THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8272, 27 October 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1906.

Popular interest in the affairs of Russia has of late been a good deal less been than it was a few months ago. The civilised world has expressed its horror cf the outrages that have usurped the sacred name of justice, and of those other outrages that nave avenged them. We have grown so acoustomed to hear of assassinations, on the one hand, and of massacres on the other, that we have almost oeased to be interested, beyond a vague sense of sympathy for the oppressed and down-trodden people. Civilised nations have becone convinced that, they are practically powerless to control the present, or gteatly to influenoe the future of Russia in the present crisis; and as a consequence tb«y have ceased to take that interest in her affaire with which they wetohed the first efforts of her people to improve their conditions by reforming the Government. Fortunately iV the future of the Russian people their ultimnte success is not iikoly to depend largely on the sympathy of other nations, but rather on the dogged determination which is characteristic of their own race. Lookers-on, it must be confessed, are not unnaturally disappointed at what, seems to them the slowness of the process of reform In the barbarous methods of the government of a

hundred and thirty millions of people. They ask themselves if the present: conditions ot cruelty and anarchy are to go on for ever; and some, it may bo, are almost ready to conclude that the dull quiet of the ancient despotism was preferable to the wild unrest which has taken its place. Great changes, if they are to last, are never sudden. The evolution of society is a a comparatively slow process. Great oatastrophies may sweep away existing evils and failures, but they are always powerless to build up iiew conditions in their plane. This, no doubt, is the secret of what is taking place in Russia to-day. The movement, so far, has been one of social upheaval anc 1 , catastrophe. The wild effort on the one hand to overthrow, and on the other to maintain, an oppressive and corrupt social system has now been going on for a long time, and it may go on still for years to come.