neutrality of the other continental Powers in view of a war with England.  To begin with, as regards our ally, the French Republic, a satisfactory solution of our task in this direction is already assured by the existing treaties.  Yet these treaties do not bind the French Government to afford us military support in the case of a war which, in the eyes of shortsighted observers, might perhaps be regarded as one which we had ourselves provoked.  We have accordingly opened negotiations through our Ambassador with M. Delcasse, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and with the President of the Republic himself.  I have the supreme satisfaction of being in a position to lay before you the result of these negotiations in the form of a despatch just received from our Ambassador in Paris.  It runs, in the main, as follows:  ’I hasten to inform Your Excellency that, in the name of the French Republic, M. Delcasse has given me the solemn assurance that France will declare war upon England at the moment His Majesty the Tsar has directed his armies to march upon India.  The considerations which have prompted the French Government to take this step have been further explained to me by M. Delcasse in our conference of this day, when he expressed himself somewhat as follows:  ’Napoleon, a hundred years ago, perceived with rare discernment that England was the real enemy of all continental nations, and that the European continent could not pursue any other policy but to combine in resisting that great pirate.  The magnificent plan of Napoleon was the alliance of France with Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Russia, in order to combat the rapacity of England.  And he would, in all probability, have carried his scheme through had it not been that considerations of domestic policy determined the Tsar Alexander I., in spite of his admiration for Napoleon’s ability, to run counter to the latter’s intentions.  The consequences of Napoleon’s defeat have shown themselves sufficiently clearly during the past hundred years in the enormous growth of the English power.  The present political constellation, which in many respects is very similar to that of the year 1804, should be utilised to revive Napoleon’s plan once more.  Russia has, of course, the first and most vital interest in the downfall of England, for, so long as Great Britain controls all the seas and all the important coastlines, it is like a giant whose hands and feet are fettered.  Yet France is also checked in her natural development.  Her flourishing colonies in America and the Atlantic Ocean were wrested from her in the eighteenth century.  She was ousted by this overpowering adversary from her settlements in the East Indies and—­what the French nation feels perhaps most acutely—­Egypt, purchased for France by the great Napoleon with the blood of his soldiers, was weaned away by English gold and English intrigues.  The Suez Canal, built by a Frenchman, Lesseps, is in the possession of the English, facilitating their communications with India,