The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1912. THE WORLD’S PEACE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 99, 21 December 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1912. THE WORLD’S PEACE.

That the peace of the whole world depends on Austria and Russia at this juncture is the clearly expressed opinion of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ because, for more than two centuries, since the days of Prince Eugene and Peter the Great, their rival pretensions to different portions of the Sick Man’s inheritance have been the main factor in the Eastern question. The paper further calls attention to the importance of the following lines telegraphed by the London ‘Times’: — “The Russian Press grows daily more bellicose. ■ The history of the Bosnian annexation is not likely to be repeated.” In other words, Russia will not consent again simply to ho ruled out by the Triple Alliance on a point vital to all Slav interest and feeling. The organ of the Bulgarian Government, the ‘Mir,’ says that Austria-Hungary lias the greatest interest in making sincere friends of the Balkan States, and fmy insistence on its part in preventing the just and natural solution of tho Balkan question—a solution of which an outlet for Servia on the Adriatic is a sine qua non—may sow the seed of a future war, which it will he no longer possible to localise. As for the position of Great Britain, the ‘Pall Mall’ says; “We might make the situation temporarily easier for ourselves, though not for the Balkans or for Europe, by deserting our friends, breaking up tho Triple Entente, and extinguishing our influence with the League and the Turks alike. That is a policy which would soon bring its own Nemesis. It is not yet the policy of the British nation, nor of the British Government as a whole.”

LI HUNG CHANG’S MEMOIRS

Li Hung Chang’s visit to Germany is the central interest of tho ‘Observer’s’ second instalment from tho diary of that statesman. Writing at Essen, where ho was tho guest of Herr Krupp, ho says: “I had a splendid visit to Prince Bismarck at his castle. Ho made mo drink some beer, which I did not like at all, but a taste for which he said 1 would acquire if I stayed long enough in Germany. During a large part of the time we discussed international politics, and finally come to the prospective influence of Germany in tho Far East. Yon ] ia ve seen but little of ns in your part nf the world,” he said, “for Germany us a unit is only a new nation; hut the time will come when the German Empire will dominate Europe. England, with all her bluster and show, has a hundred weak points, and she knows

that a conflict with a Power nearly her equal will mean her undoing. .1 hate the boasted Englanders, even though' German blood rules from the throne.” When I told him that some people had paid me the high compliment of calling me the ‘Bismarck of the Ear East,’ the Prince tried to look

serious, as if studying my meaning. Then he smiled under his bushy eyebrows and whispered to Captain Ruffbach: ‘Ted His Excellency that the French would not consider that a compliment at all!’ I found that the Prince could deliver a compliment as quickly as anyone, for he said: ‘And so they have called your Excellency the Bismarck of the Far East, eh? Well, I want to tell you that 1 cannot ever hope to be termed the Li Hung Chang of Europe.’ I am wonderfully impressed with the way this nation seems to be working as a unit. The army is upon a business basis, the navy is on a business basis, and the ■whole machinery of government work smoother than our best Canton timepieces.”