_August 15th._--On the 12th instant Eckart, of Hamburg, again sent the Foreign Office a report of the contents of some of the Russian periodicals. This includes a reference to an article by an “American,” or, more correctly, an Englishman, named Dixon, who indulges in a number of silly statements as to the intentions of Germany respecting the Baltic Provinces of Russia. These are to be refuted, and I am doing so in a communication to the _Kölnische Zeitung_, which runs as follows: “In the July number of the Russian monthly _Besseda_, we find an article by the much talked-of and prolific writer Hepworth Dixon, in which the Russians are urgently warned against the German agitation for the Baltic Provinces, which must necessarily lead to the next European war. According to Dixon it resembles the former agitation for the separation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, which after modest beginnings ultimately swept German statesmen forward in spite of themselves. It is true that up to the present the more sensible section of the German people will not hear of it. The leading statesmen in particular, including Prince Bismarck, are thoroughly and in principle opposed to it. Experience teaches, however, that fanatics are always more energetic and active than those who weigh the consequences of their acts; and it may therefore be regarded as certain that the agitation in Germany, which is maintained by skilful agents from the Baltic, will continue to spread and lead finally to a war with Russia. The _Golos_ finds it incumbent to commend to the consideration of the Russian public these silly lucubrations of a writer who obviously knows still less of Germany, its requirements and aspirations, than he does of Switzerland, upon which he recently published some few hundred pages of moonshine. That is really quite unnecessary. The only grain of truth in Mr. Dixon’s wisdom is that no leading German statesmen and no sensible people in Germany give a moment’s thought to Curland and Livonia in the same sense as they once did to Schleswig-Holstein. The agitation, which was not initiated with much skill, and was from the very beginning hollow, has not increased, but on the contrary has long since died out, with the exception of some faint echoes in opposition newspapers, whose faith in the cause they plead is itself slender. Every one with the least insight into the facts knows that ‘German’ Russia, with its one German to every ten inhabitants, cannot for an instant be assimilated to Schleswig-Holstein, nor Russia herself to Denmark; and furthermore, that we have not the least right to interfere in the administration of those provinces, nor the slightest interest in their conquest, which would only extend our straggling Eastern frontier, and render it less capable of defence. We have entirely omitted from our consideration the circumstance that we have in Russia a friendly neighbour, whose good will, which has been of