25 AUGUST 1917, Page 10

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE NEAR EAST. [To THE EDITOR

Or Tar "SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—There is one aspect of the Russian delaicle which, so far as I hare seen, has escaped notice in the public Press. Will you allow me, as a student of Near Eastern politics and an old traveller in those countries, to put it plainly, for it is time that we faced the difficulties which will be presented to us after the war? Labour Conferences may give us phrases, but phrases do not ultimately govern the world; they may provide us with policies, but they cannot alter facts, and policies from those ".who earn their living with their hands "—to quote from your "News of the Week "—are hardly likely to be of equal value with the policies of those "who earn their living with their 76 brains." The old governing classes in England have largely renounced their responsibilities and abdicated their power, but it is certain that ill the end it is to the educated that a nation will turn for advice and government. The Spectator is a journal read almost exclusively by the educated, and to them I would venture to commend the consideration of the position in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the fourth year of the war. Let its assume that we emerge victorious, that the Germans are cleared out of Belgium, that Alsace nut Lorraine are restored to France, that the enemy is driven back to the Rhine, and that all his schemes of domination in the West are shattered. That Germany should be utterly crushed and over seventy millions of a clever, stubborn, and disciplined race reduced to impotence is hardly conceivable. Now the war, whatever Germany may say, was certainly a war for expansion. It was, moreover, a war aimed primarily at England and Russia, the two countries which stood in her way; and this being the case, the control of England from the coasts of the Channel—a disaster from which we have escaped by the skin of our teeth—was only part of her aim. There remains the expansion to the East; that is, through the Near East to the Persian Gulf. Dammed up in the West, the Teutonic flood will bent with ever-increasing force on the East. What barriers do we propose to construct?

The Balkans are a seething mass of conflicting races, which front that very circumstance have furnished the name for a popular dish of fruits. Hitherto Russia, as the great Slav Empire, has championed the Slav elements against Teutonic aggression; the immediate cause of the Great War was her defence of Serbia against German ruthlessness. We certainly began the war under the impression that our great Eastern Ally would police the Balkans at its close, and, incidentally, block the communications of Germany with Constantinople. Who is to she that now L Are the Western Allies to keep II permanent army in Salonika ? Supposing Constantinople is "neutralized." where are the army and the fleet to come from that will defend the neutrality of that great city, incomparably placed for political domination, the richest prize a plundering horde could wish for ? Who is to govern the Holy Land 1 President Wilson, from New York? What about Armenia when the Russian armies are withdrawa in obedience to the new policy of her Socialistic rulers ? England went mad in 1909 over the glorious Turkish revolution; but after the deposition of "Abdul the Damned," and the usual talk about Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, Rarer and his "Committee of -Union and Progress" soon turned from embracing Christians to cutting their throats :rod knocking them on the head as heartily as ever. If " scraps of paper " without guns do not bind Germans, they certainly will nut bind Turks; we have had abundant evidence of this ever since the Crimean War.

Let us go a little further East. With the Russian withdrawal our position in Mesopotamia is, to put it mildly, not improved. Are we to keep a permanent army of occupation in Baghdad? For the Turks, with all their faults, are fine fighting fellows, and will not sit down quietly to see us in the city of the Caliphs. 'And what about Persia? I have been four times in that country and in that now all-important north-western corner; I think I may venture to claim that I ant one of, let UR say. a dozen or twenty Englishmen who hare first-hand knowledge of Kurdistan, so I may speak with some assurance- The government of Persia, ss I knew it, was not by any means ideal, but it performed the first function of government; it at least preserved law and order. In 1906 "representative institutions" were introduced, a system or government hopeless and ridiculous to all who knew anything of Pereia. and its people. In 1909 we supported the Persian rerolution. (What has made Englishmen of the twentieth century so enamoured of revolutions?) Since their there has been no Government worth the name in that unhappy country, and England and Russia have had to divide it into "spheres" to maintain some kind of order, with the assistance of a gendarmerie under Swedish officers, not, as the war has proved. a very happy selection. What is to happen now? Are we to " take on " the whole of Persia. with the Turks and Kurds on our flunk, and with possible anarchy in Russian Transcaucasia to Ike north of the Mares ? What force must we keep in Tabriz, to ammo one plate alone ?

Here are some of the problems raised by what the Prime Minister calls the "beneficent Russian Revolution." Let us turn from the benefits in Russia to what vitally concerns ourselves. I have tried to propound the questions whirls (Ile "no annex. tions " policy of the Russian Socialists presents to us. Perhaps wiser,heads than mine will answer them.—I am, Sir, de., St. Petrov Minor, St. Issey. ATHEISM!: RILEY. [The difficulties (rented by the temporary eclipse of Russian power are great and very real. But the dungen threaten Russia herself even more than they threaten us, and, to our way of thinking, this fact contains within it the guarantee that Russia sooner or later will recover her power. She will because she mast.—En. Spectator.]