THE TRUTH ABOUT RUSSIA

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 12 September 1901, Page 4

THE TRUTH ABOUT RUSSIA

An unusual view of the position and prospects of Russia is given in the "Fortnightly Beview" for June by ''Calehas." He is of opinion that during the last thirty years thfl European situation has changed more completely to the disadvan- | tage of that Power than in any equal period since Peter the Great. Russia's advance has been morely in population, while her formidable neighbors, Germany and Austria, confront her 130,000,000 people (who are spread over an enormous ! area and*many of whom are Asiatics), with 100,000,000, who have at their disposal an immensely superior apparatus of civilisation. Bussia is very dificient in the mobility conferred by railways, and while, '' in the age of bayonet charges and short-rango volleys, the low level of her civilisation detracted nothing from the fighting qualities of her dense masses, the magazine rifle, the Boer tactics, and the application of individual intelligenceand alertness to the business of battle must bo held to hitve reduced enormously the fighting power of Bussia in an age when war is a special application of high civilisation." But above all, as the able Russian Financo Minister, M. Witte, sees, there is lack of capital and of industrial development. Bussia is unablo to raise an internal loan, and but for the help of Franco would be far more seriously hampered by want of money than she is. There are only 2,000,000 persons engaged in industrial production in Bussia. against 26,000,000 thus employed in Germany. The necessity of a long purse in warfare is moro marked than ever, as England has found to her cost in the Boer war. Not only would a great war expose Bussia to bankruptcy and revolution, the ruin of her French bondholders and of the forced industry of her towns, but if she should bo defeated by Germany she might, as has been suggested by M. Anatole Leroy Bcaulicu, be driven out of the Baliic provinces and Poland, and across tne vast marshes of the Pripet, the nearest approach to a natural frontier that exist:* between Berlin and Moscow. Even a war with England would srrvhi liar resources to the utmost, and it is no longer certain I hat in a struggle with Jiiptm the yellow power would not bo victorious. H.'iico peace is a more vital necessity to Russia than to any other nation. The popular view as to the diplomatic acutene*s of Russia is held by "Calehas" to be fallacious, and he declares that the neutrality of Russia in 1870 was probably the most remarkable aod far-reaching blunder committed by the statesmanship of any country except Franco during the last fifty years. Even if peace is maintained, Russia's internal outlook is not reassuring. Some authorities hold that the Siberian railway will not pay, while, according to a sombre book recently published in Germany, called ' Starving Russia,' by Dr Lohmanu, a German physician, and M. Parvus, a Russian economist, Mr Witte's rosecolored budgets are fraudulent, a favorable balance being only secured by the device of taking the necessary sums out of Iho money borrowed ostensibly for productive purposes. In short, according to this writer, after a careful investigation of the position in Russia, " there seei&s to rise up the background of some shadowy and immense doubt as to the future of the Czardom."—Exchange.