RUSSIA AND JAPAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9135, 7 February 1910, Page 2

RUSSIA AND JAPAN.

DISQUIETING RUMOURS.

' LONDON, Dec. 17. A semi-official communique, published at St. Petersburg, says:— ''There has latterly been evident in the press a particularly nervous feeling, created by rumours of a conflict which is alleged to be impending between Russia and Japan. Disquieting reports from the Far East fill the newspapers,, and this feeling is penetrating in a regrettable manner to wider circles of society. According to present reports, the effect of these rumours is making itself especially strongly felt in our frontier territory in the Far East, where, under the influence of the conviction of the inevitableness of,an approaching war with Japan, which is becoming deeply rooted in the minds of the community, even representatives of the Administration not excepted, the feeling of anxiety is assuming such a strained character that it reacts directly upon private enterprise, inducing business men to apply to the Government organs for information as to how far the rumours current are correct, and whether commercial and industrial undertakings in tho Far East may rely .upon the preservation of peace. '' The interests of the people forbid the Government to abstain from intervention in this disturbing state of affairs, and oblige it to declare categorically that all rumours of complications between Russia and Japan at the present time are absolutely unfounded. The Government Tiave made use of the four years that have elapsed since the last war to conclude a whole series of international agreements, designed to wipe out all traces of enmity left behind by the economic relations of the two countries. From this point of view, next to the Commercial Treaty and the Fisheries Convention, particular importance attaches to the political agreement of 1907, concluded with the object of mutually guaranteeing the integrity of the territorial possessions and treaty rights of the two Powers in the Far East."