ABSTRACT
In the relation of land power to the future of Middle Asia–between the parallels north–natural conditions have bestowed upon Russia a pre-eminence which approaches exclusiveness. The recognition of a community of interest in the general question of Asia, as depending upon land and upon sea power, should influence those who possess the latter to guard sedulously against permitting this rivalry to degenerate into antagonism. The regions whose political and social future is in doubt, and to be determined possibly by the relative effect exerted upon their inhabitants by the contrasting powers of the land and of the sea, in the struggle of these to influence commercial conditions, constitute the objectives of policy. In order to constitute a political condition susceptible of durable progress, in place of the impotent misrule, a process of development must begin from without; for it is sufficiently demonstrated that there is no internal source of regeneration under the actual tenure.
