PEACE FOR CENTRAL ASIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6325, 27 September 1907, Page 4

PEACE FOR CENTRAL ASIA.

The Powers, great and small, may hesitate about adopting Hague resolutions to disarm, but it is assuredly from no sneaking affection for war. The tendency of all modern diplomacy and legislation affecting international relations is towards peace, and mucl) better work may be done by removing : the causes of conflict than by striving j to make bloodshed unpopular by arguments drawn from the great ethical 1 codes of humanity. The theory of The Hague moralist is that nations | should submit their differences to arj bit-ration, but the practice, to which | recourse is being had by States—and particularly the great States—is to eliminate the grounds of difference. So long as Russia in Central Asia, and Britain in South-western Asia, glared at each other across the intervening territory which both coveted, and both knew they could not acquire wholly, ■ it was necessary to keep the grindstone moist and the watch-fires burning. They haW pursued this method for a century or so, with results that may be’t safely counted as disasters. * Without coming to close grips themselves, the two nations have wasted millions in the task of keeping the buffer States in a condition -of perpetual unrest, tempered by spasms of j rebellion and massacre, "and marked I all along by the most unrelenting forma of popular oppression. Strategical railways, armed camps on either bolder, and a welter of corruption and distress within, sums up the case of Persia and Afghanistan since the per- . iod when Russian intrigue began to I operate on the one side, and the "great game” of Indian policy was erected on the other. ,

Advantages gained now on the one side and now on the other have never materially minimised the probabilities which pointed to an ultimate great straggle between the rival white peoples for the hegemony of the Bast. But the new tendency of the time ha? changed all that. The cable announces that the Anglo-Russian Convention, which has been some time in the making, and the terms of which have just been communicated to the other Powers, will settle all outstanding differences, remove the main incentives to trouble in Persia and Afghanistan, and permit of'" a substantial reduction in the military budget of India. These are the results that will appeal most strongly to the eye and the imagina-

tion, but there are others, based upon commercial considerations, which may be productive of even greater results. The delimitation of the British and Russian “spheres of influence” in Persia, and the surrender to Britain, of the virtual suzerainty of Afghanistan, mean that a road is opened to the development of trade under conditions of security and peace, and its growth may therefore be expected bo be substantial and rapid. When speaking of the peaceful tendency of the era, it may bo well to remember, with an eye to possible, though, one may' hope, unlikely contingencies, that Russia’s ambitions in tho Far East have been tempered by recent events. The Manchurian campaign served to demonstrate that the limits of the Muscovite domain must stop short at Mongolian territory, and the terms of the AngloJapanese treaty made it plain that India is no longer a practicable objective for Russian military strategyNevertheless, it is wise, as well as gracious, to assume that the Czar’s Government is actuated by motives of humanity as well as expediency, and that the terms of the convention just concluded will afford as much satisfaction at St. Petersburg as in London and Calcutta.