The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGM0NT SETTLER. TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1915. A GREAT POWER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 56, 9 March 1915, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1915. A GREAT POWER.

Tlio very friendly service which Britain with her great resources and enormous wealth has been able to render to her great ally, Russia, at this time must undoubtedly help to hasten the end of the present dreadful conflict. The service rendered also must tend to further cement the exceedingly cordial relations now existing between the two countries. The Russia of today is a great country to be friendly with—a country of wonderful possibilities, and one that will yet play a big part in the future of civilisation. Those who have closely studied Russia and her people learn to hold for her and them great regard and affection. An empire with enormous territory,’ much of it extremely fertile and much of it hitherto untouched, must take a great place in the world’s markets of the future. In addition, the high character and uprightness of her people, it is becoming more and more evident that her aims in the present conflict are honest, and her ambitions are laudable. Knowing to-day what we do of the German spirit, it is ludicrous to find tho “kultured’ baby-killer sneering at Russian barbarism, and tlie whole world is only anxious to put these perverted Germans in their place. Possibly half a century or so: of education from the standards of! Russia, France, and England, may lead the beaten German to something tor, ami in fifty years’ time, when the present brutal ideas are utterly eradicated, a new German people may arise for whom the world may have some use. It is well pointed out by one writer that while Germany lias been producing nothing notable in art except the obscenities of Munich, nothing notable in drama except the plays of Hauptmann and the vulgarities of Max Reinhardt, nothing notable in music except the brilliant decadence of Richard Strauss, Russian music lias given the world new dreams, the Russian theatre lias given drama a fuller life, and Russian novelists have added to the splendid literature of pity ol which Tolstoy and Dostoievsky are the greatest writers. In the whole oi Russian literature, says another, there is not one page in which mockery is made of poverty, of suffering, of a girl who has been betrayed, or of a child that is illegitimate. Russian literature is one long hymn to tho injured and insulted. People in Russia are naturally kind, and they have become even kinder since the war began. The whole of Russian popular feel ing is of tenderness rather than rapacity, and though, of course, there lurks in the Russian soul not only the brutal German but the more brutal Tartar, yet it is love to one another, follow sympathy in suffering and gentle sociability that keeps the great nation together. The-Gormans, sneering at the weak and at tho victims of their Inst for power, with their bi n-

tal materialism and their cruelty, re

resent that which is most foreign to the Russian heart, and consequently that which is most abhorrent to all the people. One -of the commonest headings in Russian papers, says an American correspondent, is “Holy War/’ A war, if it is going to have any success in Russia, must be a holy war. The Crimean war was a holy | war. to protect the Russian pilgrims from the persecutions of tho Turks. The Japanese war never succeeded in,

getting thought holy—that was why it failed so disastrously. This war is holy to everyone, and its motto is: Getting rid of the German spirit in life, getting rid of the sheer materialistic point of view, getting rid of brutality, and the lack of understanding of others. This war has come as a relief to Russia, uniting all parties underj this one idea. Russia has suffered more than any nation from the Prussian terror. The Hohenzollerns since the days of Frederick tho Great'have been the bad angels of the Romanoffs, ever tempting them to evil. Every blunder of the Russian Government, according to an English writer, can be traced to Prussian influence, and the bureaucracy has always been Prussianised. For the Russians this is a war of deliverance from foreign tyranny. Russia’s development has been very \Vonderful of later years, and in her time of trial she has borne herself with noble courage and unconquerable resolution.