THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2546, 31 December 1902, Page 44

THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION.

TROUBLE WITH TURKEY. RUSSIA AND INDIA. (FeOM OtJE OW3 COBEESPOXDE^T.) LONDON, October 31. When things get so far that one Sovereign Power tells another Sovereign Power that if it does not move its troops off a certain area in a brace of shakes they will be turned off by force of arms, the situation has a distinct air of " blugginess." Yet that is how matters stand to-day between England and Turkey. A Turkish force has encroached upon the hinterland of Aden, under the usual Oriental pretext of suppressing disturbances, and England has ordered them off. They won't go, and their Government, on being appealed to, adopts the customary Ottoman method of dilatory temporising. So the Porte has been informed that unless the British demand be acceded to forthwith, the intruding troops will be attacked by ? a British force and simply " cleared out." Turkey is still hesitating, and nobody doubts that the astute and wily Sultan is simply" "trying it on" while he is " fee!mg the pulse " of all possible backers. It is difficult to dissociate this audacious Turkish encroachment upon British territory from the recent visit to Constantinople of the Russian Grand Duke, and the subsequent proposal to free the Dardanelles to Russian warships. Of course if Britain plainly shows "her t-e-eth. the Porte will '" cave in " promptly, unless, indeed, there be more in the background than has yet appeared. But the incident goes to show once more by how very frail a tenure the boon of international peace is held. j As for Ru £ juia's progress eastward, it has well been characterised as " gigantic." It seems that " ihe construction of the Si- j berian line from iloscow to Port Arthur ■ has practically fcsen completed in le=s than j a year's time beyond the original estimate j made in I£9l, and that by the end of this year through bookings will be opened from Europe to Shanghai and Nagasaki. Already ', correspondence has been initiated between j France and Russia for the transmission of mail.6 by this route, ana! it does not require the eye of imagination to foresee that within j five years' time the mails and passengers ! from all European countries to the Fa-rEast will be Hvertsd from the maritime lines through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to the Ru&sian Transcontinental railroad." One writer remarks: — "Public opinion, in , England has hitherto taken little account of the achievement of this vast undertaking, but its commercial results will consti- | tute almost as great a revolution as followed upon the opening of the Suez Canal. The j indifference shown in thi3 country reminds j one curiously of the way in which many \ Englishmen "of business, merchants, and : shipowners scoffed at the Canal till suddenly it was opened, and left them and' , their fleets high and dry. The commercial ascendency of England in the China seas. ' which is based on the exclusive access of maritime Powers to the coasts and seaports of China, is now for the first time seriously assaulted." Russia has broken into China from the land side, and has created a highway of communication from Calais to Peking which is perfectly independent of maritime intervention, and is much shorter and more direct than the long sea voyage." The well-informed writer from whom I am quoting goes on to assert that: "The immediate political and commercial gains to Russia of the new overland route must be prodigious, for now at last Russia has succeeded in binding together her European and Asiatic dominions and establishing intercourse with Eastern markets without using EngVnd as the intermediary ; and she stands now before the world a colossal selfsufficing Empire, securely bound together, completely independent of external interference, and stretching across two continents from Moscow to Cathay. What Russia is showing now)," he says, "is the- new birth, the renaissance- of Asia, and the revival of her old internal commerce. Not only is she opening otit Chinese markets from the land ride, but her industrial ac- ! tivity. which we are apt to despise, will now find fresh outlets. Ifc will be eurprising if her cotton goods do not find their wav by the new route to the East to compete with the sea-borne products of the Lincasbire looms and spinning milk. Russia has made immense advances of late years in the manufacture of cotton, chiefly through milk' built by Englishmen. . . But Rusfiian aclhity in railway enterprise is not confined to "the Siberian line. Everywhere in Central Asia fhe steady advance of Russia from year to year is remarkable. It seems but the other Say that she began the Transcaspian railway. which she has now pushed close up to the Afghan frontier near Herat, and continued right along the border of Afghanistan as far as the Tiver Oxus, and bnyond that river to the cities of Samarkand and Ta«hkend. Nor is this all. The Transcaspian line only rune along the eastern coast of the inland sea from Krasnovodsk to Askabad. The break of the Caspian Sea remains, and must ho crossed by boat before a traveller from the East can place himp&lf in communication with the European railway system. Russia, however, ha 3 now undertaken to work round the Caspian on both banks. Ifc is intended to connect, Krasnovodsk directly by rail with the Caucasian line, and an announcement was made the other day that the Shah of Persia was going home to Teheran from Baku, on the western coast of the Caspian, by tho new railway which the Russians have constructed toward the northern frontier of Persia. It is understood that in less than two years' time this railway will reach the station of Resht, whence a good metalled road has been built to Teheran. In tho course of the next few years, therefore, both Teheran and Meshed will be placed in unbroken communication with Moscow, and all Northern Persia will ■^■^ftctically become a r>rovincf> of the Russian Empire. " But this." he maintains. "is not the coal of Run=ian ambition. The construction of the [jrpat southern line from Orenburg through the Khanates of Central Asia to Tashkend has been rapidly pushed forward, and by- the year 1910 this Work will no doubt be finished. This is the real overland line by the most direct route, avoiding any breolc of gauge at either the Black Sea or the Caspian from Calais to the neighbour-

has finished her share of the work and has completed at Tashkent! the circle which from Moscow will girdle all Central Asia i it will be possible to travel in seven or eight days from the further side of the English •Channel to the Russian outposts on the Oxus, and from these putposts it is hardly an exaggeration, in view of all that has been accomplished and the little that remains to be done, to cay that a shell might be pitched across Afghanistan into the English camp 'at Peshawur. The Moscow-Orenburg-Tashkend line forms the only real approach to India. It should be continued through Afghanistan, by way of Cabul, to form a junction with the Indian railway system, and to complete a straight route from Calais to Calcutta. All other schemes | are viere makeshifts of the most tedious, unbusinesslike and bungling character. . . ! But the Government of India, with incredible perversity, sets aside both the Cabul and Kandahar routes, and has now committed itself to the construction of what is known as the Seistan route, by means of which we propose to enter the nicst unproductive region in all Persia by a -circuitous back-door entrance, wliile Russia is imperiously knocking at the front door in Khorassan. -Lord George Hamilton, we are told, yielding to the importunities of Lord Curzon, has given his sauction to the construction »if the first part of this new railway, by wl.ieh we hope to counterbalance the truly, imperial ?nd magnificently farreaching work of Russia. Ineptitude could no further go. Lord George might as well have cast his money into the sea." After summing up very broadly the respective courses of each pursued by the two Powers, he says : " This contrast shows how hopelessly baliindhand we have allowed ourselves to fall in India. "We have only to stretch out a friendly hand to Russia and a real railway to Calcutta might be completed within tines years' time, at -a cost not exceeding three or four millions. Russia, lias now made overtures ±o -us for the reopening of relations with Afghanistan and the raising of that country in the scale of international civilisation. Why not meet her half-way and frankly open out Afghanistan — and, for that matter, India itself — to the world? But we are so timid and suspicious that we sit down and do nothing, or wor3e than nothing, and have built up for ourselves st sort of Chinese wall around the northern frontier of India, in the shape of the kingdom of Afghanistan, whose Sovereign we encourage to forbid the "fconstruction of a line of railway in his dominions. By this blockhouse policy we hope to check the advance of Russia, which can only laugh at us for our folly. Railways, it may be pointed out, would certainly quadruple the revenue of the Afirnar. Ameer, and there is no reason why, if Russia and England came to a friendly agreement, his territories might not, by a treaty of neutrality, be -made as secure as Switzerland." Another writer, reviewing the situation as between England and France, etrongly urges that an effort should be made to estab'ish-a modus vivendi with France by allowing her a free hand in Morocco, due safeguards being provided against any occupition of Tangier or other points on the African, mainland -which would command* the Strait of Gibraltar. It is asserted that France would willingly meet Enjjland halfway on such a basis, and would even co so far as to concede to England an equally free hand in Egypt. All this is very attractive, but there are other authorities who insist that these suggestions arc made by people who have very little real knowledge of all the difficulties involved in any settlement that would be even approximately satisfactory to boWi parties, and that the conflicting interests would prove far more troublesome of reconciliation than mere casual and irresponsible outsiders are aware of. For the present, at all events, it seems likely that things will simply drift.