Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1901. RUSSIAN ADVANCE.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 27 April 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1901. RUSSIAN ADVANCE.

Through the bold front of Japan, which Power possibly had Britain and America, if not Germany also at her back, Russia for the first time being, has been athwarted in her determined attempt to annex Manchuria and Corea, and convert the Yellow Sea into a Russian Gulf. Why the Powers so strenuously opposed the Muscovite advancement is clear. It would give her at once, what has been the dream of all the Czars since the time of Peter the Great, and enable her ere many years to become a naval power of such magnitude as to menace the rest of the civilised world. The establishment of a Russian government with a commanding naval base in Northern China will inevitably give a fresh importance to her position, and aims in Persia. In the Northern Pacific she has reached the open sea, and is well on her way to absorb the Hinterland. The full exploitation of these remote eastern provinces cannot be sufficiently secured by the long land lines through the inclement regions of Northern Asia. The next step must be to develop a sea-borne trade and protect it by a strong naval squadron. Once firmly established at the eastern extremity, Russia will next require a position nearer home, which will shorten the long sea journey, or at least protect the route which her ships must follow between the Black and Yellow Seas. Such a position is to be found in the Persian Gulf and nowhere else. This is her natural outlet to the Indian Ocean; she will now s )ek to secure it. It is no new idea. Towards this end the poiicy of Russia has been working not years or decades but for centuries. The so-called Will of Peter the Great expresses it succinctly. " Lose no opportunity to provoke war with Persia ; hasten her decay; hasten her decay, penetrate to the Persian Gulf; re-establish the I ancient trade of the Levant, and ad- ! vance upon India." The founder of modern Russia looked no further than the Indies, but the horizon .has since extended. With that steady, relentless determination -which has terrified the

nations of Asia, this policy has been pursued through difficulty, opposition and obstruction till the end is now in sight. In the last quarter of the century the progress has been literally at railroad speed. The conversion of the Caspian into a Russian lake, and the subjugation of Central Asia, have laid Persia open all along her northern frontier. The Trans-Caspian railway has cast its arras about her borders', and the garrisons along the line from Kizil Arvat to Khushk stand ready to replace diplomatic dominance by military occupation whenever the occasion arises. That the occasion will arise whenever Eussia requires it is not a prophecy but a commonplace. Everything has been carefully prepared. Russian trade, sedulously fostered, has surveyed and opened the roads of advance, and furnished at each step a reason or a pretext for fresh interference. Russian officers command the most disciplined section of the Persian army, and Russian diplomacy, backed by irresistible force, has transcended, it might almost be said has excluded all other influence in the Persian Court.