take, then we must be armed. Humanitarianism is certain to make us other enemies as bitter as the Sultan, and therefore the humanitarians should help us to be strong. There is nothing more dangerous and snore futile than to try to play the part of a knight-errant without a stout lance and a good horse. If we were to disarm, the first thing we should have to do would be to mind our own business, and not listen to the cry of the oppressed.
