W E are still unable to believe that peace will be
kept between Russia and Japan. The difference between the interests, as well as between the aspirations, of the two Powers is too nearly incurable to be settled by diplomacy. Russia has advanced too successfully and too near towards one of the grand objects of her secular policy, the extension of her unbroken sovereignty to one of the great oceans, to recede before the bidding of a Power whose fighting strength she doubts. And Japan has risen too high in the world to be fillipped back to the third rank, being com- pelled to accept assurances which she does not believe, and which her statesmen think fatal to all hope of future ex- pansion. We say this in opposition to many Continental observers possibly more competent than ourselves, although we perceive, or think we perceive, the reasons which in- fluence their judgment and excite their hopes. At bottom, perhaps, those hopes are founded upon fears of the great commercial and financial panic which would undoubtedly follow any considerable defeat of Russia, where the savings of a generation of Frenchmen and Italians, and of no in- considerable section of Germans, have been deposited in the full expectation of a profitable peace. Still, the optimists have their reasons to plead. They do not see why Russia should not recede, and think that a transaction in the Far East can hardly involve that feeling of national honour for which the great nations always fight. Kuldja was retroceded. to China, under a threat of war, and the world has forgotten the name of Kuldja. They hear that the Czar still calls himself a devotee of peace. They know that the war, unless rapid beyond all pre- cedent, will pulverise the financial edifice which M. de Witte and his colleagues built up with so much pains, and amidst such bitter resistance from the classes who at last expelled him. They see that some hidden conflict is going on among the great group of whom the Czar is at present only the pivot, and that the advocates of peace in the bureaucracy have at least this much influence : that contrary to all Russian precedent, newspapers strongly condemning both war and the retention of Manchuria are allowed to express their opinion without suppression. They see also that Russia will lose heavily in Europe by any protracted war in the Far East. They understand that Bulgaria will take advantage of her opportunity for a final effort to attain legal independence of the Sultan, and the possession in one form or another of her half of Mace- donia ; and they recognise—what is, of course, quite obvious—that when Russia is preoccupied in Asia, Austria becomes the overshadowing Power in the Balkan Peninsula. Things might, they say, settle themselves most inconveniently for Russia in the Balkans. Even the extinction of Japan would be no consolation if the road to Constantinople were permanently barred. These argu- ments, they are persuaded, are as familiar in St. Peters- burg as in Berlin, Paris, or London; and therefore they doubt the certainty of war, expecting, with a belief which is not a faith but is operative, that at the twelfth hour Russia will give way, perhaps covering retreat by a proclamation.
But the Japanese may declare war ? No, say the hopeful on the Continent, the Japanese, though brave, are not quite so audacious as they wish for the moment to be considered. The statesmen of Tokio, they think, know that the war, even if successful, would place a tremendous strain upon the resources of Japan, would exhaust an organisation which, however powerful, is a, little new, and would render a cordial peace between herself and her colossal enemy impossible for a generation. No doubt Korea would be obtained, and might be fortified almost beyond reach of attack ; but Korea is a bad swarming-ground for the Japanese millions, for it has already thirteen millions of its own. Again, Korea can never be safe without a strict alliance with China, which the Japanese are sedu- lously engaged in cementing, and which the war might interrupt. China lies open to Russian attack at many points if war is once declared, and her ruling class shiver with the fear of irreparable losses, a fear made evident by their con- stant professions of their intention to be neutral. Neutral, in a war actually waged upon their own soil ! Japan, moreover, though assured of the benevolence of Great Britain and America, is not sure of their active assistance; and remembering the result of her last war, has an uneasy lingering doubt whether Europe at heart intends that she, a strictly Asiatic State, should become a Great Power. Therefore, say the sanguine thinkers of the Continent, the cool statesmen of Tokio, who still appear able to hold their common people in leash, hesitate to strike any blow which would make hostilities inevitable, and are leaving Russia one more chance of which she may still avail herself.
We have tried to state the case for those who still believe that the result will be a patched-up peace with the utmost fairness, but we must confess that the arguments weigh but little with our own mind. They leave out of the account the broad fact that Russia has rarely had such an opportunity of fighting for a great stake within the secluded area of her own North Asiatic world, and without any direct chance of European interference. She thinks, and has signified to France, that if Britain is restrained she obtains the full benefit of her French alliance ; and she does not, in truth, apprehend interference from America. She can avert that by temporarily conceding the "open door " to trade in Manchuria, and so postponing for a time the full profit for her traders from their new acquisi- tion. It is easier to postpone the profits of monopoly for a few years than to postpone such a chance of territorial expansion as her party of action are now convinced that they enjoy. Nor can we believe that in a period of universal social discontent throughout the broad provinces of Russia retreat will be as easy to her Government as it would have been while the people were less fully awakened, and while the Czars had in their hands the tremendous instrument of emancipation. Nor, though it is most difficult to ascer- tain the precise facts, is it quite possible to believe that the Mikado's Government, absolute as it is in a sense, can afford to disregard the popular unanimity expressed in the last great vote of the Diet without some danger to an authority which even liberal statesmen in Japan are most unwilling to impair. Even they still prefer the Mikado to the multitude, and will run great risks rather than suffer the Japanese " man in the street " to think Japan dishonoured. For the rest, all the signs by which politicians usually estimate the chances are still strongly in favour of war, and war at so short a date that the Russian Admiralty thinks it worth while to shadow new cruisers belonging to Japan, and the Russian War Office to send an entire corps d'aringe over the already overweighted Trans-Siberian Railway to increase a force which it has been proclaiming for weeks to be already more than sufficient. The Japanese, on their side, obviously did something to prevent a seizure of Masampho, though the details are not yet accurately known ; and though their pecuniary resources are far inferior to those of Russia, they are spending money like water, to be ready, as the French Minister said, to the buttons of their gaiters. Their self-confidence will certainly not have been diminished by the renewed pledge with which Mr. Balfour on Monday reaffirmed, as it were, the limited Alliance with Japan. They will not expect from him immediate action; but they will think that he deals with them as with one of the Great Powers,—a pretension for which every Japanese who understands it is willing to lay down his life. We can- not but think that they mean war unless Russia recedes ; and if Russia recedes before what is now a clear and open challenge from an Asiatic enemy who is visible to her masses, we have misread. her history and that of the limited but able group of courtiers, soldiers, and states- men who have, since the days of Peter the Great, remained, under the headship of the Romanoffs, the directing caste of Russia.
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