LORD ROBERTS' CRUSADE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7936, 9 January 1906, Page 6

LORD ROBERTS' CRUSADE.

Lord Roberts has won extraordinary enthusiasm at Oxford for his scheme of universal military training, which, in many other parts of the country, has been received so far with comparatively apathetic approval. "There is no 'militarism' or 'jingoism," he told the young men of the university town, "in a man's being prepared to defend his country." Itj was painful to him to notice how little was done in this country now to promote a true spirit o patriotism, and to hear Englishmen talk, as a Japanese writer had remarked, so rruch of their rights and so very little of their duties. Lord Roberts continues to insist that the Anglo-Japanese alliance has not in any degree made it less obligatory upon Great Britain to strengthen the defences of India. During the last 42 years Russia has advanced more than 540 miles dearer to the Indian frontier, while England's prepartions havo practically remained "Our Indian fellow subjects," he says, "have followed with intense interest the successes of thp Japanese in their war with Russia. Tney have realised for tho first time in modern history that an Eastern people have proved themselves as a patriotic nation and as a fighting machine the superior of their Western foes. Nowhere in the East has this passed unnoticed. I need scarcely point out what a fatal blow tt it would be to our prestige in India if thej natives of that country were ever allowed to believe that England needed the help of Japan, and bad made an alliance with her from a hope that she would assist in the defence of our Eastern possessions."