RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3177, 24 March 1911, Page 5

RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY.

CONTRADICTORY POLICIES. SHARP CRITICISM IN THE DUMA. During a debate in the Duma on the budget Prof. Milukoff, leader of the Constitutional Democrats, in discussing Russian diplomacy, said that the Foreign Office nad abandoned its promise to take the Duma, into its confidence on foreign affairs. The meeting between the Czar and the Kaiser at Potsdam, he declared, had fundamentally affected the triple entente, i educing, Russia’-s alliance to merely an agreement of defence. Russia. had, therefore, lost old friends without having gained new ones. If the assertion of the German Chancellor regarding the mutual obligation not to enter a hostile combination of Powers was correct Russia's value to her allies had greatly diminished. Professor Milukoff sharply criticised Russia’s arrogant attitude towards China.

“It is difficult to estimate,” he went on to say. “what next spring will bring forth. We are pursuing three contradictory policies in the Near, Middle, and Far East, and are afraid of a German invasion more than ever.

“We are hopelessly stranded in the Far East, and have, lost sight of the Near East, where critical events are foreshadowed.” Professor Milukoff further declared that Russian diplomacy was receding to the level that was responsible for the war with Japan, and his assertion that exalted personages were again the cause of much of the trouble created a great sensation.