NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE history of the week tends to beget the suspicion that some one is striving to gain time. Nothing advances, except the armaments, and they advance rapidly. The new negotiations, based on the plan of a Congress to revise the Treaties of 1856 and 1871, have failed ; and the proposal that the Russian Army should retire to Adrianople and the English Fleet to Besika Bay, though not rejected, does not advance. There are insuperable difficulties, it would appear, in carrying out the details, difficulties increased by the Mussulman rising in the Rhodope Mountains. The Agence Russe says negotiations are going on, and the Times refuses to give up the case as hopeless ; but the Governments, all the same, are pressing on armaments, the Russians securing their road through Roumania, and the English engaging transport, and their journals discuss war as an imminent possibility. The drift, in fact, is towards war,—war to be waged by this country, with Turkey for sole ally, and with the object of again setting up the dominion which Lord Salisbury in the Conference formally condemned. The Continental journalists are, of course, delighted, and congratulate England on her defence of European law, which, for their own part, they propose to leave to take care of itself. If England wins, Russia will be wounded, which will suit every- body but France ; and if Russia wins, England will be wounded, which will suit everybody, without exception.
