320 THE NEAR EAST. 



the attempt must be made, an elementary acquaintance 

 with Asian affairs being necessarily presupposed on 

 behalf of the reader. 



In the opening chapter of this book I have been at 

 pains to point out that as the kingdoms of the East 

 have slowly but surely sunk into a decline, they have 

 naturally been absorbed by, or fallen under the aegis of, 

 that Power which by its geographical position was 

 brought into contact with them — Russia. It is equally 

 clear that without geographical juxtaposition command 

 of the sea could alone give to a Western nation do- 

 minion in the East, and it was naval supremacy in 

 conjunction with commercial activity that gave an 

 Eastern empire to another European Power — Great 

 Britain. So it is " England and Russia in the East," 

 the title that appears upon the backs of a whole host 

 of books written upon the subject during recent years, 

 that sums up the Eastern phase of the past century. 

 The exclusive claims of the two nations must inevitably 

 undergo modification in the future, since the awaken- 

 ing of Japan, the commercial rivalry of Western 

 nations, notably of Germany, and the improved com- 

 munications which have opened up the markets of the 

 Eastern world of late years, have introduced additional 

 competing forces into the arena ; but nevertheless, 

 with every allowance made for the ambitions of other 

 Powers, the one nation that confronts England now, as 

 in the past, whether it be across the waters of the 

 Euxine, or over the crumpled outline of the Persian 

 highlands, or from behind the rugged buttresses of her 

 Indian stronghold that she directs her gaze, is and for 

 long must continue to be Russia. Whose were the 

 war-hardened legions that rattled at the portals of 

 Constantinople and shook the Ottoman Empire to its 

 foundations while England looked on aghast ? — 



