THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF RUSSIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5033, 11 May 1877, Page 3

THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF RUSSIA.

(From the Spectator.) There is something almost comic in the indecision of the Turkish journals as to the strength of Russia. They cannot make up their minds whether it would best help Lord Derby to represent her as an ogre or as a cripple, and so they do both, sometimes in the selfsame article. Russia, in their accounts, is the most terrible and yet subtle of all the Powers ; she intends ultimately to execute the “will of Peter the Great” and conquer all the world, and immediately she is proposing the conquest of India, of Central Asia, and of European Turkey all*at once. She must be resisted, at all hazards and any cost to civilisation, or she will destroy the supremacy of the British Empire in Asia and at sea. At the same time she is only a sham Power. The Government of Russia has no money, no fleet, and no powder, is threatened with endless insurrection, and has no army which can be trusted to keep the field amidst a friendly population, against a caste which disposes of perhaps 100,000 European troops, and some motley hordes of scarcely disciplined Asiatics. All her menace is brag, all her strength illusion, all her subtle diplomacy minute trickery. If she declares war, Prince Bismarck will attack her heart, and Count Andrassy menace her fiank, and Turkey defeat her on the south, and therefore Great Britain must postpone all moral obligations to the duty of resisting so dangerous and magnificent a foe. There never was such nonsense put forward as “ unsentimental sense,” as the sermon which these journals have been preaching for the last three months, and which has been so mouthed, so arranged, and so iadorued with pretty sentences, that it has tfaken in at least half the people of England. The truth all this while is, that Russia is a very considerable Power, though not so considerable as she looks, —a Power belonging to the very first rank, but not first or even fourth witkin that rank itself. What is said of her weakness is only false because her strength, after the right deductions, is so unscrupulously concealed. Those deductions are very serious, but they do not cover the whole ground. In the first place, her long-continued' effort to develop her raariue has not succeeded in any adequate degree. Without entering into very doubtful calculations as to the number of her ships, or the qualities of the u Popoffkas,” or the skill of her sailors, it is certain that the Russian Fleet is not directed in the spirit that ensures success, and is for her permanent purposes very badly distributed. Too much of it, probably from considerations of climate, is always hovering about the mouth of the Amoor and the coasts of the Far East, where it could do nothing except worry Australia, a proceeding which in a war with England would bo equivalent to the Chinese practice of making insulting faces at your enemy. Another large portion is necessarily kept in the Baltic, whence it is difficult to emerge ; and another in the Caspian, whence there is no issue. The remainder, in the Black Sea, is not equal to the Turkish Fleet, and the whole appears to be controlled on the principle that ships are much too expensive luxuries to be risked in battle. During the

whole of the Crimeau war the Russian Fleet never risked a serious engagement, not even in the Gulf of Saghalien, where it had at one moment a chance of fighting ou tolerably equal terms. There are, moreover, certain grave deficiencies evident in the management of the army. Owing to the enormous extent of Russian territory—an extent which Englishmen wholly fail to realise, as they fail to realise the same difficulty in India—the army is bigger than the resources of the Empire justify, and is therefore underpaid, underfed, and inadequately provided, for its size, with artillery aud transport. If we think of the Russian Army as an army of a million of men, equipped on the German or French pattern, not to mention the English one, we are under a mere delusion, which any competent soldier can at once expose. There is no such army in existence, and any calculations based upon it are useful only to mislead those who, hating Russia, like to amuse themselves with ‘‘middling ” calculations of her strength. Nevertheless, when all this has been conceded, Russia remains a very formidable Power. Her ruler cannot dispose for any effective purpose of “ the eighty millions of people” who are so often paraded, and of whom one-third at least diminish rather than increase the strength of the Empire. But he can dispose of forty millions—that is, of as many as the German Emperor can—with an authority which for war purposes is irresistible. Of this population, eight millions consist of adult males liable to be used for war, very brave, very tenacious, aud as submissive to authority as any people in the world. Of these eight millions, one million has received as much military training as makes them excellent recruits, 350,000 are soldiers on a level as to readiness for war with any ordinary troops, and about 70,000 are the equals of any troops in the world. The Czar, therefore, though he has no million of men to flood Turkey with, has an army of a quarter of a million which he can advance beyond his own frontier, which he can supply for campaign after campaign with fairly drilled men, and which is supported by sufficient artillery, and by any requisite quantity of light and active cavalry. This army costs ne more in the field, except for transport and the conveyance of supplies, than it doea*at home, aud the only financial question is whether means exist to supply those two requisites. We believe,judging from the past history of Russia, and indeed from all history, that they do, although the effort could not be protracted as it might be by richer Empires. It is admitted that the means would exist if the service of the debt were suspended ; and forgotten that though this could not be done without too great a shock to future credit, almost every other form of outlay could be postponed ; that public works, the civil administration, and the great sura payable to the landlords in redemption of their serfs, could all be represented for two years by bonds on the provincial and municipal revenues, which are by no means too insolvent to borrow. A State with a secure revenue of £80,000,000 a year, and only one-seventh of it to pay to creditors, can always raise considerable sums, no doubt with much damage to its future, but in war time damage to the future is not much regarded. The Emperor Nicholas did it, under far more unfavorable circumstances —for he had not a mile of railway, and Alexander has 11,000 miles—and his successor can do it also. That Russia could not fight a protracted war against a great Power without repudiating her debt—that is, without paying interest in paper roubles, valuable only when peace returned—we quite believe, but that she could for two years keep a quarter of a million of men constantly in the field, re-supplying their places as they fell from her million half-trained men, we believe also, and any one who comprehends politics hnows how formidable such a Power must be. No other State, except Germany and France, can do anything of the kind. No doubt England could do what she has done so often before—lodge a small but perfect army like a bullet in that immense body, and half kill it or wholly kill it in the effort at extrication ; but failing those three Powers, there exists no force capable of driving back that army in visible defeat The Austrians are Slavs when it comes to the crisis, and as to the Turks, they have not the numbers, are no better provided, and have reduced their financial resources to a far lower point. It is, we conceive, as irrational to believe that Turkey can defeat or even arrest Russia, as to believe that Russia I can defy any of the three first* class Powers, I still less, aay two of them in combination. But Russia “is honeycomed with disaffec tion.” That may be quite true, and is true thus far, that large classes dislike acutely the existing regime, that every Catholic in the Empire is an enemy, that the relation between officers aud men formed during the period of serfage seems, and probably is, strained by the new ideas consequent upon emancipation. But war is not the aggravation, but the cure of these disorders. The moment the order is given to march the vnat mass of ignorant and partially-discontented peasantry are again on the Czar’s side, the really dangerous classes are submerged, aud all the pressing military difficulties, from the reluctance to obey the conscription to the reported rage at the insufficient supply of vodka, end at ouce. The Russian is a patriot before all things, and' if he were not, tell us the army which ever mutinied in the field. No doubt defeat would shake the Autocrat’s throne, as defeat would shake the Germanic Empire or the Italian Monarchy, or any structure not based on democracy, which, as the American war showed, receives blows as water does, and closes instantly over the wound ; but then that risk attends every war, and is not greater than the risk of retreat without it. And then think what victory would bring. All observers worth hearing report that the difficulty of Russia at this moment, and especially the military difficulty, is depression. From the Czar to the serjeant, the collapse of France has destroyed their self-confidence, till Russia is pervaded, as England repeatedly has been, and as we believe is now, with a sens© of weakness, a self-distrust, partly real, mainly unreal, but as debilitating as hypochondriasis. Nothing would cure that, nothing restore the vitality of Russian organisation, like victory in a great campaign against a detested foe, who yet appears from old tradition to be a very formidable one, and victory is at least as probable as defeat.