A RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7944, 19 January 1906, Page 7

A RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

HOW GERMANY WOULD BE EFFECTED.

The Speaker (November 4th): — "The effect of a Russian revolution will be felt nowhere more intimately than in Germany. These two countries have acted and re-noted on each other in a number of different and important ways, and their relations are analysed by M. Victor Berard in his book on the Russian Empire and Tsarism, of which a translation has just been published by Mr Nutt. M. Berard sees in the Pan-Slavi9t movemeut, of which M. Pododenoatseff was one of the chief apostles, the uprising of Russian jealousy of German ' influence and power at St. Petersburg. He quotes the story that when one of the German* Tsars refused a great lord a post the great lord said to him, "Sire, allow me to become a German to serve your Majesty's pleasure." M. Berard traces the gradual advance of this passion in national and social self-consciousness from the end of the eighteenth century to the eighties, when it began to be all-powerful in St. Petersburg. When once it had captured the Russian Government, it produced a definite anti-German polioy in the outlying parts of the Empire. . . With a nation governing, as well as governed, in the spirit of freedom, there would be, of oourse, a change of incalculable importance in the grouping of Europe. The effects would be felt everywhere, on the Indian frontier, in the Balkans, in Armenia, in every quarter where rival appetites and stupid jealousies bave made havoc of innocent life and happiness. But one great effect would De the moral isolation of Germany. The Kaiser, to judge from the militant speech last week, is -still intent on pursuing a polioy that is the counter-part of the policy that revolutionary Russia is expected to disown. A nation in arms is still the nation that ails his dreams. It is bis wish to perpetuate the temper of 1871, to make Germany, which might be the aohool of humane and elevating culture, a sobool of a humane and aggressive propaganda. " But supposing that the German Emperor found his despotic neighbour transformed into a free and liberal nation, would there be no change m his relations to his own country?"