CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 256, 8 April 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE TRUTH ABOUT RUSSIA. The truth abmit Russia, according to Mr Denis Garstin, who discusses the sub. j«:t broadly in Nash's Magazine, is that the bureaucracy is strongly influenced by Prussian examnles. only in Germany it is the system that crushes, whereas in Russia it is the individual. Of the Russian people themselves Mr Garstin has nothing but good to speak. Ho declares that the lack of British enthusiasm, regarding Russia is due to a vague and baseless fear that the Petrograd diplomalists may have some deep-laid scheme to promote in the future, and ho finds that in an undefined, way the British are apprehensive. "Apprehensive of whom?"" he asks. "Of a people whose standard of morality is love, whose religion is faith, whose philosophy is a mixture of hope and fatalism; who live simple, unassuming, friendly lives; careless, indolent, a little childish; idealists, dreamers, counting each his own existence as a tiny particle of that great Holy Russia which ohsesses his whole vision of Mr Garstih's main ccntpiition—and the same point is emphasised in a score of other articles—is that there is nothing bellicose or aggressive about, the Russian people. They have refrained from war except on behalf of oppressed Slav peoples, and the sole aggressive enterprise to be charged against the Government in modern times—the war against Japan—failed dismally be cause it was impossible for the rulers to drive the people into a war against their will. There was never the slightest enthusiasm for the war against Japan, and the temper of the people revealed itself speedily in the great revolutionary movement. On the other hand, the Kt-.v siiin people in the present war is absolutely united, absolutely determined to prosecute it to the end, not because of the hope of aggrandisement, but because the cause for which the nation is fighting is one that appeals irresistibly to Uir simple heart of the individual.