Neue Oder-Zeitung.  
No. 23, 15 January 1855.  
Midday Edition

X. London, 12 January. (The Unconditional Acceptance of the “Four Points”) —  
and indeed the “four” points in the sense of the “three” powers — on the part  
of Russia has now turned out to be a “hoax” by the *Morning Post* and *The Times*.  
We were all the more inclined to believe in the “hoax”, as we know from  
Pozzo di Borgo’s secret dispatches, which became known in consequence of the  
Warsaw insurrection, that this master of diplomacy lays down the principle:  
“Russia must, in all cases of collision, have her own conditions forced upon her  
by the European great powers.” And in the “four” points we can see only “four”  
Russian punchlines. If Russia is not accepting them for the time being, we  
likewise find the explanation for that in Master Pozzo di Borgo. Russia,  
he explains, may make such apparent concessions to the West only from a  
victorious armed camp. This is necessary for the preservation of the “prestige”  
on which her power rests. And so far, Russia has indeed brought it to an  
“armed camp”, but not yet to any “victory”. Had Silistria fallen, the “four  
points” would long since have been put forward. According to *The Times* and  
the *Morning Post*, the “four points” in the sense of the “three powers” were  
accepted as the basis of the negotiations, in order to proceed from them as a  
minimum. It now turns out that Prince Gortchakoff understands them as a  
problematic maximum, from which one must rather haggle downwards, or that  
they serve solely to furnish the pretext for a second “Vienna Conference”. The  
*“Morning Post”* confidentially informs us today, in an important-doing,  
diplomatically-oracular leader, that the interim meetings of the diplomats  
in Vienna are merely the preparatory school for the actual conference, which  
will assemble only on 1 February and will certainly not fail to surprise the  
world, more or less.

Yesterday the following announcement from the Admiralty was posted up at  
Lloyd’s House: “With reference to the last paragraph of my  
letter of 8 November (1854), which contained the communication that the  
French and English admirals in the Black Sea have received orders from their  
respective governments to extend the blockade from the mouths of the Danube  
to all the ports of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoff which are still in the  
possession of the enemy, I am ordered by the Lords of the Admiralty to  
inform you, so that knowledge of it may reach the commercial public, that the  
governments of England and France have further resolved that the blockade in  
question shall take effect on and after 1 February (1855), and that due notice  
of the blockade of the particular ports shall be given in the London Gazette as  
soon as it is put into force. Signed: W. A. B. Hamilton.” Here, then, it is  
openly admitted that the allied fleets have hitherto blockaded only their own  
allies at the mouth of the Danube, but neither the Russian ports in the Black  
Sea nor those in the Sea of Azoff. Nevertheless, the Ministry had repeatedly  
declared in Parliament — in April, in August and October — that it had issued  
the “strictest orders” for the blockade of the ports and coasts of Russia. As  
late as 21 December, Lord Granville stated to the House of Lords in the name  
of the Ministry: “that Odessa was blockaded by five men-of-war which were  
constantly cruising off the port and from which the government was continually  
receiving reports.” In a letter addressed to a daily paper, a well-known English  
pamphleteer sums up the consequences of the blockade measures adopted, or  
rather not adopted, by the coalition thus: “1) The English government supplies  
the enemy of England, from England, with the money to continue the war against  
it. 2) The Danube is blockaded in order to impoverish the Principalities and  
to cut off our own supplies of grain. 3) Odessa, Taganrog, Kertch, etc., remain  
unmolested, so as to supply reinforcements, ammunition and provisions to the  
Russian troops in the Crimea. 4) The sham blockade ruins our merchants, while  
it enriches the Greek, Russian and Austrian ones.” The *Times*, too, takes the  
opportunity of Mr. Hamilton’s notice to make violent attacks on the  
“blockade diplomacy” of the Ministry. It is characteristic of the Thunderer  
of Printing House Square that his thunder is always hurled after the event.  
From 26 March 1854 to this day *The Times* defended “blockade diplomacy”.  
Today, when its bluster crosses no ministerial measures but wins it popularity,  
it suddenly becomes clairvoyant.

The Minister of Marine, or as he is called here, the First Lord of the Admi-  
ralty, Sir James Graham, is sufficiently well-known on the Continent for that  
great deed in the black cabinet which sent the brothers Bandiera to the scaffold.  
The fact may be less widely disseminated that Sir James Graham, in 1844, when  
Emperor Nicholas landed on the English coast, did not dare to press the imperial  
hand proffered to him, but only to kiss it. (See *Portfolio*, 2nd Series, year 1844.)