The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1899. A THREATENED EMPIRE.

Feilding Star, Volume XXI, Issue 127, 28 November 1899, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1899. A THREATENED EMPIRE.

As an indication that the statesmen of the United Kingdom are fully possessed of a knowledge of the dangers which threaten the Empire, we quote thu following extract from a speech made in London last month by Lord Roseberry. Making reference to the Transvaal war he said : — " This is no little war. There are nations watching with eagerness every trip, every stumble, and, much more, every catastrophe and disaster that may overtake our arms. War waged under these conditions, therefore, is not a little war. Ido not knew why we should attract such ill-feeling. There is one simple test that will apply to the British Empire as compared with other Empires which watch with her so much, I won't say malevolence, but candid feeling. We would only be too glad at the present moment to strike a bargain with the rest of the world that every frontier should remain as now. Of what other Empire can that be aaid 1 Yet we, who are not trying to gain, but to maintain an Empire ; we who, in. the best and highest sense, are the most conservative force in the world, are the objects of the concealed dislikes of Governments who, T think, are less single-minded than ourselves." In conclusion he called upon the nation to maintain a united front, so as to meet with confidence the hostility, the hatred and jealousy of the great Empires of Europe who count their armies by millions. Readers of history know that the British have fought the world before, when their wealth and their population were btft a tithe of what they are at present, and the race has nofc degenerated, as their gallantry in recent battlefields has amply proved