We can afford to follow events with growing solicitude and remain neutral as long as we may. Whether or not we maintain this neutrality to the end our action can change neither the fortunes of Greece nor the position of other Powers. It is to be presumed that the power driving this giant conflict to the conclusion has more remote motives and that to all appearance, the war will end without any of the participants suffering a crushing defeat. While Russian aspirations are generally considered to be in harmony with those of the Balkan kingdoms, the following extracts from Russian papers representing varying shades of Muscovite opinion show now an unfavorable or critical attitude. Thus the foremost organ of the Panslavist Party, the Russian weekly Slavianski Izvestija, April No. 8, disapproved the Bulgarian plea to give Thrace and Adrianople through Russian influence. Of the Macedonian question this paper said: Bulgarians expect that Russia will get for them Macedonia Thrace, and Dobrudja, to reward their honest labors. Alas, they must learn that not every day, but every hour, Macedonia is receding from their grasp. For Russia the Macedonian question hardly exists. If Macedonia finds it hard to be under heroic and benevolent Serbia, what would become of her on the day when she should fall into the hands of Bulgaria? And should we Russians, in order to assure Macedonia such a future, grieve now our dear ally Serbia? The semi-official Novoye Vremya of Petrograd commented on May 27, on the statement of the Bulgarian Premier Radoslavoff published in Vienna, that Bulgaria cannot engage to intervene without a formal treaty, a policy, it believes, that says but one thing, namely: "You Russians tricked us Bulgarians once; you shall not trick us again." This attitude of Bulgaria shows, the Novoye Vremya thinks, "how thick-headed and insensate its people are." The Birjevaja Viedomosti, a standpat Russian daily of Petrograd, on May 23 warned Serbia that, whereas the war began in her behalf and on her account rivers of blood are flowing, her complaints of the allotment of Dalmatia to Italy should not "assert principles which have nothing to do with actualities." The same newspaper says of the whole Balkan situation: The German policy of von Buelow, having failed in Rome, is courting failure in Bucharest. In fact, all the German promises to Rumania seem to go no further than sharpening the Rumanian appetite for Russian Bessarabia, while holding out as a last bait the cession of a small parcel of Bukowina--supposing the Hungarians never consent to yielding Transylvania to Rumania. On the other hand, Germany promises Bulgaria the Turkish province of Thrace and Serbian and Greek Macedonia; but these compensations have as much value as the cessions of Corsica and Nice and Tunis in the early days of the war.