Читать книгу Japan and the Pacific, and a Japanese View of the Eastern Question онлайн

5 страница из 34

Without doubt the Pacific will in the coming century be the platform of commercial and political enterprise. This truth, however, escapes the eyes of ninety-nine out of a hundred, just as did the importance of Eastern Europe in 1790, and of Central Asia in 1857. In the former case England did not appreciate the danger of a Russian aggression of Turkey, and so Pitt’s intervention in the Turkish Question failed. It was otherwise in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Crimean War and the Berlin Congress proved great events in English history. In 1857 the national feeling in England was not aroused as to the importance of defending Persia from foreign attack. Lord Palmerston had written to Lord Clarendon, Feb. 17, 1857, “It is quite true, as you say, that people in general are disposed to think lightly of our Persian War, that is to say, not enough to see the importance of the question at issue.” How strongly does the Afghan question attract the public attention of England at the present day?