During the past week there has been a great deal
of most unnecessary and mischievous tall talk owing to the fact that directly after the Russian Minister at Pekin had informed the Chinese Government of the agreement with England as to spheres of railway development, he pressed for a concession to connect the Russian Manchurian railway with Pekin. This was at once alleged in certain quarters to be another act of Russian perfidy. But as the St. James's Gazette pointed out in an extremely sensible leading article, the Russians were in reality only asking for what it had been specifically agreed they might ask for in the ag resilient between us and them. Fortunately, the outcry at first raised seems now dying out in view of a betber under- standing of the facts. The British public are, we believe, beginning, surely if slowly, to abandon the prat' rnatural suspicion of Russia once entertained, and 'to see rrhat even if Manchuria is placed in railway communication with Pekin the British Empire will not fall to pieces.
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