GERMANY FOUND OUT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 185, 14 January 1915, Page 3

GERMANY FOUND OUT.

RUSSIA'S BAD GEXICS. PRUSSIAN INTERFERENCE. Germany has for many years been Rus. sia's bad genius, says Mr Sydnev Dark in the London Express. It was part of Bismarck's policy to cultivate the closest relations with Pctrograd, and on more, than one occasion he sacrificed the interests of Austria-Hungary to placate the Tsar. Germanised Russians from the Baltic provinces have held high positions in the Russian Inireauacy. They have always been in touch with Berlin, and their influence has been freely used against the many attempts made by the Tsar to encourage the development of Russian national life along its own peculiar lines.

Western Europeans must never forgot tli;it during the. centuries of its social and intellectual growth the Russian Empire was the buffer that held hack Asiatic barbarism. The Russian people naid for this service to civilisation in tiier own international life. When the rest of Europe was well advanced in culture. Russia remained unpicturesque--I}' mediaeval.

But though it started late, there has since the days of Peter the Great been persistent progress in Russia, and this progress would have been more apparent and beneficent but for the constant interference of Prussia. Berlin dreaded the growth of its mighty neighbor. It always gave the worst possible advice, luring its Government to outside adventures and encouraging the suppression of popular sympathy. The history of the Tsars in the Hith century is marked by ceaseless good intentions never earied out, and the faillire can in every ease bo traced to the influence of the Prussianised on whom the Sovereigns have necessarily depended.

The character of the Russian people has made it easy for this influence to be effective. In the Western sense ol the -vord, the Russian is not by nature a practical person. In a pamphlet called "Our Russian Ally," Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace sava:—

"Unlike the. English, who crawl cautiously along the rugged path of progress, looking attentively to the right and to the left, and seeking to avoid obstacles and circumvent opposition by conciliation and compromise, the Russian dashes boldly into tile unknown, keeping his eye fixed on the distant goal, and striving to follow a beeline regardless of obstacles and pitfalls. Tim natural consequence is that his moments of sanguine enthusiasm are frequently followed by hours of depression bordering on despair, when lie is inclined to attribute his failure to some malign influence rather than to his own recklessness."

This is the characteristic not of a class, hut, of a nation, and it is not difficult to understand why Germany has found itself able, with its cold, materialistic common sense, to use. this characteristic to its own advantage. "Bismarck- constantly fanned the jealousy between Russia and Great Britain., and his agents were ever stimulating in Petrograd the idea of a Russian conquest of Tndia. The Kaiser deliberately lured Russia into the war with Japan. The Japanese war so successfully achieved this plan that for the first time Russia as a. whole realised Germany's real host'le intent, and the country welcomed the attempts made by France to establish relations between her ally and Great Firifain, and rejoiced at the concluding in IW7 "f the Triple Entente. There has always been a party in Britain eager for friendship with Russia. and for the last seven years all parlies in Russia have agreed that an alliance, or a semi-alliance, with Gre:it I'.vihrn. was not onlv desirable, tint was essential. if the Empire of the Tsar was to fulfil its mission as the great Slav