§ BARON HENRY DE WORMSasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is the fact, as stated by Hobart Pacha in a letter to the "Times," published on Friday last that the Kilia Branch of the Danube
Has only to be cleared of sandbanks and other minor impediments to receive the whole flow of the river into its watercourse, thus leav- 841 ing dry and useless for navigation the channels lower down, called the Sulina and Saint George's Channels,and that Russia, if allowed to hold that branch of the river without being subject to the control of the Danubian Commission, as provided by Articles 15 and 16 of the Treaty of Paris, would not only holdEntire command of the commerce of the Danube, hut turn the Hank of any warlike action on the part of Austria and Germany on the Eastern question, establishing, in fact, a second Gibraltar in the Black Sea, the more so as she would have the moans, from the formation of the land at the entrance of the Kilia Branch, of making a magnificent seaport in those waters;if so, whether Her Majesty's Government will insist on the Articles of the Treaty of Paris, above quoted, being applied to the Kilia mouth as they are to all the other mouths of the Danube?
§ LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEFull information on the Question asked by my hon. Friend, and the opinion of Hobart Pasha therein referred to, as to the Kilia branch of the Danube, will be contained in the Papers which will be laid before Parliament when the Conference now sitting has concluded its labours.