RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13333, 23 March 1911, Page 6

RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY.

CONTRADICTORY POLICIES. Sharp_Criticism in the Duma. ST. PETERSBURG, March 20. During the. debate > in', the Duma to-day on the budget Professor Milukoff, leader of the Constitutional Democrats, in discussing Russian diplomacy, said that the Foreign Office had abandoned its promise to take the Duma' into its confidence on foreign affairs. The meeting between the Czar and the Kaiser at Potsdam, he declared, had fundamentally affected the triple entente, reducing Russia’s alliance to merely an agreement of-defence. Russia had, therefore, lost old friends without having gained new ones. If the assertion of the German Chancellor regarding the mutual obligation not to enter a hostile combin-ation-of Powers was . correct- Russia’s value to her allies had greatly diminished. Professor Milukoff . -sharply > criticised Russia’s arrogant attitude towards China. : ■ “It is difficult to : estimate,” he went on to say, “what next spring will; bring forth. We are pursuing three contradictory'policies in the Near, Middle, and Far. East, and, are, afraid of a German invasion more than ever. ‘ ‘We are hopelessly stranded' in the Far East, and have lost sight of the Near East, where critical events are foreshadowed.” Professor Milukoff further declared that Russian diplomacy was receding to the level that was responsible for the war with Japan, and his assertion that exalted personages were again the cause of; much, of the trouble created a great sensation'. ,