6th March.
That France is uneasy there is no doubt. Is there any sufficient reason? Is there that, ip the present position of the political world, which affects her so closely as to warrant anxiety? It can hardly be denied that there is. Noone, even now, can be certain that the Far Eastern struggle is to end. without bringing brace, and France does not want other powers into its sanguinary em-
war, But this_is not all. For more than a decade Frenchmen have been proud of their alliance with the Colossus of the North. Now they have learnt the bitter lesson that they have trusted to a reed, a braised reed, which needed but the breath of an Eastern gale to bend and break. This is bad enough to those of the upper and middle classes who had looked with the greatest pride on the alliance, But to the purely democratic section, a large one in France, to those whose Republic-ganism has taken on a tinge of Socialist, the events of Red Sunday in St. Petersburg were even worse, How can France, they ask, continue yoked with a tyranny which tramples the rights of man into the dust, and reddens with native blood the streets of the capital for no greater reason than that the lo wished to appeal to their Tie lo Father in whom they had been taught to trust? Morally, therefore, as well as_politically, the Dual Alliance has been shaken, How much, may be gauged by the fact that the spokesmen of the Government have thought it necessary to assert its continuance, Even this is not the only reason, nor even the chief, why France cannot help feeling uneasy at the present juncture. She has lent to Russia at least four hundred millions of hard sterling gold. And the finances of Russia may come with a crash to grief on any day. I: is only due to the good common-sense with which the French investor is blessed that be has not given himself up to panic ere this, What may happen after the fresh. disaster to K thin has sunk deep down into the French mind, it is difficult to say.
Yet another reason growing out of the war is giving the French ground for thought—the rise of Japanese power. Neither they nor the Russians would believe that English journalists were right when they ised the power of the Mikado's forces, whether of seaer land. There was @ sort of conspiracy to refuse even to think of Japan as a serious rival to any first-class European state, and the result of the awakening is that France and Germany are both in considerable ferment over the new threat to their Far Eastern sions, A clever French officer who pamphlet and gets it published as the report of a Japanese officer of high rank to his home government. The ruse works, as it was intended it should, and' forty millions of francs are asked for in order to strengthen the Far Eastern French position generally. Quite unnecessarily, as we believe, so far as Japan is concerned, for there is, in our opinion, no thought on the part of Japan of attacking France in Cochin-China. It might be different were France to attempt to enlarge her boundaries at the expense of southern China, but then we trust that the days of the hoped-for dissolution of China are over and done with. France is not likely w iuterfore again in order to pull chestnuts out of the fire for Russia, and still less for Germany, and hence we believe that, though the Japanese do not understand what the French understand by neutrality, they have no desire to pick a quarrel with them.
There is a threat to France closer home, and to this we learn attention is now being drawn. For some time France has ceased trying to build against Great Britain in the matter of warships. But it is evident that she cannot remain an uninterested observer of the growth of the naval power of her Eastern neighbour, and hence it was with no surprise that we heard of the determination on the part of the French Government to enter upon a course of naval construction which is intended to place France once more in her right ition regarding sea power, France is the possessor of colonies second only in extent to those of Great Britaiv. It is evident that German expansion might at any moment bring ber and the owner of colonies, whether Great Britain or France, into violent conflict. Here we think the French Government has shown more perspicacity than in its suspicions of Japan. For twenty years to come Russia may be looked upon as a negligible quantity, and hence the restraint which her supposed power had upon the wilder spirits in the Kaiser's realms will no longer remain as a political restraint upon which France can with safety trust. It is fortunate for her that she has already the warmest good wishes of Great Britain and Italy, for we may look forward with certainty toa reshuffling of the European pack before long
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.