The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News," "The Morning News," and "The Echo." FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1878.

Auckland Star, Volume IX, Issue 2500, 29 March 1878, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News," "The Morning News," and "The Echo."

FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1878.

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This afternoon's cable despatches convey the important intelligence that Russia has refused England's demand that the whole of the conditions of peace shall be submitted to the Congress, and the idea of holding it is, therefore, abandoned. If those conditions which most seriously affect European interests were to be withdrawn from consideration, it is better that the farce of meeting should never be enacted. Indeed, by recognising the Conference as a means \of settling the difficulty, with the cession of Bessarabia and Armenia as an accepted part of the terms, the Great Powers would immediately become an assenting party to conditions of which they strongly disapprove. England wisely declines to participate in a Conference which Government could only accept by hopelessly compromising itself. The telegrams state that official circles still speak hopefully of the maintenance of peace. It is not likely that England will go to war without an ally for the protection of purely continental interest.", and as these are mainly involved in the conditions of peace agreed upon between Europe and Turkey, the future course of events will probably be controlled by the attitude of Austria. That Power, always a dangerous, unreliable, and shifty ally, has pursued its customary indecisive policy throughout the war; and the mission undertaken by General Ignatieff to-Vienna may be the means of destroying the semblance of firmness which it has latterly assumed. Time alone will show. The determination of the Principality of Roumania not to submit to spoliation at the hands of its late ally stands in marked contrast to the irresolution of its big neighbour. The intimation that Turkey is to cede the Dobrudscha is new.