tria and Russia. It will be remembered that on occasion of the visit of Francis Joseph to St. Petersburg in April, 1897, a "state treaty" was arranged, signed by the Russian and Austrian emperors, and countersigned by their ministers of foreign affairs, Count Muravieff and Count Goluchowsky (Vol. 7, pp. 376, 861). This understanding, it was thought, removed, for the time at least, all danger of friction between the two empires over their traditional differences in southeastern Europe, being based, as explained by Count Goluchowsky, on "reciprocal repudiation of all ideas of conquest, and respect for the independence of the Balkan states, the preponderance of either empire being excluded." The terms of the treaty were at the time kept a state secret; but what purports to be an authentic outline of them recently appeared in a Berlin journal, in substance, as follows:

The life of the treaty extends from May 1, 1897, to May 1, 1902. It is renewable for terms of three years, unless one party denounces it six months before the expiry of the current term. Its main purpose is the maintenance of peace, tranquillity, and the territorial status quo in the Balkan peninsula. To gain this end Russia and Austria-Hungary divide the Balkan peninsula into two spheres of interest, each of which contains an inner and a wider sphere. To Austria-Hungary's inner sphere belongs Servia, to the wider Macedonia from Salonika, inclusive, northward almost in a straight line to Kranja, Albania, except some districts bounded on the southeast by Montenegro. Bulgaria belongs to Russia's sphere. Her wider sphere comprises that part of European Turkey east of Austria-Hungary's sphere. The two states bind themselves to take care that no warlike complications occur in their spheres, and that no agitatións affecting Turkey, and thus threatening peace, shall emanate from Servia or Bulgaria. To gain this end each of the two states will intervene in its own sphere with or without previous agreement. Should friendly intervention prove futile, and Servia or Bulgaria wish to bring on war, the state to whose sphere the peacebreaker belongs will be entitled to intervene in arms.

Were such an understanding as the above to remain in full force, we might look with equanimity upon the present Balkan crisis; but doubts are now cast upon the cordiality of Austro-Russian relations by the fact that the Prince of Montenegro, a close connection of the Russian imperial family, is most active in fomenting trouble in the Balkans, and that Austria seems bent on a policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina to which Russia could hardly give her assent.

Still another cause of anxiety is found in the rumor

that Germany, in posing as the friend and ally of the Sultan, has ultimate designs upon securing the protectorate of Palestine, ousting both Russia, which is now dominant, and France, whose historical claim has been unquestioned.

On the whole the European outlook is not the most reassuring in this time of general apprehension.

THE PARTITION OF AFRICA.

The Anglo-French Delimitation Convention. The Niger convention signed by the French and British commissioners in Paris, on June 14, makes a very considerable reduction in the African territory subject to dispute between the European powers (p. 93.)

Roughly speaking, England now controls, more or less directly, the southern third of the continent, from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika, despite the fact that the coast territory is largely claimed by other powers. The only good port to German Southwest Africa, Walfish bay, is British, while the Portuguese territories on the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, it may safely be assumed, will continue to be administered in harmony with British desires. Egypt is also British. The rest of northern Africa is French, the vast territory of the Sahara contributing to make the republic the largest landowner in Africa, 3,300,000 square miles of territory being included within French Africa, a round million more than England claims. Central Africa remains to be divided. The Kongo Free State and German East Africa stand in the way of the English dream of a united empire unbroken from Cairo to the Cape. The problem which is now coming nearer and nearer the demand for settlement, concerns the possession of the heart of the continent. Uganda is British; and the claims of Egypt upon its ancient territories, reaching to the very head waters of the Nile, so essential to the agricultural well-being of Egypt, will surely be maintained most vigorously by the British government. But the headwaters of the Nile are nearly 2,000 miles away from the southernmost Egyptian outpost, Khartoum, or rather Omdurman, where the dervishes are expected to make their last stand against the present advance of the Anglo-Egyptian forces, being just half way up the Nile from Cairo.

Meanwhile, France is apparently endeavoring to repeat the tactics so successfully employed in the Niger region, upon the Nile. Knowing full well that the "perfidious land-grabbing English men" will make no effort to encroach upon the legitimate field for future French expansion, all the energies of the French colonial party are being devoted to the establishment of posts and the exploration of the advanced regions, and especially in the direction of the British claims. Already France has a strong hold upon Central Africa, reaching northeast from the

MAP SHOWING THE NEW ANGLO-FRENCH BOUNDARIES IN THE NIGER COUNTRY.

French Kongo and southwards across the Sahara. A narrow strip of territory on the Indian ocean lends force to her ambition to stretch her empire across from east to west; and if her explorers can succeed in establishing themselves upon the upper Nile, England may yet be compelled to fight, or more likely to sacrifice some valuable portion of her claims elsewhere, before she can complete her hold upon the region between Victoria Nyanza and the Atbara.

Rich as is Egypt and the eastern Soudan, the western Soudan, tributary to the Niger river, promises even greater prosperity and wealth to the powers controlling its resources. This control is divided between England and France, and the convention of Paris determines the territory belonging to each power. While both the English and the French press claim to have profited most by the delimitation arrangements, it seems clear that the French negotiators have gained much more than they surrendered. French troops, to be sure, are to be recalled from a large number of posts occupied by them; but it is becoming more and more evident that they had occupied these posts principally for the sake of securing something which they might seem to surrender, despite the fact that the justice of the British claim to the region was undeniable.

As a result of the present arrangement, to quote the official statement of the French foreign office, the new frontier just recognized as that of the great French colony of West Africa extends over a distance of perhaps not less than 3,000 kilometres-that is to say, approximately over a space as great as that from Paris to Moscow. Such is the fundamental character of this arrangement. It closes the series of treaties which, concluded one after another during the last ten years with all the neighboring powers-Portugal, England, the Republic of Liberia, Germany, and the Kongo Free State-have placed without possible dispute under French rule the immense regions extending from Algeria to the Kongo, passing by Lake Chad, and from Senegal to the Nile basin. At the present moment all our West African colonies-Algeria, Tunis, Senegal, FutaJallon, the Ivory Coast, the Soudan, and the Kongo-are in communication by their respective hinterlands.

In the eastern section of the West African territories under dispute, comprising the region into which the Royal Niger Company has extended its authority under the energetic initiative of Sir George Taubman Goldie, and the back country of Lagos and Dahomey, a line of delimitation has been agreed upon, which, starting at its southern end from the dividing portion of Dahomey_and_Lagos, traverses the disputed territory, leaving to Great Britain every point occupied by British troops and the whole territory recognized by both countries as being the legitimate territory of Borgu. This covers both banks of the Niger up to ten miles north of Ilo, and necessitates the evacuation by the French of all posts occupied upon the river south of that point, as well as of all the inland posts of which forcible occupation has been made in the territories of the Sultan of Borgu. Under the terms of the convention the French will withdraw from Ilo, Gomba, Lafagon, Busa, Kiama, Kishi, Borea, and Ashigire. Nikki, to which the British claim has

been recognized as admitting of doubt, has been ceded to France. The extensive territory of Gurma, included within the potential sphere of British influence by a claim of suzerainty advanced on the part of the Sultan of Gando, has also been left in the French sphere

On the east bank of the Niger a triangular piece of territory, of which the sides are marked by lines drawn from Say to Mauri and from Mauri back to the river ten miles above Ilo, has been given to France, and, in compensation for this concession made in territory clearly protected by the Say-Barua line, Great Britain obtains a deflection northward of the line in a curve with a radius of 100 miles from the town of Sokoto. The 1890 agreement (Vol. 1, pp. 26-7) with regard to the Say-Barua line provided for some deflection to include all that rightfully belonged to the empire of Sokoto. The difficulty of determining the rightful possessions of these semi-civilized sovereign states, which has been very clearly demonstrated in the course of the Paris negotiations, renders the definite delimitation of the 100mile radius valuable as an equivalent. Great Britain also obtains some further modifications of the Say-Barua line. Of these the most important is a prolongation of the line, which formerly was defined as terminating at Barua on the coast of Lake Chad, to a point on the 14th meridian near the middle of the lake, whence a line drawn due south meets the termination of the Anglo-German frontier upon the south shore. The net result is to place the whole of the British possessions in this portion of West Africa within a ring fence starting from the western frontier of Lagos, including all that Great Britain has ever wished seriously to possess in the back country, and ending at the eastern frontier of the Niger protectorate, where it runs to the sea at Old Calabar.

The western portion of the disputed region included the back country of the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast, and the country within the upper portion of the bend of the Niger. The boundary line which has been accepted as a prolongation of the frontier between the Gold Coast (British) and the Ivory Coast (French) takes the upper courses of the river Volta as the most convenient dividing line, and cedes a slice of the theoretic hinterland of the Gold Coast colony to France. This gives the towns of Bona and Dokta, now in the occupation of British troops, to France. These are the only points upon the map which Great Britain will be called upon to evacuate. The French will evacuate Wa and all other points to the east of the River Volta and south of the 11th parallel; but France obtains, north of the 11th parallel, the concession of the extensive, healthy, and valuable territory of Mossi, for which Britain receives no equivalent. The new boundary, after following the 11th parallel in an eastward direction along the northern frontier of Mamprusi, is deflected northwards to include Bawku, and has the appearance of ending without cause east of the Greenwich meridian. As a matter of fact it comes in contact at that point with the boundary lately defined by Franco-German agreement to mark the limits of French and German territory in that district. The boundary as now defined between England and France carries the northern frontier of the Gold Coast to German territory.