Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎150v] (310/312)

I ■ —r-^sr^ 1 —^
The newspapers Qf this morning are unusually full of disquieting
reports, some of them possibly of a less formidable nature than they
appear at first sight, bui others incapable of any such reassuring expla
nation. The intelligence quoted from the Russky Mir in a Berlin,
telegram to the effect that General Stoleteff was accompanied back
to Tashkend by an Afghan embassy, which has remained there to await
the result of a visit of the Russian Envoy to his Imperial master at
Livadia, appears, on the face of it, very grave. It is, however,
of course possible that these movements and the disclosure of them
may mean no more than much else of the same kind. They may be only
dirtcted to the accumulation of materials for working upon the fears
of the English Government. No such explanation, however, is appli
cable to another telegram from Berlin having reference to the state
of things in European Turkey. "The native armies forming in Bulgaria
and East Roumelia, are," according to this report, " placed under
Russian officers, equipped with Russian arms, and commanded in the
Russian tongue. These troops are about 50,000 strong, the greater part
belonging to Bulgaria." These doings, if they are truly reported, are
something morfe than the creation of moral difficulties by Russia for trie
embarrassment of her political opponents. They appear to indicate a
settled resolve on her part to interpose physical obstacles to the progress
of the Berlin settlement, and to raise against it a barrier of "accom
plished facts." In Roumelia she is not, as in Central Asia, only preparing
to impose her will upon others; she is actually taking her own way in
defiance of treaty, and waiting to see what comes of it. No wonder that
Prince Dondoukoff "laughs at the idea of the European Commission
devising arrangements for an Eastern Roumelia which would never exist."
Russia is already acting as though this fact were admitted. Not that
she is unprepared, however, or Turkey either, apparently, for what may
follow upon the total subversion of the Berlin Treaty. " Forcible enlist
ment continues in Bulgaria and East Roumelia. In the latter country
arms are distributed by the Russians among the Christian villagers, while
the Tuiks provide rifles and ammunition for the Pomaks in the Rhodope
hills." •
HOT
PBWI