10th Feb. Tre recent telegrams as to the military preparations for defence that are beitig made in England, and the telegram that we published yesterday as to the attitude taken by the French press in reply to Sir M. Hicks-Beach's speech on the Ezyptian Question, lend an additional interest to the first paper in Mr, Wilson's review, on "'I'he Vulnerability> of England." There is. no doubt that if France and Russia really meant to incur the risk of trying to turn us out of Egypt, this would be a good opportunity when our great Indian dependency is embarrassed by disease and famine; but we see little reason to believe that France and Russia are so eager for war that they will try to turn as out of Egypt by force, until the smoother path of negotiation has been found impracticable, Russia las not yet assimilated her new acquisitions' in East Asia, and for that task she requires peace, and therefore France confines herself to the platitudes with which M. Hanotaux amused the Chamber on Monday.
In one of its aspects, says Me. Wilson, the British Empire "may be compared to an ancient oak, a giant of the forest, whose leaves are still green each spring-time, but the heart of whose trunk is decayed and rotting, full of weevils and devoured by, parasites. Were it in a shady valley, protected from the storms which rage around the mountain peaks, its life might yet. be long, rotten though it be; but standing high iv the sight of the world as it does, it must fall, if not all at once in a confused heap of dry branches and brown dust, than limb by limb, as the elements it cannot defy or battle against spend their fury year after year upon it, as the enemies within consume its substance." Mr. Wilson davies that the success of the little expeditions we are coustantly undertaking against' frontier tribes are any-proof that the old fabric is still strong. "All the vitality we have is consumed in keeping up the appearance of strength. We, waste our substance in continually waking ready for some unknown danger; a great war we dare not wage, or even so much as risk the liability to wage."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.