Note 1 — THE WAR IN ASIA.

These views are not an after-thought, but will be found expressed in our article on “The Peace,” written before the Treaty of Paris was ratified. Inter alia, alluding to the probable results of the Treaty, we observed—“By guarding the line of the Danube, while leaving open the Transcaucasian frontier and the shores of Anatolia, you change the main line of Russian advance from the western to the eastern side of the Black Sea. You divert it from Europe into Asia, and by so doing change the Powers by whom such southward progress brings her into collision. On the Danube, Russia has Austria for a rival; but for Asia Minor, Austria has no concern,—there Russia will meet no rival but Great Britain, who will be left to struggle with her single-handed.” And we characterised this as “the best method for directing the march of Russia from Europe into Asia, and thereby not only freeing France and her Austrian alliance from the rivalry and pressure of the Czar, but of raising a new and permanent source of antagonism between Russia and England,—every step of the former of those Powers necessarily bringing her nearer to the Indian empire, and line of communication therewith, of the latter. The general public, alive only to the interests of the moment, may underrate the importance of this stipulation, but its consequences will be none the less momentous because not immediate. It is a legacy of hostility between Russia and England which the future will duly honour.”—(May 1856, p. 617.)