'On January 23rd Evelyn Ashley, Chamberlain, and I had a meeting with regard to Greek matters, at which we drew up the public declaration to be made on behalf of the friends of Greece. 'On the next day, January 24th, a good many startling events occurred. A War Ministry was formed at Athens; the vote of money was announced in the British Parliament. Lord Carnarvon resigned in the morning, and Lord Derby at night; but Lord Derby's resignation was for a time withdrawn.' In 'the great debate' on Mr. Forster's motion against the vote of six millions sterling for 'adequate preparation'--a debate which opened on January 31st, and was prolonged to the second week in February--Sir Charles took part on the fourth day. Great interest attaches to this speech in view of all his later work: 'I pointed out that we spend normally on defence or war far more than any other Power: at that time twenty-five millions sterling at home and seventeen millions in India, or forty-two millions in all, swelled in that year by the extraordinary vote to forty-eight millions, while France and Germany spent much less. I was to return to this subject after many years, and when I wrote upon it in 1890, while the Indian expenditure stood at the same sum, the annual expenditure in England had risen to over thirty-eight millions, making the whole fifty-five, and with the rest of the Empire nearly fifty-seven millions sterling.' A side-note adds: 'It is now (1905) vastly greater.' As he was the first non-military politician to devote himself to the question of defence and to call public attention to the subject, so this question of wasteful expenditure always occupied his attention. He laid stress on the inadequate return received for naval and military outlay, not only on the popular ground that money was thus deflected from projects of internal reform, but pre-eminently because the nation in time of peace resents heavy defence expenditure, and he feared that the necessary money might not be forthcoming for that naval equipment which he held to be essential to our existence as a Great Power. But the main burden of his complaint was that now when a Conference was proposed, and when England ought to have gone into the Conference with all the weight of a unanimous people, the bringing forward of a "sham war vote," which was a contradiction of the alleged desire to negotiate, had produced inevitable division of counsels. Before the debate closed came the rumour of an occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, and under the belief that the war vote might be needed in good earnest, Mr. Forster's motion was withdrawn.