years are over a large slice of Mongolia will be Russian. The Russians have certain winning ways of their own, altogether foreign to our system of diplomatic procedure, of getting what they want from the Chinese. While we are spending millions in sending armies to fight the Chinese, for questions which are as much or more for their own interests as for ours, and then as conquerors astonishing the Chinese by the moderation of our demands, the Russians are in the most amicable manner possible pushing forward their frontiers, and slicing off a thousand miles of Chinese coast, all the while maintaining their position as friendly allies of the Chinese, in contradistinction to the English barbarians, who are always blustering and fighting, in utter defiance of the rules of courtesy. After all it may be as well so. Our interest as a commercial people is to develop the resources of the world. The Russians will certainly do this better than the Chinese in those wild northern regions; at all events, a desert on the one hand, and a wilderness on the other, cannot be made much less productive than they are. But the Chinese cannot be expected to view the matter in this light, and yet they are so infatuated as to nurse the snake in their bosom to the exclusion of others who would be likely to checkmate his designs. The Russian government has shown a strange penchant for annexing vast deserts to its dominions. Much may it make out of them; but if half the enterprise and money had been expended in improving the condition of the enormous territory it already possesses, the Russian empire would have been too powerful for all Europe. But that is their own affair.