RUSSIAN EXPANSION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 217, 23 September 1901, Page 2

RUSSIAN EXPANSION.

, Professor'Coolidge, of Harvard TJnij versity, makes pome Bagacioua remarks on Russian exp-msion, which deserve the widfßt recognition:— When we try to sum up our impressions of a century of Russim expansion, tin first glmce at the Swires should show us I the error of the common Anglo-Saxon j notion that we are dealing with a I particularly rapacious Powe-, growing i faster than any other. Counting up gains and losses, we find that the I increase of Rusiaa territory durii g , the century has been far less than that ■of Great Britain, or of the United 1 Sca'es, or even of France, and is hardly larger than the colonies acquited by j Germany in the last \5 yen's. Even] !as lately as a g-'r.eratioa ago, the Russian Empire wa* double the size of the 1 British; in i-f now the smaller of the jt*o by over 30 ppr cent. Its great, accession of strength has come chiefly I from the natural growth of its popul '- jtion and the development of its resources. If ifc were suddenly reduced to-day to its f ion tie's of the year 1800, it would still be the second largest state in the world, with a population of over a hundred million of inhabitants. What makes the power j of Russia appepr so imposing, and her advance t > irresistible, is noil so much the size of I »v armies and the skill and ambition of her statesmen, whose reputation has often bean exaggerated, it is, rather, the compactness of her enormous mass, which gives her the same sort of practical invulnerability possessed by the United States.