The Emperor of Russia has directed the Grand Duke Con-
stantine, with many distinguished officers, to congratulate the Emperor of Austria on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his admission to the Military Order of St. George, June 28. As this is also the anniversary of the battle of Raab, i.e., of the first victory gained by the Russian troops over the Hungarians in 1849, the occurrence has given rise to many specu- lations. Is the old alliance renewed, or is the Czar calmly satirising the Kaiser, or is it all an accident? There are few accidents in the arrangement of ceremonials of the kind, and the intention of the Czar may be to remind the Austrian Emperor that if again in danger, he may be again compelled to apply for Russian assistance. The Times seems to think that an intentional affront is involved in the incident, but if so, the Haps- burgs have met it with their usual stately calm. The Emperor receives the Archduke, and says nothing of Raab ; his Ambassa- dor in London takes the occasion to utter a speech dilating on the harmony between Austria and Hungary ; aid the cue obviously given to everybody is to say that the incident has only revealed the completeness with which the two kingdoms have for- gotten their domestic quarrel. Indeed, it may tend to harmony, for Hungary is not likely to forget that without German sup- port she, with her partly Slavonic population, would lie at the mercy of St. Petersburg, or that the best road to Constantinople lies through Buda.
