Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1891-12-17
AMERICANS AND THE GAR.

How Russia Rendered United States Most
Valued Services In Times of Extreme
Perii--The Gar Has Been Our Best
Friend.
New York Sun.
Have Americans any desire to witness
the overthrow Of the house of
komanoff? That we have is assumed by
MIR. Stepniak, literary representative
Of the Russian revolutionists, who in
the November number of the North
american Resieao invites us to subscribe
for a paper called Free Russia and for q
fund to be applied apparently to the
| promotion of Nihilist conspiracies
Now, admitting that great sums of
money could be raised in the United
states for such purpose, and that the
outcome of their application might be
the substitution of Slav republic for
czardom, what would we as Americans
have gained We should have been
duped into playing into the hands of
our implacable rivals and enemies, the
English, and we should have lost the
one friend in Europe who has firmly
upheld us in the past and upon whose
sympathy and succor we might have re-
lied hereafter.
The county most interested in the eX-
Junction Of the Romanoffs is England
Owing to the contiguity of their Asiatic
possessions, the British and Russian
! governments are irreconcilable foes, and
there is no doubt that the stability of
British rule in India would be materially
augmented by the disruption Of the Rus
sian Empire, which would certainly
follow the humiliation of czardom
The attainment of republican regime
ut Moscow or st. Petersburg would
naturally be followed by struggles for
national independence on the part OF
the Poles, the Little Russians, the Cir
cassians, the Georgians, and the inhabi-
tants of the annexed Mussulman khan
ates in Central Asia. Only the strong
hand of Alexander III. holds together
the widely separated and unassimilated
conquests made by his predecessors
during the last hundred years. They
could not remain unite under repre-
sentative institutions, and therefore the
proclamation of Russian republic
would be hailed with sense of relief
and of rejoicing in Calcutta and In Lon
don. The dream of planting the Rus
sian flag over the mosque of st. Sophia,
imputed by legend to Peter the Great,
would disappear with the soveregns
who have inherited his programme, and
England's fear of Russian interference
with the Suez waterway would be dis
PEELED forever.
Such Island viii be the attitude Of Eng
land towards the house of Romanoff so
long as nations are governed by an eye
to their own interests instead Of by uto-
plan visions of the brotherhood of man
The American people, on the Other
hand, have been taught by long and
memorable experience to feel for the
dynasty which Alexander III. repre-.
sets both deep gratitude for services
rendered and lively sense of the posi-
bic value of similar services in the neal
future. We are not gulled by the tardy
professions of kinship on the lips Of
English statesmen, who, in our hour Of
trial, looked with undisguised com
placency on the prospect of a dissolu
ton of the union. We have not for
gotten that, next to England, the mos
mischieyious and rancorous enemy Of
our infant commonwealth was the frs
French republic and the Napoleonic EN-
pire which was its outgrowth. 1t is the
house OF 3omanoif alone which In thu
great crisis Of our national existence ha.
stretched forth the hand of friend
and which is now in position to plac,
us under still deeper obligations, SHOULD
England's secret antipathy to us ane
her avowed sympathy with Chill, grow
ing out of her commercial relations
with that republic, cause her to drift
into a hostile attitude towards the United
States.
The present is good time for recall
ing what has been done for us in the
past by our predecessors of Alexande
Ill. 1t was the adhesion OF Catharint
III to the so-called league of neutral.
which broke the spirit and forced The
hand of George III. and his Parliament
and compelled assent to the treaty o.
, 1888 by which the independence of thu
10 colonies was recognized. 1t was, al
Mr.. Henry Adams has lately pointet
out, an act of friendship to the Unitct
States, viz, the refusal to bar American
! vessels out of Russian seaports, which
compelled Alexander l. to brave tn,
, anger Of Napoleon and to subject hi
, country to the invasion OF 1912. Still
fresh in our remembrance is the act o
Alexander IL, the father of the presen
, car, when, with colossal rebellion
! already on its hands, our government
: seemed likely to be plunged by til,
/ Trent affair into war with England.
+ While ominous measures were beln!
t taken to increase the British nava
\ forces at Halifax, and to hurry regi
ment after regiment to Canada, Their
r appeared on a sudden Russian war fleet
in the harbors Of New York and Sal
I Francisco. If ever u country had
1 friend in need, the car showed himsel
one at that juncture. Again and agail
4 during the next two years we profile,
by his good offices to avert the threat
q ened joint intervention of France an,
i England on behalf OF the Southern Con
q federacy. When we picture to our
/ selves what such an intervention woul,
: have meant after the second battle 0
i Bull Kun, or just after Fredericksburg
< and Charlottesville, and remembe
@ that the prevention of the blow was du
a more to Alexander III than to any othe
human agency, We begin to appreciat
# the character of our true relation to tn
v house of Romanoff.
4 We wonder if it can be imagined tina
d the French Republic would at this juno
ture be promising field in which t
solicit subscriptions destined more o
!. less avowedly for the overthrow OF tn
car. The feelings of the French peopl
n were clearly enough attested the othe
day, when Alexander Ill. wished t
y borrow some money, by protfering seye
4 times over the amount of the loan dc