“Oh, dear! what can the matter be?” That familiar song has been haunting me all these weeks. What can the matter be? Day after day I open the Times to find articles that are simply bewildering.

Twenty уears ago, in the height of the Jingo fever, they would have been comprehensible enough. But to-day?

In the marvellous adventures of Baron Münchausen the music that was frozen in the post-boy’s horn was thawed out hours later, to the great astonishment of the worthy baron. The articles about Russia seem to have been bottled up at Printing House-square, not for hours but for years. But what has let them off just now?

A wicked friend of mine gravely assures me that it is because Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett has recently been appointed Editor of the Times. How far this is the case I do not know. But, as the Pope said when the German potentate behaved rudely and then proclaimed his identity, “that may be an explanation, but it is not an excuse.”

Neither is any excuse possible for those busybodies who break in upon the amicable discussions of friendly Powers by angry recriminations and vehement threats. Fortunately, we Russians have learnt to know our limes pretty well by now. Otherwise the consequences might, indeed, have been serious; but nations, it would seem, are sometimes smitten with the maladies of individuals. There is a painful illness caused by a severe nervous shock that severs for a time the communication between the brain and the tongue. The directing brain loses the command of the babbling tongue, which talks on aimlessly, without any apparent relation to the matter in hand.

When we compare the policy of Lord Salisbury, who acts, with the utterances of the Times, which chatters, it would seem as if in some unaccountable way there had been a severance between the organ of direction and the organ of articulation.

The worst of it is that with the best endeavour in the world one fails utterly to see any cause for such an outbreak. Surely there is nothing new in the fact that Russia intends to utilise Port Arthur. English readers will bear me witness that weeks ago I was able to slate with firm conviction that the utilisation of Port Arthur would last as long as the lease of Kiao-Chow.

The British public supported the intelligence with rational fortitude when it appeared. It showed a calm and fair power of judgment which did not surprise those who have the good fortune to know some of its best leaders. I have good reasons for recognising a very noble and generous feature of the English national character. Whenever the nation clearly sees its mistake a strong determination is at once shown to correct it, even at great personal sacrifice. Is it not cruel to mislead such a nation? But it is exactly what the Times, owing to the aforementioned malady, has, unfortunately, been doing. But why should the Times lose its head when news, admitted by Russians themselves, comes by wire all the way from Peking?

I have tried to put down quite simply certain things which ought to be known by all who discuss the Far Eastern question.

The first is that China is not, never has been, and never will be, a special preserve of England. India belongs to her, but China does not. You have no right to regard other Powers as poachers when they utilise provinces or ports. If it suit us to do so, and China consent, that is no business of England. There exists no treaty, no custom, no understanding in China such as those which limit the freedom of action of individual Powers in the Ottoman Empire.

It may be right or wrong of Germans to lease Kiao-Chow, or of Russia to utilise Port Arthur, but in doing so we do nothing for which we need ask anybody’s leave or blessing.

The second is that this insistence of England upon “open ports” in territories which China hands over to Russia for utilisation would come perilously near to being insulting if it were not due to sheer ignorance. Why in the world some of your papers should lecture Russia as to the importance of making Port Arthur an open port, 1 am not the only one who utterly fails to understand.

Why are we going to Port Arthur at all, if it be not to open up communication between the outside world and our Siberian hinterland?

Do your self-appointed judges actually imagine that we should carry our railway hundreds of miles across Manchuria merely to lock and double-lock the door of exit and entrance against the very outside world, which we have taken so much trouble to reach? Russians are not lunatics. Is it very courteous to аssume that they are?

What a want of knowledge it all shows! Why do people not study history before making up their minds to preach to foreign nations?

After the sacred mission of Russia for the extinction of Mohammedan rule over the Christian populations in Eastern Europe, the attainment of open ports has been for centuries the dominant object of Russian policy. To gain access to the Baltic and to open the sea-gates of Northern Russia to the outer world was the great object of Peter the Great’s long war with Sweden.

To gain access to the Black Sea and to open the sea-gates of Southern Russia, which the Turks had sealed against all Christian commerce, was the chief work of Russia in the eighteenth century.

English ships which abound in Cronstadt and Odessa would never have found these doors open but for Russian sacrifices and Russian wars, and yet when, after another century, we are achieving the gigantic task of unlocking the sea-gate of Eastern Siberia, the Times and its followers think proper to clamour for open doors and open ports! Really, it is altogether too amusing! It has been publicly admitted by Sir William des Væux, an eminent but somewhat changeable authority, that Vladivostok is already a free port. And if the same cannot be said of our European ports to the extent you would desire, why not, as 1 have already suggested, have a treaty of commerce such as would be mutually satisfactory to both countries?

The third point, upon which it is necessary to insist with some precision, is that we know perfectly well what is meant by all this hubbub about open doors and open ports. There will not be—and I am revealing no secret that is not perfectly well known to all the “chancelleries” of Europe—the slightest semblance of a retreat on Russia’s part from her resolution to utilise Port Arthur, as long, at least, as Kiao-Chow is leased by Germans. There will not be—and again I am giving away nothing but a “secret de Polichinelle,” a secret known to all the world—any toleration of the establishment of Japanese or European force in the north of the Gulf of Pechili.

These facts have to be accepted as fixed and settled. I repeat we are going to Port Arthur, and we shall not tolerate the presence of any other Power on the mainland north of the Gulf of Pechili.

Neither ultimatum, nor war itself, of which your papers talk with a coeur leger, a la Emile Ollivier, will induce Russia to abandon either one or other of these firm principles of her policy.

Protests and remonstrances will avail nothing. Why, then, not concentrate your efforts within the range of the possible?

I am not an authorised exponent of Russian policy, I am merely an intensely interested bystander who is in a position to see most of the cards in the hands of both players.

Do you remember the familiar story of the great Molière asking his cook to give her opinions about his masterly plays? Outsiders may sometimes be struck with certain things which interested actors, strangely enough, failed to realise. Nothing that I can say can either compromise or commit either Government or Ministers. But in speaking quite independently, it does seem to me that the modus vivendi is quite obvious and simple.

You tell us that you do not want any Chinese territory, at least not on the mainland. Your interest is purely commercial, not political or territorial. Your papers are always telling us that you have a treaty right to import your goods at a maximum of 7 ½ per cent, duty into any port of China open to foreign trade. You naturally wish, before assenting to any new leasing or utilising of Chinese territory, to secure yourselves against any increase in the import duties. That is the British interest. A maximum of 7 ½ per cent, on all British goods imported into China, and a guarantee against any preferential duties. Why, then, cannot your diplomatists confine themselves to the securing of this simple and attainable end, instead of running about here and there, as if in search of a stone wall against which to knock their heads?

A treaty to which all four Powers—Russia, Germany, France, and England— should be parties could secure you against any increase of the import duties and guarantee you against the handicap of preferential treatment. If you were to help us to obtain what we need politically and territorially in China, that would be Russia’s gain. Our guarantee against any increase of import duties in all ports leased, utilised, or occupied would be England’s gain. Surely it is not impossible for diplomacy to negotiate a settlement on a basis so simple and so firm as this. Why not try to do so? Anything for real peace with real honour!

4, Portman-mansions, W.       О. K.