STUART MILL ON THE THREATENED RUSSIAN WAR.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 157, 9 February 1871, Page 6

STUART MILL ON THE THREATENED RUSSIAN WAR.

Mr. John Stuart Mill, in a letter to the " Times," expresses the opinion, which he thinks is shared by multitudes of his countrymen, that for England to let herself be drawn into war with Russia would be nothing less than monstrous. This (Mr. Mill says) is not the doctrine of a partisan of peace at any price. Had we, at the first breaking out of the present hateful war, declared that whichever nation first invaded the territory of the other should have England also for its foe, we should, at an extremely small risk to ourselves, in all human probability have prevented the war, and perhaps given commencement to a new era in the settlement of international differences. To effect this great good to humanity and to public morals, we did not choose to incur a mere chance of being involved in war, and in my opinion we were wrong, and have exposed ourselves to the just recriminations of the suffering people — I do not speak of the Governments — of Germany and France. Were we now to plunge into a war infinitely more dangerous to ourselves, and for which we are, materially speaking, totally unprepared, those among us who are the causes of our so doing will, in ray judgment, deserve and receive the execration of the people of England. The honour of England, Mr. MiU contends, is not concerned cither in the protection of Turkey or in the humiliation of Russia. Treaties are not made to be eternal, and before we go to war for the maintenance of one, it behoves tLe nation at least to consider whether it would enter into it afresh at the present day. We should have learnt little, indeed, from the spectacle that has been going on hefore our eyes during the last four months if we allow our journalists to hurry us iuto a Avar under the plea of honour, because of the manner or the form in which "Russia has thought fit to throw off an obligation, the substance of which we all admit we ought to be rcadv to reconsider.