The terms of this agreement have been dealt with so fully in these calamus that the briefest recapitulation will here suffice. Divided into three principal parts the Convention treats of the relations of Great Britain and Russia as touching Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. In the latter country the principle has been adopted of "hands off all round"; with the reservation that Great Britain maintains her right to deal with Tibetan authorities through her commercial agents, a right which has been the subject of protracted discussions at Simla between the Indian Government and the Chinese Treaty Plenipotentiary Chang Yin-tang; and that Russia stipulates for the claim of her subjects to approach the Dalai regards "Afg!, Russia recognizes this State as being outside the sphere of Russian influence, and undertakes neither to send any Agents i nor to deal with it by dividing that country into three spheres, in the northernmost of which the fait accompli of Russian influence is formally recognized, while the south-eastern is set aside for Great Britain.
It is possible to cavil at individual items of the Convention. In Tibet Great Britain certainly appears to have sacrificed more than could have been justly expected of her, especially after her expensive expedition of 1904. The Persian clause cannot but arouse grave doubts as to the justice and moral consequences of staking out claims in a country which is at least nominally independent and thereby reducing it to the virtual condition of a vassal kingdom. Moreover the violent internal discord and hopeless impoverishment of Persia leave us with the conviction that the Persian question is far from being permanently solved. But at least we may hope that the olearness of the present understanding will tell in the solution of any fature complications; and that hope is based on the indisputable worth of the Convention as a whole. Without it even the Russo-Japanese War would have done no more than suspend for a while the long-standing belief that sooner or later Great Britain and Russia must meet in battle, That the Convention has effectually shattered this belief is only a part of its work. For it no piece of blind prejudice but a mere recognition of bare fact to say that Germany has counted on war between Great Britain and Russia to clear the path of her own development; und once the danger of such a conflict is removed, not only does the peace of Europe gain in strength but the centre of the world's action is shifted to a new quarter.
THE PACIFIC LITTORAL, Other events, however, than the Anglo-Rassian Convention had already combined to assign the centre of interest to the shores of the Pacific. Ifthe Convention is to be regarded as the one most, important incident of 1907, it would be fair to set beside it as the most noticeable development of the whole year the steadily increasing prestige of Japan and the respect in which she is held by other nations. As regards her relations with her Ally and with her former enemy, there is little to be gathered from the records of the year but what is satisfactory. On September 11 the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation and the Convention of Fisheries between Japan and Russia, which were stipulated for under the Treaty of Portsmouth, were published in Tokio; and although Japan has had the best of the bargain, especially in the surprisingly liberal concessions made by Russia in the matter of Japanese fishing interests on the Russian coust and the Amur River, there appears to be hardly less satisfaction with the arrangement in Russia than in Japan, Henceforward Russians are free to pursue in the Far Bast a policy of peaceful Original from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.