Russia in the Pacific.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 6019, 28 March 1885, Page 2

Russia in the Pacific.

Mr Moss sends us tho following:—" Sir, — There was considerable dissent when I mentioned at the banquet te our Volunteer champions the significant fact that Russia has at the present moment a fleet in the Pacific more powerful than that of England. In reply to those who dissented, I gave my authority—the * Army and Navy Gazette' of so lato a date as January 24 th of the present year. It maybe worth stating that the leading article in the 'Gazette of that dato, to which I referred, points out that Russia has certain openly-avowed designs on the Corea. Her object is to secure seaports free' from ice throughout the year, and, with them, eight millions of Coreans from among whom she could raise a large armed force to guard her Pacific coasts and be able the better to copo with tho Chinese. The writer adds: ' Russia at tho present moment possesses a magnificent naval station at Vladivostock, the resources of which she has been rapidly developing since 1878. In the interval that has elapsed sinco then, we have done nothing to improve Hong Kong or to increase our naval power in the Pacific. Up to 1878 we were in every House of the term the superior of Russia in the. Pacific. Today we are her inferior. She has permanently a more powerful squadron than our own in the Chita Seas. Vladivostock she has equipped with a dock capable of holding the largest men-of-war, a regular torpedo factory, and a new dock-yard capable of building small vessels of war, and fintlly she has secured her own coal supply by depositing a population of s,ooo■souls upon the carboniferous shores of the Island of Sag-alien,'"

There is more in the article to the same effect which it is not necessary to quote. I doubt not that England would soon make ber fleet the stronger of the two. But she has vast interests in the North Pacific to protect, and may have to- meet complications in Europe tha< would require most of her fleet near home. We hava juafc haard that Euseia has occupied

tho Island of Quelpart, off the Corean Coast, and wo havo no right to hamper England's movemonts by throwing upon herthewholo burden of our defenco when we could do so much towards defending ourselves. So far from trusting entirely to English mon-of war to defend Now Zealand, tho Governor has frankly told us that it might be unsafe for an English man-of-war to enter our port if thero was a possibility of hor boing caught in it by a largely superior force while wo had no guns with which to do our part in holping her. It is idlo to say that such a superior forco is impossible while Russia and Franco might at any moment bo united against us. I trust you will pardon my troubling you at this length, but I fool vory strongly that wo ought to bo prepared to do our part, and not to bocomo perhaps a hoavy burdon on England in tho groat light apparently botoro hor. It is satisfactory to find that Government intond to mount tho guns so long lying idlo in stovo. Lot us hopo thoy will act promptly and not leavo to tho last moment preparations that can only bo proporly mado whon mado doliboratcly, and building that cannot in its nature bo hurried without waste and weakness,—Yours, &c, F. J. Mos-."