Arizona republican., 1904-04-10

de Giers, then minister of foreign af
 fairs, had stated to him that the or ders to Rear-Admiral Lessoffsky were, ! if a war should have occurred between
 the United States and England, or the
 United States and England and
 France, or either of them, that at the time the fleet arrived at the harbor of New York or whilst it remained in America, to tender the fleet, it's ships,
 its men and its guns, to the president
 of the United States, with the best
 wishes of the emperor of Russia Col. Cooper quotes his own cores pondence with the Hon. Don. M. Dick inson, a member of Cleveland's cabi-
 net in his first administration, in
 which Col. Dickinson relates that, to
 the best of his recollection, the late Justice Field told him that the czar of Russia had once shown to him (Field) the original of the famous sealed order. This, it is true, wanders into the field of hearsay. Col. Cooper alludes to the published statements of Thurlow Weed, President Draper of Illinois university, Jeremiah Cur tin, the traveller and linguist, and others, to the effect that the Russian fleets were sent to our shores to help us against England or England and France, in case either or both should go to war with the United States. It does look as if it was something more than a coincidence that "socn after these fleets sailed from our shores the British ministry for the first time in over two years, re- versed it's policy and forcibly prevent ed confederate ships. built in English yards for the purpose of making war on the United States, from departing on their hostile errand." And there after England and France vexed us no more by the rasplng course of their diplomacy.
 On the general subject of Russian friendship for the United States, inde- pendently of this controverted ques- ton of the ships and the sealed orders, Col. Cooper shows from the diplomatic correspondence of the civil war period that the sympathies of the czar and his ministers was wholly on the side Of the union.
 It is doubtless true that the Wash lngton archives contain nothing about the sealed orders, but they do contain numerous letters and dispatches show ing that Russia, alone among the gov ernments of Europe was our steadfast friend through the dark days of the war. Col Cooper's copious, quotations from these dispatches will serve to re- fresh in a timely way the memory of the American people as to the attitude Of Russia during the period in which we most needed a friend.
 But it is to be hoped that the famous sealed orders themselves will soon be made public. They could do no harm al this period. Anglo American" with an apparently hidden. sinister meaning, blurts out: "A copy Of those orders must surely exist Let the Rus sian government produce them-if it dares!" Well, perhaps, the Russian government may conclude it wise to dare the dangers attendant upon their production. France, Russia's ally of the present day, would hardly take offense at an official disclosure Of Rus sia's intention to make war upon her forty years ago-in certain contin- gency-and it is not supposed that the British government at any time has had doubts of what the presence of the . Russian fleet in American waters was intended to mean. So perhaps the time has arrived for Russia to lift the veil from enc of the most interesting pages of our civil war history.