19th Oct.
Tus Reuter's telegram which we publish to-day goes a good way towards explaining the inaction at Peking at which we have all been wondering, but not as those who have no clue. We hinted on Thursday, and before, that "China is very fortunate, and some European complication may possibly come to her assistance now." It has apparently come. here have not been wanting indications of it in the telegrams published in our columns during the last week or so. It is, as usual, a Russian "scientific" expedition that has been exploring on the "Roof of the World," as the Pamir steppes north of the Hindu Kush, in Turkestan, east of Bokhara and north of Kafiristan, are called.
An Allahabad telegram which we September, told us that the Russian published on Saturday, dated 22nd
exploring "parties had assumed an aggressive attitude on the Pamirs. Lhe scientific pretence was audaciously abandoned. Captain Younghusband who, with Lieutenant Davison, has been travelling without an escort on this Roof of the World, where the great Victoria Lake is at an altitude of nearly 2,000 feet above the top of Fusiyama, was driven back by the Russians, although there was a Chinese general on the Alichur Pamir who came to Lieut. Davisou's assistance, and tried to stop the Russians. "'I'here can be no doubt," said the telegram, "that the Russians have deliberately forced the question of their right to control the Pamirs between the Uhiuese boundary of Kashgar and the Afghan frontier at the Sarikul (Wood's Take), as laid down in the Granville Agreement of 1873." That this disquieting suggestion is not merely a product of Russophobia which so often inspires the Indian Press, is shown by the extract from the Russian paper, the Novoe Vrenya, which appeared among the telegrams published on Friday. 'That journal was represented as' saying: "Unless England desires war, it will be advisable to avoid meddling with at at Puwir, Central Asia, where a chi may be met unless the claims of Great Britain are supported by arms." We can afford to treat with indifference the inspired and uninspired menaces of the Russian Press, which finds it politic to bombastise every now and then, in order to conciliate the Pauslavists but when it comes to the Russian use of force in territory to which they have no claims whatever, where our acceptance of a check, however slight, is a grave danger to our prestige in India, we cannot afford to be indifferent; and the Novoe Vremya will find that Great Britain is prepared to support her claim with arms.
The fact is that Russia is not at all in comfortable circumstances. The and the somewhat half-hearted friend-Alliance ties her down in Europe, ship of France, who has just warned her that that friendship does not include connivance at her seizure of: Coustantinople, is not a sufficient set-off to the Dreibund. Russia sees the Balkan provinces growing stronger every year, and piling obstacles on that side: in the way of her march to Stamboul, and her energies are now being devoted towards opening up another road to! India. General Alikhauoff was sent to spy out Afghanistan and captured there u his disguise by the Amir; but if the Ru: attack on India were made through Afghanistan, her forces would be worn out by the Afghan hostility before they could reach the Indian frontier, The new attempt is to be made by Bokhara and the Hindu Khush, the Cuarevitch having been sent to India as a preliminary step, to let the Indians see something of their future lords. The Amir of Bokhara has been invited to Russia, and courteously informed that Russian troops will keep order for him in his territory during his absence. He may fare indeed like the hedyesparrow told of in Avy Lear, which "fed the cuckoo so lon That he had his head bit off by her you Then a " scientific" expedition with a large armed escort is sent to explore the Pamir steppes, with the results already mentioned and a sequel still to be awaited.
The importance of this is not confined to Englishmen and Russians in China. In 1873, when the Viceroy of India sent his return mission to the Amir of Kashgar across the Pamir steppes, they were occupied by the Kirghiz, but Lieut.-Col. Gordon, whose book, The Roof of the World, gives us a good description of this marvellous table land, mentions seeing a Chinese fort on the road from Sarikul to the plains, a fort "with high loop-holed walls extending up the hills on both sides of the narrow valley mouth." The reconquest of Turkestan by the Chinese has made the Pamir steppes Chinese territory again, and we have learned that there was quite recently a Chinese general on the Alichur Pamir, a sere about 160 miles southwest of Kashgar. Hence arises a complication of the deepest interest to us all, China and England are mutually interested in not allowing Russia to annex the Pamirs, and it is to be expected that Lord Salisbury will find it more important to join China in withstanding Russia, than to join the other Powers in coercing China. Russia must be withstood at once, the coercion of China can be postponed; or in return for our assistance in keeping Eastern Turkestan inviolate, China may be disposed to grant our demands without coercion. Anyway, China has, it seems, obtained a respite; but if she does not use it carefully, it may bring on her worse troubles. If the Chinese think that the inaction of the foreign Powers is due to fear of her strength; if it gets bruited about the valley of the Yangtze that the foreigners did not dare to face the might of China's braves things will rapidly go from bad to worse, and we shall. hope that the Americans and the French, who are interested with us in having their treaties observed, will not necessarily withdraw because circumstances compel England to hold off fora tine. All the Powers know the danger of letting the Chinese think that they have come off victorious iv a conflict with the West.
We have now, it seems, the key to Russia's indignant demand that the Porte shall allow her Volunteer steamers to pass freely through the Dardanelles with troops and arms on board, and to her arrangement with France that she shall be allowed to use Saigon and other Indo-Chinese ports as coaling stations, as well as to her haste to forget the attack on the Czarevitch in Japan, We still hope, however, that she will not proceed to extremes. She is terribly in want of money, for her attempt to float a 3% loan in Paris is evidently a failure, {¢ was put off too long, France might have taken it up had it been emitted when the country was in the first flush of enthusiasm over the Cronstadt reception. Now France has had time to think it over, and the roseate glow has died out. hat the Czar of Russia wants war, we do not believe; but he is obliged to pander to the Pauslavists, and they, apparently, are not sufficiently appeased by the pretentious commencement at Vladivostock of a railway which the country has no money to complete. Their idea is that if they can keep us occupied in Central Asia, they remove the main obstacle to their advance on Constantinople; but it will not be the first time that they have reckoned without their host.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.