Alliance is temporary and easily revocable, and therefore by no means a settlement of permanent national questions. The moment that an attempt is made to remedy the carelessness complained of, to settle the principles upon which the burden of defence is to be divided between the mother-land and colonies, 'to come to an understanding for mutual support,' it will be found {102} that immediately behind the military problem is the political problem[8]. [1] _Nineteenth Century_, Oct. 1891. [2] While these pages are going through the press there comes, as if to qualify what is here said, the news that a young Canadian, Captain William H. Robinson, of the Royal Engineers, has met a soldier's death while leading, with conspicuous courage, an attack on Tambi in Sierra Leone. Trained in Canadian schools, and graduated with the highest honours from the Canadian Military College at Kingston, he had steadily pushed his way forward in the Imperial service and had for some time been in charge of the important fortifications in course of construction at Sierra Leone. In the ardent pursuit of his profession he had specially volunteered for the service on which he was engaged when he met his end. As his teacher I had occasion to watch over the early development of his very exceptional powers. Britain has, first and last, sacrificed many precious lives on Canadian soil, but in Captain Robinson Canada has begun to repay the debt to the mother-land with one of the most promising of the sons she has yet produced. [3] 'I should like to ask the friends of federation whether the colonies of this country--Canada, and the great colonies which cluster in the South Pacific and in Australia--whether these colonies would be willing to bind themselves to the stupid and regrettable foreign policy of the Government of this country? Will they take the responsibility of entering into wars which will be 10,000 miles away, and in which they can have no possible interest or influence, and in which they could have been in no degree consulted as to the cost? My opinion is that the colonies will never stand a policy of that kind.'--John Bright at Birmingham, March 28th, 1888. [4] A Liberal Foreign Minister has lately expressed the same thought in other words. 'Our great Empire has pulled us, so to speak, by the coat-tails out of the European system; and though with our great predominance, our great moral influence, and our great fleet, with our traditions in Europe and our aspirations to preserve the peace of Europe, we can never remove ourselves altogether from the European system, we must recognise that our foreign policy has become a colonial policy, and is in reality at this moment much more dictated from the extremities of the empire than it is from London itself.'--Lord Rosebery to the City Liberal Club, March 23rd, 1892.