He contented himself with a few brief sentences of acknowledgment, and sat down. Then somebody proposed the health of the other commissioned and noncommissioned officers, and to this Ernest rose to respond, making a very good speech in reply. He rapidly sketched the state of political affairs, of which the Zulu war was the outcome, and, without expressing any opinion on the justice or wisdom of that war, of which, to speak the truth, he had grave doubts, he went on to show, in a few well-chosen, weighty words, how vital were the interests involved in its successful conclusion, now that it once had been undertaken. Finally he concluded thus: “I am well aware, gentlemen, that with many of those who are your guests here to-night, and my own comrades, this state of affairs and the conviction of the extreme urgency of the occasion has been the cause of their enlistment. It is impossible for me to look down these tables, and see so many in our rough-and-ready uniform, whom I have known in other walks of life, as farmers, storekeepers, Government clerks, and what not, without realising most clearly the extreme necessity that can have brought these peaceable citizens together on such an errand as we are bent on. Certainly it is not the ten shillings a day, or the mere excitement of savage warfare, that has done this” (cries of ‘No, no!’);” because most of them can well afford to despise the money, and many more have seen enough of native war, and know well that few rewards and plenty of hard work fall to the lot of colonial volunteers. Then what is it? I will venture a reply. It is that sense of patriotism which is a part and parcel of the English mind” (cheers), “and which from generation to generation has been the root of England’s greatness, and, so long as the British blood remains untainted, will from unborn generation to generation be the mainspring of the greatness that is yet to be of those wider Englands, of which I hope this continent will become not the least.” (Loud cheers.)