THE WAR AND ENGLAND.
The Home News remarks :—To Englishmen tho importance of the intelligence that the earliest battles between the Muscovite and Mussulman are likely to take place on Asiatic and not European ground may be of extreme importance. So long as the independence of Constantinople was not Beriously menaced from the Balkan Peninsula, we might afford to remain comparatively unconcerned spectators of a war in Europe between Russia and the Porte, assured that neither Germany nor
Austria will permit Russia to acquire continued possession of the Danube.. It becomes an entirely different question when we contemplate the possibilities of a successful campaign of the Russian troops in Asiatic Turkey. Here, as Lord Hartington pointed out some weeks ago, the Imperial interests of England would be directly concerned. It would be impossible for England to view with equnnimity the establishment of the Russian power at Erzerum and Van, at Trebizond and Batnm, at Aleppo and Scanderoon, at Bagdad and Bassorah. The annexation of any one of these places would act as a threat to our Indian Empire. If Russia were once powerful on the Syrian coast and on the shores of the Persian Gulf, we might bid farewell to all notionof the Euphrates Valley railway, farewell to all tranquility in the conduct of our Indian trade. Of the opportunity Russia would have once she had made good her supremacy in Asiastic Turkey, of stirring up troubles on our Indian frontier, it is unnecessary to speak. If these ambitious and aggressive designs were successfully thwarted by England, after a long struggle, what a burden would have been first imposed on English and Indian finance? There is no doubt that such considerations as we have here suggested will be forced upon the English mind by the intelligence that Russia is engaged in the active prosecution of her warlike plans south-east of the Black Sea. At such a crisis the Government will not be inactive or unwatehful. Mere vigilance will be insufficient, and it becomes more than ever likely that in a few weeks we may hear of an English force established at Crete. With the English fleet within easy call of Constantinople, an English garrison at Gallipoli, and Crete, as we have suggested, in English hards, the future might be awaited with calmness and confidence. It is possible that such plans as these may be now engaging the attention of the Government. All that remains for their endorsement with the hearty approval of the nation is that for a policy fluctuating, uncertain, partly declared, there shall be substituted by her Majesty's Ministers a policy definite, decisive, clear, based not upon speculative inferences, but on the ascertained facts of history aud the unmistakeable demands of Imperial interests. There is no danger of any serious division of national opinion in this country when the Government of the day have once explained what they consider the safety of England requires, and have shown that this, and nothing less than this, is what they intend to do. As we have announced in our summary, only a section of the Opposition, headed, it is true, by no less a person than Mr. Gladstone, is prepared to call in question the policy of the Cabinet. The responsibility which rests with the Government is proportionate to the completeness of the national confidence which they may claim to have received.
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5068, 21 June 1877, Page 3
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561THE WAR AND ENGLAND. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5068, 21 June 1877, Page 3
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