rty
in the Upper House which believed that Britain needed no such ally,
that with Germany and Austria at her side she could fight the world,
in spite of the Tsar's new-fangled balloons, which would probably
prove failures in actual war as similar inventions had done before,
and even if her allies succumbed, had she not stood alone before, and
could she not do it again if necessary?

She would fulfil her engagement with the Triple Alliance, and declare
war the moment that one of the Powers was attacked, but she would not
pour British gold in millions into the bottomless gulf of Italian
bankruptcy.

Such were the main points in the speech of the Duke of Argyle, who
followed Lord Alanmere, and spoke just before the division. When the
figures were announced, it was found that the Loan Guarantee Bill had
been negatived by a majority of seven votes.

The excitement in London that night was tremendous. The two Houses of
Parliament had come into direct collision on a question which the
Premier had plainly stated to be of vital importance, and a deadlock
seemed inevitable. The evening papers brought out special editions
giving Tremayne's speech _verbatim_, and the next morning the whole
press of the country was talking of nothing else.

The "leading journals," according to their party bias, discussed it
pro and con, and rent each other in a furious war of words, the
prelude to the sterner struggle that was to come.

Unhappily the parties in Parliament were very evenly balanced, and a
very strong section of the Radical Opposition was, as it always had
been, bitterly opposed to the arrangement with the Triple Alliance,
which every one suspected and no one admitted until Tremayne
astounded the Lords by reciting its conditions in the course of his
speech.

It was the avowed object of this section of the Opposition to stand
out of the war at any price till the last minute, and not to fight at
all if it could possibly be avoided. The immediate consequence was
that, when the Government on the following day asked for an urgency
vote of ten millions for the mobilisation of the Volunteers and the
Naval Reserve, the Opposition, led by Mr. John Morley, mustered to
its last man, and defeated the motion by a majority of eleven.

The next day a Cabinet Council was held, and in the afternoon Mr.
Balfour rose in a densely-crowded House, and, after a dignified
allusion to the adverse vote of the previous day, told the House that
in view