I T might have been expected that President Roosevelt would seize
the occasion of the Japanese Trafalgar to suggest that the time for negotiation between St. Petersburg and Tokio had arrived. Personally he is a hunianitarian ; as President be is necessarily eager to seize such a chance of vindicating the great and dis- interested position of his country ; while as an American statesman he cannot wish that any Power should rise to a dominant position on the Pacific. When the Panama Canal is cut the hope of American commerce will be in that broad ocean, where already Washington owns the two thousand islands and islets of the Philippines. And as the West believes in President Roosevelt's good fortune, and is weary of the war, with its incidental dangers to neutrals, it is natural that it should believe that his intervention, if unrepulsed, would be equivalent to peace. It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether the President, far- sighted as he is, has caught the right psychological moment ; whether, that is, Russia is sufficiently beaten to accept terms which Japan is bound, for the sake of her own safety, to make severe. The Czar, of course, has sent a civil reply to Washington, for one does not affront a President of the United States for nothing, and the accept- ance of his advice pledges Russia to little, and may indeed incidentally bring her a great advantage. Whether the Czar has appointed plenipotentiaries or only dignified postmen in reality matters nothing. Whatever the terms arranged, it rests with the Czar and the Mikado to ratify them, and would rest even if both were Presidents of Republics. Pending such ratification, Tokio is asked to show her hand, and the Czar may either accept the terms, " to avoid further shedding of blood," or, rejecting them, may affirm that he rejects because they are too intolerably humiliating to the Russian people. He may even be hoping for an armistice during which either General Linevitch may retreat out of reach, or the stores of shells which he so greatly needs may be accumulated at a point only a hundred miles behind him. There is therefore no evidence as yet that the Russian Court feels itself sufficiently beaten. To the Czar and to his entourage Manchuria is no part of Russia, but is a great possession such as India is to us. We should fight for India to the last pound and the last procurable man ; but we were great before its conquest, and we should survive its loss.
On the other hand, Tokio is hardly ready to make peace. Taught by a long experience of the "Asiatic Department of Foreign Affairs," Japan distrusts pro- foundly the sincerity of Russia ; and after her amazing victories, and yet more amazing sacrifices, she is in no mood to offer terms which will leave her still exposed to a Russian revanche. She probably will not ask that Russia should bind herself never to send a fleet to the Pacific, for the demand, even if granted, would never hold good against a new wave of circumstance, and is not backed, as the similar demand was in the case of the Black Sea, by geographical facts which make it easy to destroy a fleet trying to rush the Bosphorus or the Hellespont. Japan must, however, for her own safety, deprive Russia of the power of attacking her from Saghalien or Vladivostok ; must keep Port Arthur as a fortress-arsenal giving her ingress to the continent ; must expel Russia from Manchuria, and erect in Northern Manchuria fortresses strong enough to prevent any sudden rush of her enemy ; and must also, she will think, unless she is richer than she is believed to be, ask for free money sufficient in amount to pay for the development of her Fleet into that of a first-class maritime Power. We do not see how her statesmen can ask less than this, and their inherent stubbornness has certainly not been diminished by their continuous victories. It is very ,doubtful whether the proudest house in Europe, with its evident belief in the value of prestige as essential to its ascendency in Central Asia, will be found prepared to make such concessions, which, again, must be demanded at the sword's point, or the negotiations will be protracted for years. Should we make them in the same circum- stances while men and money were still procurable ? That is the question to ask, and the answer is at all events not so certain as is just now assumed. We leave out of sight deliberately the idea that Russia may be expecting aid from Europe, for aid from Europe means aid from France or Germany, and neither Power is prepared just now for a great maritime war. ' With Russia still wrapped in her lofty and not altogether contemptible pride, events, we think, must move a step forward before the psychological moment for peace can be assumed to have been reached. Of course, if General Linevitch is destroyed, or forced to surrender, that moment will be much nearer ; but it is improbable that the Czar or his courtiers apprehend any catastrophe of the kind. They think, or at least they say, that Linevitch is far abler than Kuropatkin, and that the fighting class of Japan and the financiers of Japan are both a little exhausted.
There is, we must add, one contingency, or indeed there are two contingencies, in which these arguments will lose most of their force. The first is that the Czar, who, our readers will note carefully, remains as perfectly autocratic as he was at the beginning of the war, may have been reduced by the apparent disfavour of heaven to a condition of hope- lessness in which he will accept any terms rather than continue the struggle. Such a change in his attitude is rumoured ; but we see no good evidence that it has occurred, and think it more probable that the Czar, like most weak men, defends himself from his own weakness by an unreasoning obstinacy upon all the points at which his pride comes to the aid of his wishes. The second contingency is the fear of revolution, and upon this we entirely admit that the Court may be better informed than any outsider can even profess to be. If there is any danger that Russia may pronounce against the house of Romanoff, the Czar would doubtless make peace in order to concentrate his powers on the defence of his throne ; but of that as yet there is little solid evidence. The people are discontented, it is true ; but the autocrat can, as we pointed out months since, remove the peasants' discontent by a great Land Act ; can disregard the " intel- lectuals," who are already doubting whether peace will be to their advantage ; and can hold down the proletariat of the cities, as he is now holding down the populace of St. Petersburg, by sheer force. The force, it is argued, may fail him, or he may know that it will fail him ; but military mutinies have been very rare in Europe, and in Russia especially the Army has the pride of a reigning caste. There is agitation, no doubt, in the army of Manchuria, which has been beaten, as it thinks, by the mistakes of its generals and the faults of its officers ; but that army has no power of re-entering Central Russia until it is re- called by the Emperor. It may one day spread discontent through the villages, but that discontent need not affect a peasantry full of gratitude for a new Land Law, and in the vast plains of Russia a dispersed soldiery will not con- stitute a force. A Parliament might ; but even that is an assumption based on the other assumption that the Russian masses will consider a representative body pos- sessed of the moral right to rule or to advise. At all events, the Parliament is not yet sitting, and the bureaucracy believes that it is possible so to pack it that it will deprecate instead of promoting revolution. We are all a little bemused by the precedent of the French Revolution ; but • the French people had at least arrived at the conception that they, and only they, had a right to appoint the supreme Legislature. The Russian " intellectuals " have arrived at it also ; but are they and the masses in accord? We cannot answer the question in any convincing way; but there lies before us a proclamation which the bureaucracy has not suppressed calling upon the people to resist the claim of the " intellectuals " to power in ' the following, menacing phrases :—" If the gentlefolk by their audacity, their terrorism and assassinations, should succeed in this, little brothers, do you then refuse to recognise them as the authority and the Government, tear them in pieces, show that in the Empire you are the power, that there are a hundred millions of you, and of the intelligentia there will not be even five millions. The elect of the Czar must you be. You must tell him your views. Remember the saying : It is for the people to hold opinions, but for the Czar to give decision.' The opinions of the gentry will be always in their own favour." _
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