Tue chief London dail; are 80 full of local affairs and advertisements, and the reading public are so imperative in their demand for "actualities that is, full accounts of the things that are going on under their own noses—that much interesting matter that used formerly to be inserted is now crowded out of their columns. 'I'he letters from distant "special correspondents," which kept Londoners minutely informed of what was going on all over the world, no longer appear; only what. correspondents send by telegraph is printed, and not all by any means of that. In the same way the report of the proceedings of parliament has been cut down to a mere sketch, only a very few prominent members of the House of Commons
complete reproduction of their speeches. being honoured by an approach to a Many important matters are handled at question times, before the debate of the evening begins, and yet nothing like justice is done to thei, a whole string of questions and auswers—of far greater real importance than the thrice-repeated arguments for and against the Home Rule Bill—being disposed of in a few lines, On the 2ist of February last Mr. 'l. G. Bowles of Vanity Fair fame, who has imposed on himself for some years the duty of watching and drawing public attention to the voracious wickedness of the Russian satraps in Asia, asked series of questions in the House on the subject of Russian aggression in the Pauirs, and the answers, which conveyed some rather weighty information, are condensed in the London daily papers into one or two lines. But Mr. Bowles fortunately has the ear of that extremely well-informed paper the Morning Post, and in that paper he has given a fuller account of the admissions he extracted from the government. 'I'he gist of these twas that in the spring of 1892 Somatash, on the Alfchur Pamtt, was occupied by a Chinese force, which was driven out by an Afghan force, this Afghan force being in turn driven out, after a fight in which several Afghans were killed, by Colonel Yanoff and his Cossacks; and that the Chinese have asked our government to explain on what pretext the Afghans, for whom the Chinese consider us responsible, drove out their troops. Mr. Bowles argues from this that our government admits the claim of the Chinese to Somatash, and repudiates the claim of Russia to the Alichur Pamir; and that. therefore we ought to have nothing to do with any proposal from Russia to delimit the frontier with her; bnt rather that we should back up China's claim by all means in our power, and, Russia's true frontier in these regions being the Murghab and Aksu rivers, "we should distinctly intimate to Russia that unless. she retires: within this frontier we shall: regard the matter seriously, and take such steps as the situation may dewand, not merely in India but elsewhere,"
The claim of Afghanistan to the Alichur Pamir may be quickly dismissed. In the first place, the Amir Abdur Ralinan, when applied to by our government on the part of China for an explanation of the expulsion of the Chinese from Somatash by his troops, professed complete ignorance of the occurrence, and assured the Indian government that he would make enquiries into the matter, The real explanation appear to be that Abdur Rahman anticipates that, sooner or later, the Indian government will want to fix definite boundaries between our territory and his possessions, and he therefore thinks it a wise policy to push forward wherever he can and wherever he dares, in order to claim a right of possession which may be profitably surrendered by and by for adequate compensation. This is the Standard's explanation. The Russian claim is a derivative one, Russia claims that the scanty tribes in the Alichur Pamir were under the suzerainty of one of the Khanates that she has now absorbed, and that her absorption of the suzerain involves the absorption of the vassals. Meanwhile she holds also Abdur Ralman's opinion that possession is nine points of the Jaw, and accordingly she sent Colonel Yanoff to " jump the claim," but Colonel Yauoff mace the mistake of retiring northward before the winter, leaving only a small detachment of men exposed in tents to the rigours of the arctic cold on the Roof of the World, to which most of them are believed to have} succumbed. Chiva's claim is a very old one, and it appears that the Chinese are determined to maintain it. There has been an eager enquiry at Peking and tientsin for maps of the Pamirs. Some six or seven military instructors have been sent from the tientsin College, and will arrive in August; the Governor of the New Dowinion is about to start an arsenal; and the Viceroy Li Hung-chang has been ordered to send 20,000 modern rifles; but when they will arrive is uncertain. here will bea Boundary Commission, but thet cannot get to work until July, and meanwhile the Ysungli Yamen is taking an unusual interest in the matter; and the Chinese have the advantage of knowing chat Russia is very indisposed to an actual quarrel with China, and will avoid it by every possible means until the trans-Siberian railway can be used for bringing up wen and material, Rowzaxps' Ovosto, a pure and scienti cally prepared tooth powder, antacid, an parasitic and slightly alkaline, it penetrates to the hidden flaws and crevices of the teeth where decay originates, removes tartar, polishes and preserves the enamel, prevents and arrests decay and sweetens the breath; is free from neid or gritty ingreclients, Rowsaxps' Essesce: or Tyre dyes red-or grey hair a permanent brown or black, 4s. Ask dealers in perfumery for Row anes' articles. Qa Ija- 94 88
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.