proved powerful buffers against Russian predominance; and Russia still sways the mongrel Bessarabia then restored to her. It is now recognised that Russia, to traverse Persia, would encounter a British bayonet at every step. Disraeli’s great object, like Palmerston’s, was to prevent Turkey from becoming a fief to Russia, and the Black Sea from remaining a mere Russian lake, as the repudiation by Mr. Gladstone, in 1871, of the clause in the Treaty of Paris, for which the Crimean War had been resumed, subsequently empowered it to become. Turkey, Disraeli had written in _The Press_ of May 21, 1853, was “a necessary evil in the European system,” but one preferable to some others, and more likely to prevent general anarchy and bloodshed. And he recalled Prince Potemkin’s old inscription on the gates of Chusan: “This is the road to Constantinople.” The standing danger was the interposal of Russian ambition on the perpetual plea of a Christian protectorate--resented by many of the Christian provinces themselves--in order to constitute Turkey a Russian province, and to spread a dominion less fanatical, perhaps, but even more merciless and repressive in Europe, however civilising it has proved in portions of Central Asia. His scheme, compassing autonomy here, independence there, compactness, the power to govern and the accountability to improve, everywhere was one of development. It held within it, as he said, the seeds of “Evolution.” * * * * * How did Disraeli diagnose Russia’s legitimate aspirations? He certainly neither ignored nor condemned them, but he distinguished between aspirations legitimate and illegitimate. Speaking in 1871, after Russia had violated and Mr. Gladstone had torn up the Black Sea Clause, Disraeli criticised the course which the Ministry had pursued.