The Pall Mall Gazette has been so angry this week,
that its acuteness has been to some extent damaged by the violence of its emotions. On Tuesday it copied a blunder from the Times' correspondent at Vienna,—a statement, namely, that the Rou- manian Convention was dated April 6—" that is, some days before the final refusal of the Porte to the Protocol,"—and then, of counae, the Pall Mall commented with much unction on the
hypocrisy of Russia's pacific professions, when she was arranging for war before even her own overtures had been rejected. If the Convention were really dated April 6 (and not rather April 16, which seems more probable, considering that it was not presented to the Roumanian Chambers till April 28 of our Style), that would, of course, be April 6 Old Style (in other words, April 17, as we call it), which was some days after Turkey's formal refusal of the Protocol. The Pall Mall has evidently fallen, for the second time, into that trap. Surely it hardly takes the Pall Mall's avowed admiration for Russian craft to suggest that Russia would not needlessly and voluntarily publish a date con- victing herself of dishonesty when there was no occasion at all to give the draft treaty any date earlier than that of publication. "These things are glass, the sun shines through them,"— only the sun will not shine, even through glass, for an eye so atrabilious that it will not see sunshine.
Previous page
