Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1906. THE PREVARICATING PORTE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 112, 15 May 1906, Page 2

Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1906. THE PREVARICATING PORTE.

Noone supposed "that Turkey would be so foolish as to openly defy the British ultimatum. The usual back-ing-down process lias taken place, but apparently the Porte is indulging in the customary practice of squirming and prevaricating. The British demands will not, of course, be varied in the slightest degree, and in the end will prevail. But a sinister significance has been given to what would otherwise be a trivial incident by the comment launched,forth by the " London Times." The " thnnderer" plainly hints that German influence has been operating behind the scenes in this case as it has in numerous other instances of international friction of late years; and this observation is the more striking as Germany has taken considerable pains to declare her innocence in the matter of the Sultan's Egyptian designs. "The incident is useful to ourselves," says the London journal, " as revealing the true objects of the railway policy instigated by German military advisers and prosecuted according to German plans, with German assistance, financial and otherwise." If that does not mean that the Kaiser's agents encouraged the overstepping of the Sinaitic boundary, language has no meaning at all. And if that language will tend to improve the Anglo-German relations, so carefully fostered by the "Times" itself not many months ago, then the Kaiser's subjects must be very thick in the skin. However, the warning may be presumed to be a not wholly uncalled for an unjustifiable one; and the British press, so far from being censured for irritating the feeling between the two nations, should be thanked for keeping the Imperial spirit alert aiid encouraging such a condition of public mind as will ensure prompt resistance whenever and wherever an encroachment on the worldwide interests of Britain is threatened. The Sinaitic affair affords still another proof of the axiom that Germany must be continually watched. The other day it was Morocco; to-day it is the integrity of Suez Canal that must be protected. ,