Once aroused, it may, it is true, reach fever heat
with remarkable rapidity, but the introductory stages offer
that worst danger to the earnest speaker--the dread of an
apathetic audience. But from this consideration Loder, by his
sharp consciousness of personal difficulties, was given
immunity.
Pitching his voice in that quietly masterful tone that beyond
all others compels attention, he took up his subject and dealt
with it with dispassionate force. With great skill he touched
on the steady southward advance of Russia into Persian
territory from the distant days when, by a curious irony of
fate, Russian and British enterprise combined to make entry
into the country under the sanction of the Grand-Duke of
Moscovy, to the present hour, when this great power of Russia
--long since alienated by interests and desires from her former
co-operator--had taken a step which in the eyes of every
thinking man must possess a deep significance. With quiet
persistence he pointed out the peculiar position of Meshed in
the distant province of Khorasan; its vast distance from the
Persian Gulf, round which British interests and influence
centre, and the consequently alarming position of hundreds of
traders who, in the security of British sovereignty, are
fighting their way upward from India, from Afghanistan, even
from England herself.
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