more commendable, ventures of trade and of pearl-fishing. Some of them we had bound over by treaties, making them directly responsible to the Government of India, whose authority they pledged themselves to recognise. In other cases we had, with perhaps excessive generosity, acquiesced in the revival by Turkey and Persia of an effective authority which, to say the least, they could never have established without our sanction and cooperation. Needless to say, they accepted all the advantages without assuming the slightest share in the responsibilities of the new situation. To the present day British gunboats alone police the Gulf, and it is to British political officers that local differences are in most cases referred for arbitration and settlement. If the Persian Gulf and its ports have been thrown open, and remain open, to the trade and pacific enterprise of the whole world, it has been, and is still, due solely to the unceasing efforts by which, without claiming any exclusive privileges in return, we have established the Pax Britannica throughout the length and breadth of its inhospitable waters.
The Russian Advance in the Middle East.
Though the trade of the British Empire which passes through the Persian Gulf amounts now to a respectable sum—namely, between three and four millions sterling a year—it is not by their commercial value that our interests there can be adequately measured. Their importance at the present day is conditioned upon the pressure of those new forces which are making themselves felt all over Asia. As Lord Curzon observed in one of the most pregnant speeches he delivered during his memorable tenure of the Viceroyalty of India, the great Powers of the European continent are becoming, or visibly aim at becoming, also great Asiatic Powers. The advance of Russia in Western and Central Asia has already caused increasing anxiety to two or three generations of British and Anglo-Indian states-
