The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-01-08 00:00:00

THE LIFEBOAT SERVICE IN 1880.

During the year which has just closed the lifeboats
of the National Lifeboat Institution saved a total of
577 lives and 27 vessels from destruction.

In the same period the Institution granted rewards
for saving 120 lives by fishing and other boats and
other means, making a total of 697 lives saved last
year, mainly through its instrumentality.

_
Altogether, since its foundation the society has
contributed to the saving of 27,600 shipwrecked per-
sons. It should be mentioned that the operations of
the National Lifeboat Institution now c( 4er the
whole coasts of the British Isles, and that all the life-
boats of the United Kingdom belong to it, with the
exception of a score or so of lifeboats which are under
the charge of harbour trustees and other local bodies.
It will thus be seen that an institution possessing so
national a character must necessarily need a very
large income to carry on its benevolent work with the
success which has hitherto characterized the opera-
tions of the National Lifeboat Institution. We hope
that the public will continue to extend to it their sym-
pathy and liberal support.

THE WAR SYSTEM OF EUROPE.
Mr. Henry Richara, M.P., lectured on Tuesday
night in the Town-hall, Reading, on the war system
of Europe.
Mr. G. Palmer, M.P., presided, and remarked that
there was no such party as a peace at any price party,
though there were those- who would sacrifice almost
anything for the interests of peace.
Mr Richard said England maintained a bad
eminence among civilized nations in the matter of
war. A few years ago he made a speech in the House
of Commong in which he said that they could not
put their finger on any two consecutive years
in the present century when Englishman were
not fighting somewhere. Since 1817 we had
been engaged in seventy-three wars. During the
last twenty-five years two and a half millions of
human beings in the prime of life had been sacrificed
in wars, costing not less than three hundred million
pounds. In Europe at present there were not less than
twelve millions eight hundred and thirty-nine thousand
men trained to arms, at least five millions being always
under arms. No more absurd maxim had ever been
palmed upon mankind or more at variance with human
experience than that if we wished for peace we must
be prepared for war. We might as well say that if
they wished for sobriety they must prepare for drunken-
ness. Armaments were not preservatives of peace but
provocatives of war. Germany was sinking deeper and
deeper into poverty and debt under its stupendous
war system, and it was a remarkable fact that within
the last ten years the number of suicides there had
increased 10 per cent. It should be the aim of the col-
lective statesmanship of Europe to introduce a better
mode of settling their differences than by the brutal
arbitrament of war. Men of peace, though ridiculed
as foolish and fanatical, had reason and common
sense as well as Christianity and humanity on their
side. They contended that the peoples of Europe
were ripe for the substitution of arbitration for brute
force.