20th September.
Our telegram from London of the 16ch instant, announcing that the Russian Ministry of Communications was considering the advisability of resuming the surveys fur a continuation of the Orenburg-Tashkent Railway to Peking, gives added interest to Mr. R. E. C. Long's article headed "Rassia's Luest Venture in Central Asia," in the August issue of the "Monthly Review." Mr. Long is rather inclined to regard this railway as having a strategical aim, and being intended to facilitate the advance on India which Russia is supposed to intend some day to undertake; but there is no reason to doubt that. it is the commercial potentialities of the line shat have urged its completion; and Mr. Long himself admits that is "is the work of the Russian industrial party, that is, of men who have hitherto opposed undue expansion, and grudged every penny of outlay for military pur-po Prince Khilkotf, the Russian Minister of Ways and Communieations, who is known in Rassian society as "The American," is a practical railway man, having served in the United States as conductor, stoker, driver of a goods train, brakeman, mechanic, and a simple workman in a factory for making rails, without ever divulging his princely rank; and it is not stonishing that he should see that if North America can support half-a-dozen transcontinental lines, Asia, with its vastly larger population, can at least do thesame. Great Britain has been so terribly slow in realising the midway possibilities in Asia, having not yet connected India with Europe by railway, though there have been fall plans before our Government for years, that when Russia shows her Teariness to seize opportunities that we have neglected, we cry out that she must mean to attack us in India.
The Orenburg-Tashkent Railway, according to Mr. Long, "was foreshadowed by de Lesseps more than a quarter of a century ago when he urged the Russian Government to make the town of Orenburg, the natural gateway of Central Asia, the starting-point of a railway through the steppes. The advantages of this scheme were even then obvious; and it would certainly have been carried out Tong ago had not Russia been {compelled to build the transcaspian line for the immediate purpose of completing her conquest of the Turkoman tribes on the north of Persia rand Afghanistan, Yet, though the transoaspian line was amply justi [by its success, is never solved the {problem of direct communication between Europe and Central Asia"
glance at a map of Asia shows ab once the importance of the new
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.