Let us suppose, for example, that as a consequence of this most alarming incident at Samakoff, hostilities should ensue between Russia and Austria, the former being the aggressor. In that case Germany—in virtue of her published Treaty with the Hapsburg Monarchy—would almost immediately have to take the field. Now, in such a contingency, is there not a grave danger that France, seizing the golden opportunity for which she has so long been waiting, would at once mobilise her army, and march the greater part of it towards the Rhine? And is it not certain that the immediate result of such a revengeful step on her part would be that Italy, true likewise to her Treaty engagement with Germany, would make haste to spring upon the flank of the Republic? It is not well to forecast evils, but at the same time it is well to look clearly ahead. We know surely enough the real nature of the feelings with which the Bulgarians are regarded by their ‘Liberators,’ just as we are equally cognisant of the true character of those who profess to be the Sultan’s ‘friends,’ and who, with the privilege of most intimate amity, have repeatedly helped themselves to disintegrating slices of his dominions. We need not remind our readers of that bitterness which still rankles in the breasts of the Roumanians at the memory of the manner in which they were ‘rewarded’ for services rendered at the Gravitza Redoubt and elsewhere during the war against the Turks; a bitterness which was only equalled by the rage of the Russians when they recognised the supreme folly of their conduct in forcing Roumania to accept the Dobrudja in exchange for Bessarabia, and thus depriving themselves of a _pied à terre_ and strategical base of operations south of the Danube, in the direction of the grand goal of their ultimate ambition—the Golden Horn. It is as much the desire of Russia to undo this unfortunate bargain as it is to shake herself free from the intolerable shackles that restrain her liberty of action in the Black Sea, and seal up the outlets thereof against her ships of war. Russia is only awaiting a proper opportunity for accomplishing these two other stages in what she deems to be her destiny (and does not everything come to him who can wait?) just as she continues to pursue her anti-English policy in Central Asia with steady, disdainful, unresisted strides, ever lessening the distance between her own frontiers and those of India, and thus paving the way for the execution of her policy of preventing the forces of England from being thrown into the balance should any complication arise in the East of Europe. ‘And ever,’ as Tennyson sang, ‘upon the topmost roof the banner of England blew;’ but that proud banner has now, at last, been blown away by Cossack colonels from the topmost roof of all—the ‘Roof of the World’ itself, thus enabling Russia to overpeer our very Indian plains, and thence despatch her Calebs and her Joshuas to spy out this other land of promise.