'This letter has not been shown to anyone, and needs, as I said, no reply, but I should be glad if it were not handed to anyone outside of your own circle. It has not been mentioned to anyone except Mr. Herbert Gladstone.'] to Mr. Gladstone during his last Premiership, Dilke summed up his views when a debate was about to take place in the House of Commons, and four days later he notes: 'On April 18th I had a long interview with Mr. Gladstone, who sent for me, on my letter. The only thing he said worth remembering was, "Jingoism is stronger than ever. It is no longer war fever, but earth hunger."' In 1887 the possibility of a German attempt to violate the neutrality of Belgian territory, notwithstanding the treaty of guarantee of 1839, which Prussia herself had signed, was again attracting attention owing to a sudden renewal of warlike apprehensions on the Continent. The position of Luxemburg was a kindred question, though the international guarantee was of a far more uncertain character than in the case of Belgium. Sir Charles, as already related, had returned from his work in France during the war of 1870 with a profound conviction that a spirit of reckless violence was abroad in Germany, which would stop at nothing if favourable circumstances offered a temptation to action; and in his opinion the absence of any fortifications at Liége and Namur afforded such a temptation. The point had been till then little discussed in England, though General Brialmont had written in the _Revue de Belgique_ on the subject. Sir Charles's view having been questioned, that the danger to Belgium's neutrality for military and other reasons was from Germany alone, he drew attention to the enormous accumulation of supplies of every kind in the entrenched camp of Cologne as of itself sufficient in military eyes to prove the truth of what he said. He considered also that the reduction of our horse artillery greatly impaired the possibility of Great Britain affording really effectual military assistance to Belgium, and that the recent utterances of the principal organ of the Conservative party, the _Standard_, and of the writers in the _National Review_, that intervention in support of Belgium 'would be not only insane but impossible,' showed that the public opinion of Great Britain was no longer unanimous as it had been in 1870-71. [Footnote: The questions connected with the Belgian and Luxemburg guarantees are very fully discussed in a recent work, _England's Guarantee to Belgium and Luxemburg_, by C. P. Sanger and H. T. J. Norton. See also chapter i. of _War: Its Conduct and Legal Results_, by Dr. Baty and Prof. J. H. Morgan; _The Present Position of European Politics_, pp. 42-48, 73, 321-323.] This dispassionate consideration of the chances of England's intervening single-handed and without allies, in the case of a European war, to protect the neutrality of an unfortified Belgium, led to statements that he was opposed to such