9th November.
THE (October number of that valuable and well-edited periodical, the "Tmperial and Asiatic Quarter'y Review," opens with a vigorous article with the above heading by Corbet. He begins by point-ling out that the belief which his become an axiom in Europe, that there is no true enlightenment, no real progress and virtue, outside the Ghristian nations, has been rudely shaken, The good people ut home who shook their heads at the idea of Great Britain becoming the ally of a pagan Oriental nation have had a sharp awakening; for the Japanese have shown themselves far better practical Christians than the subjects of Holy Russia. "The Japanes" have made short work, for instance of th" illusion that M. Bloch, by obtaining the patronage of Nicholas LI for Cobden's d dream of universal concord, had turned it into a reality. A war of the first magnitude, on the contrary, is the re-ult of the Czar's ' passionate love of peace,' and one as little reckoned upon by his advisers as by all else, it muy be added." In is linly amusing now to read the late Lord Salisbury's eulogy of the Czar as the author of the Brace Conference of 1899," Nobsdy could doubt, "he said," the purity and grandeur of the motives which had animated the Empero: And then, speaking of the Czar's devotion to the principle of arbitration in 1 ea of war, Lord Salisbury said: " And if, as I hope, in that more distant time it is developed to a greater and more p fect end, they"—the inhabitants of Europe—will have cause to bless the name of the Sovereign to whose imagination and to whose power and courage this result will in a great measure be due." This is the Sovereign whose failure to keep his' promises has already put nearly a hundred and fifty thousand of his subjects hors de combat from wounds and sickness in Manchuria. Mr, Corbet admits, however, that the Czar did not want or expec: a war with Japan. For many years Russia has added to her territory by a well-maintained exer. cise of " bluff," by creating "the idea that her might was irresistible, und counter-acting diplomatic protes' when they could not be left un-
her advance, followed by more or less noticed—by preliminary denials of ponsible pret.xts, and by profuse assurances of the most innocentes
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.