Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 62, 11 September 1905, Page 4

Evening Post

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1905. THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION. While Tokio continues to be more deeply agitated by the terms of peace than it ever was by the perils of war, and from Poland to the Caucasus Russia pursues her domestic warfare with a vigour which must leave her little time to appreciate the success of M. Witte's labours at Portsmouth, the general feeling throughout Europe is one of intense relief that the terrible war in the Far East is at an end, and that Russia has escaped from it without utter collapse or abject humiliation. It will no doubt be many years before all the military and naval lessons of the war have been fully learned by the experts, but there are lessons in the field of international politics which it is to be hoped that the world had learned from the war before it was over and is not going to forget in time of peace. It is less than ten years since we were nearly at war with France; it is but a little more since we were on the verge of war with Russia, and to make up for the longer interval in the latter case, the tradition that Russia is our natural enemy, which was revived in an acute form by Lord Beaconsfield, has never passed completely away, and has received abundant stimulus during the recent war by her piratical application of the law of contraband and the misplaced valour which her Admiral displayed at the expense of unoffending British fishermen in the North Sea. As against France, the old tradition may be said to be absolutely dead ; and despite the dangerous friction which was naturally developed by the high-handed and blundering tactics just mentioned, the British people had occasion to learn during the nest six months that, whatever difficulties the i future may have in store in the adjustment of conflicting claims in the Far East and Afghanistan, no disaster which could threaten us in those remote regions from the preponderance of Russia as an Asiatic Power is ever likely to equal the peril that the effacement of Russia as a European Power would at once bring to the very doors of Britain. The real troubler of the European Israel is tho ambition of Germany ; and' he must be a dense man who does not now realise that "Russia's difficulty is Germany's o])portunity," ana the permanent embarrassment of Russia would give Germany such opportunities as no possible combination of other Continental Powers would be likely to prevent her from using. The enterprising Kaiser has had to look east as well as west since Russia came to terms with Japan, and the Western nations have been relieved like a nervous householder by the return of the policeman. M. Witte's striking statement, made actually before the formal signing of the treaty, that "if France had been obliged to yield in order to avoid an embroiling, Russia being engaged elsewhere, France need no longer yield when her cause was just and reasonable," is a proof that the most pacific of Russia's statesmen fully recognises' the importance of her police functions, and does not shrink from telling the Kaiser with some of his own dramatic directness that she is on duty again. It really looks as if this irrepressible potentate had over-reached himself for once. His bullying of France over Morocco, iri addition to having the immediate effect which he intended of alarming her and securing the fall of M. Delcasse, no doubt made England so uneasy as to causo her to induce the Mikado to waive some of his demands in order to secure peace, and at the same time inclined Russia more strongly than ever in the same direction by telling her in plain terms that as long as the war lasted, the Kaiser regarded her as a negligible factor in European politics. Peace is accordingly declared, and the flint thing that the Russian plenipotentiary does after the negotiations are concluded is to tell Franco that she need not stand any more bullying from the same source, because hdr old friend is now strong enough again to see her through. A less audacious disregard of the decencies of international life on the part of the Kaiser would have left him appreciably nearer the realisation of his dream of converting the Baltic and the Mediterranean into German lakes, and of extending his land dominions to Trieste on the one side and to Amsterdam on the other. In an article in the Contemporary Review on "England, France, Germany, and the Peace of the World," one of M. Del-casso-'s own countrymen argues strongly that the fall of tliat Minister had really been a blessing both to France and to Europe generally. The writer is M. Francis de Pressenae, who took a part second only to Baron d'Estournelles de Constant in promoting tho friendly relations between their country and ours which culminated in the convention concluded, lust year. lie regards tho lute Foreign Minister of France as a strong, bellicose, self-willed m«n— ft sort of

French Chamberlain, in fact — who would have been just as blameworthy as the Kaiser himself if the dispute about Morocco had led to a rupture. "Monsieur Delcasse," he says, "who had only sarcasms and disdain for this movement (i.e., the Anglo-French rapprochement) so long as it was in its initial phases, and especially so long as the Russian Alliance was yet in its honeymoon, found it convenient to change his mind and attitude when the current had gathered force, and when the fchadow of utter defeat begun to fall upon tho Tsar. It is his unforgettable and unforgivable -wrong to havo warped an agreement he had not initiated, and thus to have compromised not only the success of his own policy in Morocco, but also the solidity of the now understanding. AL Delcasse gave , to faction what was intended for nations. Ho wanted to hasten his occupation of Morocco, and to inflict on Germany the anxietiea of isolation, lie did not think it too high a price to pay for those successes to make himself and France the tool of an English faction, and to risk a war in which France would be on land, in face of Germany, what Germany would be on sea in face of England. . . . Happily for us, for our friends, for the whole of tho civilised world, this dream of madness lias been dissipated. M. Rouvier has been brave enough to take into his own hands the threads of this complicated imbroglio." Ac the strenuous promoter of goodwill ■between Franco and English, M. de Pressense naturally resented seeing what he designed a<s an instrument of peace "turned ijxto an engine of international diecord." "France found herself," he says, " in the painful situation one© described to me by a man of wife when, referring to some excessive demonstrations of amity from one -who -was engaged in a violent otruggle, toe said, ' Beware of being loved, .not for yourself, but against another.' It appeared that" Germany was vehemently flirting with ■the Republic, .not for her ibeaux yeux, but for hatred of England, and that England threw herself .into our arms, moved not so much 'by a just appreciation of our charms 'as by hatred of Germany." There, must alwa"ys tie a good deal of this kind of love in international politics, and it is a kind -which the tactics of tha Kaiser are particularly well calculated .to promote. For that reason EuTope is not so much alarmed by his discourse on the Yellow Peril as relieved by the disappearance of the White Peril -with which his unbalanced ireedom threatened 'her.