COUNT MO1JRAVIEFF AND ENGLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—" Diplomaticus" is an able and a well-informed writer, but he shares the fallibility of human nature, and I am sure that further investigation will convince him that his Mourn- vieff story is a legend. I have just read his article on, the subject in the Portwightby Review, and it confirms my previous information, which, as I distinctly said, " is. not all Russian." Here is the categorical statement made by " Diplomaticus" " It is now an open secret that Count Mouravieff, the Tsar's Minister of Foreign Affairs, was emboldened-by the anti-British
agitation on the Continent to sound certain of the Powers with a view to European intervention in our quarrel with the South African Republics."
The Powers thus sounded, "Diplomaticus" tells us, were Spain and France ; and one of his two informants, he hints, was the German Government, and the other "a diplomatist of the highest standing." That the German Government would gladly propagate such a myth is probable enough, for that Government, ever since Bismarck began to guide its policy, las devoted itself persistently to the task of making bad blood between England and Russia. And a diplomatist may be " of the highest standing " and yet not be in the secrets of the Russian Foreign Office. " Diplomaticus " refutes himself when he admits that Mouravieff's tentative scheme of a league against Great Britain was " made on his own initiative and without instructions from the Emperor." Now, it is within my knowledge, and is indeed, to quote " Diplomaticus's " phrase, "an open secret," that the Czar would not have sanctioned any such scheme. He vetoed it peremptorily after the Jameson Raid when the German Emperor proposed it. Mouravieff knew his master's mind, and to believe that he sounded any Powers—and Spain and France, of all Powers— with a view to an intervention which the Czar would certainly veto, is to believe the incredible. If "Diplomaticus " will look at my letter again, he will find that I said nothing so silly as that " no Russian diplomatist makes tentative overtures on important questions without previously obtaining the sanction of the Czar." Where is the analogy between a suggestion about an " Anglo-Russian railway" "originated by a distin- tinguished Russian diplomatist," and sounding European Powers with a view to war against England ? Mouravieff knew that his master would resent the suggestion which "Diplomaticus" attributes to the Minister, and that proves that he never made it. But Mouravieff was a social wit and a genial cynic, and it is quite possible that he may have asked in some smoking-room a question which, after the manner of myths, has come to be believed as a fact. I think that even " Diplomaticus " "has not followed the recent course of international politics." Count Mouravieff's calculations, according to "Diplomaticus," "left in relief a possible Quad- ruple Alliance—Germany, France, Russia, and Spain—which, by an auspicious coincidence, was precisely the same combina- tion as that which the statesmanship of Prince Lobanoff had organised in 1895 for intervention in the Far East after the Peace of Shimonoseki." Unfortunately for this analogy, Prince Lobanoff invited Great Britain, before any other Power, to join Russia in settling the question of the Far East on the basis of a Dual Alliance ; and it was after we had curtly rejected her friendly overture and caused her to suspect our intentions that she invited other Powers to join her. I have always thought that Lord Rosebery's Cabinet made a grievous mistake on that occasion. In checking the dangerous ambition of Japan after her victory over China in 1895 Russia did a signal service to Europe in general and England in particular. Japan, not Russia, is the Power which we have to fear in the Far East.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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