RUSSIAN AGGRESSIVENESS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XIV, Issue 1839, 16 May 1885, Page 2

RUSSIAN AGGRESSIVENESS

There are in this country a few persons, and in England a great many who are simple enough to believe that Russia is innocent of auy design on India, and the other day there was republished an account of an interview between the St. Petersburg correspondent of an English newspaper, and the late General Seobeleff , bearing on this question. On that occasion the Eussian General pointed out the enormous difficulties in the way of a Eussian invasion of India and evidently wished his English hearer to believe that Russia did not contemplate anything of the kind ; but he was less guarded in what he said to some British officers at Constantinople in 1878. In that year, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, a mixed Commission was appointed to settle the new Asiatic boundary between Turkey and Eussia. One of the members of the I Commission was a distinguished explorer, Captain Gill, who with Professor Palmer was murdered in the Sinaitie Peninsular during Arabi Pasha's Eebellion in 1882. The Russians, true to their traditional policy, raised difficulties and a year passed before the work of defining the boundary was accomplished. Scobeleff was in Constantinople during the sitting of the Commission, and was probably a member of it, and the following extract from Captain Gill's journal bliows what the the Eussian Soldier then thought about India : — " Aprii 14th,— ScobelefE says, that no sane being in Eussia imangmes for a moment that the Eussian policy is not India, and he said to B : — 1 "We shall get there — we shall creep on and on, for there will always be plenty of fools in England who will believe that we are not doing so ; and then some day when you English are unprepared we shall strike the blow. Why, of course, we all want India ! . . . We can't touch you anywhere, thanks to your silver streak. But by advancing towards India we obliterate that silver streak, and at last when we are near enough you will become vulnerable." The above is taken from a memoir of the author in a recently published book of travel, called " The Eiver of Golden Sand," — by Captain William Gill, E.E., and it affords good evidence, if indeed evidence were wanting, that in her present action on the Frontier of Afghanistan, Eussia is steadily following up the lines laid j down by Peter The Great for the acquisition of India. — W.G.M. I May 11, 1885.