18th September.
Som seven or eight years ugo there appeared in the "Forum" an article from which the following is an extract:—"It is to this insistence (the need of autocracy for Russia) that Russ'a owes her supremacy in Europe to-day. She is strong because she is unified bya single principle, organising and functioning with ease and rapidity; she is influential because her vast forces are wielded bya single will."
At the same time, in the "Fortnightly Review," "Diplomaticus," who amongst the journalistic world is supposed to be more intimately acquainted with what goes on behind the scenes than most men, wrote thus: "Russia's strength has long been gradually growing, and the moral ascendency of Russia has now become the one stable fact of the international situation. Her real power is not only found en military strength, but im internal political stability and social contentment." The italics are ours, they prove how thoroughly Russia had imposed on the West.
Curiously enough, about the same time as these appreciations were appearing in our contemporaries at home, we were discussing in this column whether or no Russian expansion had not found its limit, and on the patent fiot that were the Czar's outposts to be placed much further forward they must run up against a German, British, or Japanese rampart, we came to the conclusion that a halt must soon be called to Muscovite aggression, Since then the Boxer trouble has occurred with, as a sequel, the Russian occupation of Manchuria, and the war with Japan, It was of course understood at the time that we were referring only to that aggressive military bullying which had been the keynote to Russian policy for at least two decades There is an expansion to which Russia may and ought to aspire, that legitimate growth which should belong to a people such as hers who number well over a hundred millions land are possessed of qualities which are the admiration of all who know them. We see no reason whatever
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.