Evening Post.

Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 110, 2 June 1885, Page 2

Evening Post.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1885. THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH RUSSIA.

It would appear from the cable message published in another column, dated from London yesterday, that the announcement of peace being assured was premature, and that matters arc still unsettled between England and Russia. The fuller intelligence received by mail throws a great deal of light on tho present situation, and enables us to understand it better than it was possible to do from the previously received cable messages. It seems that the view generally adopted regarding Mr. Gladstone's attitude is the same both in England and on the Continent as that which has obtained in these colonies. It is almost universally conceded that England's position is a humiliating one, that the arbitration is really a surrender on England's part, and that if a peace is patched up on the propoßed basis it will be a hollow one, •which will not last long. No one appears to regard the settlement as either satisfactory or final, or to suppose that Russia has the slightest real intention of abandoning her designs on Afghanistan or making any lengthened stoppage in an advance towards India. Groat and humiliating as are the concessions which Mr. Gladstone haa professed himself willing to moke, it would appear that Russia accepts them not as an equitable basis for a permanent settlement of the points at issue, but merely as a postponement, out of personal regard for the present Premier, who is, we are glad to say, almost the only friend Russia has ever found amongst English statesmen. It has been announced that he is about to retire. Russia, it appears, is willing to allow him to do so in peace rather than see him leave office with the Empire involved in war ; a thing he has made such enormous sacrifices to avoid. This is, no doubt, very kind and considerate of Russia, and as the prestige of England will, by the acceptance of such a concession, suffer in the eyes of India as well as of Europe, and as the delay will afford Russia time for completing her military preparations and pushing on her railway towards Saraks, she will certainly not lose anything by her geuerous consideration for Mr. Gladstone's feelings. Looking at the preparations which have been made on both sides, and tho feelings which have been aroused, it is, we think, utterly unreasonable to suppose that peace is assured for any length of time, or that it can be assured by any process of diplomacy or arbitration. The St. Petersburg and Moscow papers, which write under strict censorship and invariably reflect the official mind, refer openly to the arbitration as a comedy. So it is — a screaming farce, in whioh Russia plays the leading part and England that of the butt or dupe, out of whose unsuspicious innooence, blunders and mishaps the fun is obtained. It is, however, evidently but ithe petite comedy intended to "play in" a great tragedy upon which the curtain will ere long rise.