POLITICAL POINTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 142, 16 June 1906, Page 12

POLITICAL POINTS.

If the Tsar (says the Daily News) will throw himself heartily into the movement of converting Russia into a free self-governing Empire he will save his people and himself infinite sorrow. But .to do that he will have to make his choice between the advisers of the Durnovo school and the Liberals, and ho will have to accept the new conditions of sovereignty unreservedly. The divine right is dead henceforth in Russia, and the Tsar who would rule must rule as the expression of a free people in a free state. The Sultan (says the Times) may wish to pose as the champion of Islam. Ho assuredly is not acting from any real belief that the interests of his faith are menaced either by us or by Egypt. The most probable explanation of his conduct is that he is trying to see how much we will submit to, just as, according to the information of the Temps, he seems to be experimenting on the patience of the French in Tunis. All we can say is that, if this be the case, tho sooner he brings his experiment, to a close tho better. He is making it in very dangerous conditions, the perils of which he does not appear to appreciate. Writing on the recent difliculty with the Sultan, the Times says: The Britich nation is exceeding proud of the great work which it has done and is doing in Egypt, and it will not allow anybody to meddle with that work or to mar ■ it. Least of all will it suffer Abdul Hamid, whoso principles and methods of rule it has long known and abhorred, to interfere there. That is the settled resolve of all parties in this country. It is not least strongly held, the Sultan would do well to remember, by the more active sections of the Liberals, and the Radicals, who have just come into Eower with an overwhelming majority ehind thorn. The Conservative editor of Public Opinion somewhat grudgingly admits that there are two directions in which tho Government has shown some spirit. He says : — They have actually increased the garrison in Egypt as a warning to the Sultan of Turkey > that they will stand no nonsense on the Egyptian frontier. The step is- absolutely justified, of course, but is an amjisirig commentary on some Radical views as to the Imperial obligations and responsibilities of Great Britain. The other direction is in regard to Female Suffrage. A disgraceful scene occurred in the House on Wednesday which involved the clearing of the Ladies' Gallery. Kaiser Wilhelm's much-discussed telegram is thus referred to by the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin) : — The German Emperor has none but good intentions in sending his telegrams, and there was nothing further from his thoughts than to inflict a humiliation upon tho Hapsburg Monarchy. It cannot, however, be denied that the telegram was very unfortunately worded, and that it was open to undesirable -interpretations of a luncl which the Emperor had not foreseen." Tho Neve Freie Presse (Vienna) says:— "The tone of the German newspapers has created great bitterness in Italy, where everybody is asking what Berlin understands by alliance : whether it is the co-operation of two powers on the same footing, or the pressure of one on the other. The pressure might at least be veiled by ordinary civility." The Novoe Vremya (St. Petersburg), which is best known as an Anglophobe organ, is advocating an understanding with Britain. It says :— A rapprochement, without disturbing the good relations towards other Powers, would be advantageous to Russia above all on economic grounds. As regards tho advantages of a rapprochement for political purposes, there is nothing to say, when it is realised that Russia, having suffered defeat in war and on account of her internal troubles, must take breath. By being on good terms with England we strengthen our chance of being at peace with Japan, and put aside the possibility of the remotest conflicts, possible by living at such,closo quarters." • China is acquiring a great political significance for us. Her military reorganisation demands from us special watchfulness with regard to our position in Siberia and Turkestan; but since China is chiefly vulnerable from the sea, it would bo extremely advantageous for us to be on good terms with Great Britain, because she does not wish to see China a warlike Power. The German Emperor's telegram to Count Goluchowski, with its pregnant thanks for Austrian aid at the Morocco Conference (i.e., as contrasted with Italian opposition) and its promise to return the favours on the first opportunity (says the Westminster Gazette), has completed the mischief done by the anti-Italian campaign of the German^inspired Press. The Secolo, of Milan, which from the first has consistently opposed tho Triple Alliance, has hastened to declare that this is the final estrangement, and that the Kaiser is not Barbarossa, nor is Italy his vassal. No nation, it adds, can now pretend to supremacy in Europe — a pretension, by the way, put forward by the Berliner Tageblatt for Germany— and tho Kaiser should really consider tho interests of the multitude of Germans who have settled in Italy and intermarried with Italian families. It is no news, of course, that the life has gone out of the Triple Alliance, even though it was Prolonged for five years, or probably or more, in 1902; but one hardly expected the Emperor to cause the Italian Press to say so. And its view is echoed more Soberly by the Frankfurter Zeitung, which recalls Prince Bismarck's dictum that alliances last no longer than the conditions that produced them, and points out that those that produced the Triple Alliance are at an end. Writing of the anti-foreign movement in China, ihe correspondent of The Times says that it has been exaggerated, but that no little mischief has been done by the newly-established native press. A number of Chinese newspapers have sprung up in the treaty ports, which devote themselves to the task of inflaming against foreigners the masses of the people, whose ignorance, wo need hardly say, is still grotesque. With some exceptions, these journals indulge in the most unbridled license both of calumny and of invective. There is another source of trouble, for which the i-omedy does not lie exclusively in Chinese hands. There can bo little doubt that the political privileges enjoyed and exercised by tho Roman Catholic missionaries arc a great provocation to the native mind. The time, the correspondent maintains, has now come for the Vatican to put an end to a situation which is not only embarraaaing to Roman Catholic Powers, but which does hurt to the good name of the Church herself. The authorities in Rome ought, ho contends, to appbint a diplomatic representative at Pekin, to forbid tho indiscriminate intervention of the missionaries in native law suits, and to «xerci«e disciplinary control over them. Commenting on the letter. The Times says i — "The Vatican often moves very slowly, but it can hardly be insensible, we imagine, to the advantages to be gained by prompt attention to theso muchneeded reforms. China is a field in which the Church of Rome has won astonishing successes in the past, and in which she may reasonably hope, by a wise and prudent policy, to recover a part of what she has lost. Amongst the first objects of such a policy must be to convince both' the Government and tho people that *ho is no foe to the Rrincipli p{ 'pain* for the Ohtaeie,' <j