Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser. — 1903-05-15 (Lancaster, Lancashire, England)

FROM CHINA TO TILE BALKANS.  For the SC'eGflrl time within a few days the Foreign Office has been compiled to refute published statements tending to implicate Russ.ia in a breach of her obligations and undertakings with regard to Manchuria The public mind ought now to be satisfied on th 3 point. Friendly communications have been made to the Government of the Czar, and the response has been a frank  statement that Russia intends to fulfil its undertaking to evacuate Manchuria; that the evacuation is only delayed temporarily ; and that there is no intention of seeking to prevent the appointment of foreign eionsails at the ports to foreign vessels. Confirming these righteous intentions of the Russian Government, we have the statement from our consul at Nevrchwang that the reported reoccupation of that city by the Russians is unfounded. We may well ask, How do these things get into the papers —these reports of forts occupied by Russian troops, and of orders given to exclude foreign trade? The reports came on buch cod authority that we are fain to believe that , something harp-nod or was believed to have ! happened. Possibly movements of Russian troops were inisunderstood; or Russian ' gem rals may have taken stops in advanoa without any orders as they have often date before.  In that case we may be sure that the Ii iendlv communications from this country and the United States. and, we may pre:gime. also from Japan. would awaken the Russian Government to a sense of tho serious situation that might be created by unauthorised action by its generals. This seems the most feasible explanation and the best excuse for the unnecessary alarm to which the world has been subjected. To many minds the importance of the incident will rest chiefly on the fact that the United States, which through its Government and press disclaims all notions of jeint artien. has been found intervening in precise harmony with His Majesty's Government, which of course means also in harmony with Japan. This conjunction of three of the most formidable naval powers would give Russia, occasion to pause! if she had entertained any sinister designs. Happily the sinister designs do not exist. Nevertheless the disclosure of indentity of action between the three great naval Powers has a value of its own, and may assert to prevent a recurrene.e of these untimely and, as we are as=ured, unfounded alarms.  The situaticn in the Balkans. where lurid war clouds have hung darkening for weeks past, is also improving. The peace has been preserved so long. in spite- of the idle provocaticns to war, that we may now venture to hope the worst is over. Indeed. the glut, provocations to war have in some sort helped to avert war. The hands of ituiga.rian incendiaries have overshot the mark, they have ravaged and murdered. with the barely disguised object of exciting the Mahommedans to such a pitch of frenzied reprisal as would enable once more the worn-out old cry of Turkish atrocities to be raised, with intervention and the annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria to follow. For themselves, fortunately, the Turks. Albanians. and kfahomnsedan inhabitants of the afflicted province, have been admirably patient, and the soldiers have held faith- , fully to the bonds of discipline. Under those circumstances, even the crowning out- ! rage at Salonica, when bands of Bulgarian ruffians ramped about with dynamite bombs ! killing ineffensive people and destroying property. has failed to produce that massacre of Christians by Turks which these unholy scoundrels seem to have been praying • for. Indeed we learn that only fifty Bulgarians were killed during those terrible! outrages on the Turkish population, and this fact alone would seem to imply that only those were slain who were found in the act of committing crime. How many were murdered in the bomb throwing is not ! ascertained, but we may take it, that the !number was considerably in excess* of the losses of the dynamitaids. In the meantime these Bulgarian excesses are bringing about a change of feeling, and even the ! most inveterate Tureophobes are beginning ! to realise that when disorders take place in tho Balkans there are two aides to the question.