Tuose who have a taste for signs and portents might find an emblem for the year 1907 in the fact that its opening days discovered the whole English and French Press engaged in arguing the possibility of a Channel tunnel. The idea, although it went no further than the idea, of thus physically uniting two ancient enemies, now happily turned into friends, has been carried out in practical adjustment of a remarkable number of old differences in other parts of the world. That new differences should have begun to arise in their place is inevitable in a state of society which is still very far from the millennium, But the fact remains that the past year has been unusually rich conferences and conventions. The Hague Conference in the summer and the Imperial Conference in April were certainly devoid of any great material results, and their influence for good must be appraised at its moral value. Against this the year has produced solid fruits in the shape of commercial conventions between France and Canada, France and Japan, Japan and Russia; and most brilliant pro-, duct of all, the Anglo-Russian Convention, of which it is not too much to say that it has put an end to apprehensions by which both countries have been haunted for, upwards of forty years,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.