EPHEMERA.*
Mn. GEOFFREY DRAGE has brought together a selection from the speeches and papers which he has published in the course of his work as a member of what he calls, with a happy appropriateness, tits "Volunteer Civil Service of the country." Tho field covered is a large one, but in present circumstances the reader will naturally turn to Parts IV. and V.—those which are headed "Russia" and "The Great War and Sea Training"—and to the "Epilogue," which touches, in the light thrown upon them by the present war, upon many of tin questions in the consideration of which the author has spent his life. What is most significant in these chapters is the contrast betwee:t two of Mr. Drago's speeches in the House of Commons—one on August -10th, 1898, the other on March 20th, 1899. In the earlier * Ephemera. By Geoffrey Drage. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [10s. Od. het.] speech we are warned that the policy of Russia is to absorb China, to exclude British trade from the Chinese market, and generally to treat England as an adversary. In that made only seven months later, though the facts stated are much the same, the method of dealing with them has completely changed. Mr. Drage has come to recognize the growth in the men immediately around the Tsar of Slavophil ideas, and of faith in the mission, political, social, and religious, which Russia has to carry out. He no longer insists on the need of marking out the area of our special interests in Asia and defining what amount of interference with them will constitute a cans belli. Ho treats the Peace Conference proposed by the Tsar as an occasion for trying to arrive at an understanding between Russia and England on the very matters dealt with in tho earlier speech. Probably few of those who listened to this suggestion appreciated the greatness of the change it foreshadowed. Englishmen were still influenced by the Ideas of Palmerston and Beaconsfield. They had still to discover that the true reason why Russia threatened us in Asia was that we stood in the way of her natural progress in Europe : Afghanistan was a theatre of Russian intriguo because England was still convinced that Constantinople must remain Turkish. There is no reference to the need of a revolution in English policy on this question In Mr. Drage's second speech, but evidently something of the sort was in his mind when he made it. He returns to the relations between the two countries in the "Epilogue," -with special reference to the urgent need of an immediate revision of the Anglo-Russian Commercial Treaty concluded in 1859. If nothing is done in this way during the war, there is a real danger that it "may be merely thrown in its present form into an omnibus clause of the general treaty on the conclusion of peace." When this time comes European diplomacy will have its hands full. It will have to settle " the national, political, military, and naval issues concerned in the reconstruction of the European system," slid with these tremendous it3811C3 urgently calling for settlement what chance is there that new commercial treaties will gain anything like tho amount of attention they merit ? In the case of Russia the question will have an importance special to itself. Russia "is on the era of a tremendous industrial development" which is only waiting the conclusion of peace, and Germany will be on the watch how to turn it to the best account. All the traditions of the pre-war period will work in her favour. Her business men all speak Russian, and Mr. Drage foresees a further advantage in the knowledge gained by "the million and more Gelman and Austrian prisoners now quartered in Siberia and doing industrial and other work." His special suggestion is that the English Government should not trust to the knowledge which can be gained by written communications. He would have a small mission sent out from this country to Russia to obtain all the facts and figures "which the great Departments of State may consider necessary." The members of such a mission should be well acquainted with Russian economics, and with the "leading personalities in Petro- grad and Moscow." His own observation points to the conclusion that Russian public opinion would welcome the aid of British capital and of British workmen in place of the German infiltration whioh has so long exercised a disastrous influence on the political, bureau- cratic, and commercial action of the great Slavonic Empire. We have dwelt chiefly on this portion of Mr. Drage's volume because of its immediate importance, but there are other social questions coming into sudden prominence on which he has much to say.
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