It was amid these impressions that the Lord Mayor's banquet was held at the Guildhall (Nov. 10). The first toast after the loyal toasts was that of "Our Allies," proposed by Mr. Balfour. He described the capture of Tsingtau as a most dramatic answer to one of the most insulting messages ever sent from one Sovereign to another [in 1897] and as a good omen for those still fighting the arch-enemy in Europe. Russia had shown not only dogged and boundless courage, but unexpected powers of organisation; the war had brought out the military genius not only of a nation, but of a man (the Grand Duke Nicholas). As for the gallant French, never would the time grow dim in which they and the British fought side by side against the common foe of civilisation. Serbia, to preserve the peace of the world, had been prepared to give up everything short of her national existence, but she had gallantly defended it, and there was no chance now that Austria would wrest it from her. The case of Belgium was even more tragic. Cynicism could go no farther than the Germans had carried it, and the memory of the accumulated infamy of their transaction would be remembered after the crime, great as it was, had been adequately expiated. The Allies were fighting for civilisation and the cause of small States, and whether the war was short or long, they would triumph. They had behind them all the finest moral influences of the civilised world. M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, in reply, said that Europe had suffered invasions of barbarians in the past, but had never yet seen barbarism raised to dogma and reinforced by science. But its professors had not foreseen that they would come into conflict with the conscience of the civilised world. The First Lord of the Admiralty, responding to the toast of "The Imperial Forces of the Crown," said that it was thanks to the Navy that they were there. In a recent conversation with Sir John Jellicoe and his chief Admiral they had remarked that Cornwallis was three years off Brest and Nelson more than two off Toulon; they themselves were only just beginning, and their turn would come. The multiplied duties of the Navy arising from the curious and novel conditions of naval warfare forced them to expose a target to the enemy incomparably larger than any target exposed to our own daring and vigilant sailors. The Navy was making good the motto "Business as usual"; the economic stringency resulting from a blockade required time to reach its full effectiveness; but in the sixth, ninth, or twelfth month they would see results gradually and silently achieved which would spell the doom of Germany. The Navy, too, gave Britain and the British Empire the time to realise their vast military power. At the end of a hundred days of war the Navy was actually and relatively stronger than when war was declared, particularly in the branches most influential in the struggle.