30 JUNE 1900, Page 28

LETTERS TO - TEE EDITOR:

COUNT MOURAVIEFF AND ENGLAND.

(To THR EDITOR OP THR "SPRCTA,TOR.") Sra,—In your notice of Count Mouravieff's death in the Spectator of June 23rd you say that "during the time of our African disasters he sounded all the Courts of Europe with a view to forming a coalition for intervention." A paragraph to that effect, I know, went the round of the newspapers. I believe it to be entirely fictitious, resting on no better founda- tion than the fact that Mouravieff happened at that time to pass through Berlin en route to Paris, and that he also visited Vienna. I have some good sources of information on Russian questions, not all Russian, and all agree in characterising this story about Mouxavieff as a canard. "His proposals," you say, "were purely tentative, as he cannot have had his master's full support." No Minister of the Czar would have dared to make any such proposals, tentative or not, without his master's full and direct sanction. If accepted by the Courts solicited, and the Czar declined to ratify them, it would mean the instant dismissal and disgrace of the Minister. But it is certain that the Czar would not have