§ MR. F. S. STEVENSON (Suffolk, Eye)I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether any communications have passed between the British and Russian Governments since the latest dispatch in Turkey, No. 2, 1896, with reference to the conditions on which Russia would undertake to occupy and police those provinces of Asiatic Turkey in which massacres have principally occurred, and in which a recrudescence of trouble is to be feared?
MR. JOSEPH A. PEASEI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether Her Majesty's Government will consider the desirability of taking the initiative in seeking the approval of the signatories to the Berlin Treaty to the Russian occupation of those provinces in Asiatic Turkey in which recent massacres have occurred?
MR. GIBSON BOWLESasked whether such an occupation as the question contemplated would not be a violation of four separate treaties?
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.I do not think it necessary to make any such historical investigation as the hon. Member for King's Lynn suggests, because, as a matter of fact, Her Majesty's Government have no intention of doing what is proposed in the question on the Paper.