WE all want to know the truth about Russia, but
it is not easy to get at it. Political or social prepossessions make it unusually difficult for observers to see that vast empire of the Czar in dry light. One tells us that all Russia is corrupt, effete, and doomed to perish speedily ; another, with appar- ently the same opportunities for judging, waxes enthusiastic about the "civilising mission " which Russia is carrying out in Asia, and perhaps even in Europe. As a rule, the English traveller leans to the former opinion, the French to the latter. Probably neither is quite accurate ; the difficulty of drawing an indictment against a whole people is still as great as it was in the time of Burke, and in Russia the vast extent and extreme heterogeneity of the empire make it peculiarly hard to dogmatise. We have, at least, no lack of material in the shape of the reports of acute and unprejudiced • (1) Russian Affairs. By Geoffrey Drage. London : J. Murray. [21.. net.]
—(2) Russia as it Really Is. By Carl Joubert. London: E. Nash. [7s. 6d..1
—(3) Manchu and Muscovite. By B. L. Putnam Weale. London Macmillan and Co. [108. net.]r— (4) Manchuria and Korea. By H. J. Wbigham. London : Isbiater and Co. 7s. rid. net.] — (a) The Balkans from Within. By Reginald Wyon. London inch. [15s. net.]
observers, and the reader of the five books—all interesting and useful in their different styles—which lie before us will have no small assistance towards comprehending the present position of Russian affairs and the probable trend of Russian policy. They vary considerably in literary method and merit, but they all agree in leading to the same conclusions,—that the Russian people has a great future before it, but must first succeed in reforming the intolerably corrupt and inefficient government under which at present it vainly struggles ; that Russia has "put her money on the wrong horse" by aiming at a vast Asiatic empire when her territory was still so far from consolidation, and in seeking chimerical advantages in the Far East whilst a great and promising task lay at her very door in the Balkans.
Mr. Drage and Mr. Joubert aim alike at depicting the existing state of things in Russia. Mr. Drage depends mainly upon a great array of solid fact, derived from the best authorities in all languages; Mr. Joubert is content with a picturesque selection of the impressions that he has gained during nine years spent in Russia in communion with all sorts and conditions of men. Mr. Drage has given us an admirable work of reference, Mr. Joubert a readable book. Both agree in the final impression that they produce on the reader. The Russian people, still inarticulate and hardly conscious of its real power, is slowly reaching the point at which no weight on the safety-valve will keep a working pressure of steam in the boiler. Reform or revolution must come speedily. " Dissatisfaction with the existing order is to be found in every class of society," says Mr. Drage, " and it cannot be doubted that the nation is slowly gathering its forces together in protest against the Government which has allowed such a state of things to come into being." The seeds of revolution are already sown, says Mr. Joubert :-
" There are mothers bringing up sons who will be the judges of vengeance, and who ate now learning to lisp the word. There are in foreign universities young Russians who are studying science with set jaws, and thinking; but they will not be always thinking. In the breast of every humble moujik there is a con- suming fire. He is io.norant and cannot diagnose the malady, and he is patient in 'his suffering. But when the young men return from the foreign universities and tell him the real nature of his disease, and fan the smouldering flame within him, the bestial flame of savagery will leap out, destroying in wanton fury all whom he is incited to destroy."
Russia, indeed, reproduces to-day all the symptoms which preceded the French Revolution a century ago. The people are crushed by taxes and seignorial rights, education is a dead letter, justice is corrupt, and there is no Constitutional avenue by which the oppressed can reason with the oppressor. The Army is uncertain ; the nominal head of the Government, however good his intentions may be, is practically powerless when the bureaucracy and the high officials think differently from him ; and the educated classes have no voice in the man- agement of affairs unless they abnegate their individuality by entering the official ranks. Otherwise any protest which they venture to make against the existing order of things is rewarded by deportation to Siberia in circumstances of which Mr. Joubert gives a graphic description in the third part of his book, where he describes how—by the aid of the almighty rouble—he assisted some young friends of his to escape. Meantime the Russian peasant—the backbone of the country—hangs back from taking his necessary part in the industries which all friends of Russia desire to see flourishing.
Altogether things are looking very bad, even without taking the strain of the present war into account, and one cannot lay aside these two interesting and instructive volumes without feeling that before very long there must be a radical reform in Russian society, whether it be initiated from above or below, whether it be by way of peaceful evolution or of savage inter- necine struggles.
Russia's empire in the Far East, of which so much has been made by those Russian statesmen who profess to think that the satisfaction of reaching the open sea—the "warm water "—will make amends to the moujik for all domestic oppression, is in just as bad a way. Mr. Weale's remarkable letters from Manchuria, written during the autumn of 1903 for certain Far Eastern papers, and now recast into a valuable and illuminating book, are enough to demonstrate that. The boasted provinces for which Russia has suffered so much dis- honour, and is now pouring out blood and treasure—apparently to no purpose—have turned out a disappointment. The attempts made to turn Manchuria into a Russian colony have been wholly unsuccessful. When Mr. Weale made his journey the Russian population was represented solely by the soldiers and railway guards, the contractors and their workmen in government employment, and the motley crew of camp- followers and hangers-on of both sexes who batten on them. The reason of this failure to attract the much-desired colonists is pretty clear. It lies in the notorious fact that Manchuria has been governed hitherto simply as a preserve for official fortune-hunting. Everything has been done by bribery and corruption. Mr. Weale is very candid in his account of the principles which guide the Manchurian officials, from the highest to the lowest. "Nobody will move until his palm has been greased. Chinese are aghast and ask how it is that their own officials have acquired such a name for squeeze,' when in Europe squeezers and renderers of false accounts exist to such an undreamt-of extent." Everywhere below the surface there is " a rottenness and a hollowness" which are not reassuring for those who hope great things of Russia. It is no use for a government to endeavour to attract trade by building a great port—like Dalny, of whose colossal plan Mr. Whigham gives a very striking description—and to expect honest traders to settle in a land where every transaction, from the acceptance of a tender to the enforcement of a contract in the law-courts, is frankly controlled by the longest and most freely opened purse. Russia, in short, according to all these students, is hopelessly corrupt throughout her administrative system, alike in Europe and Asia, in her ancient provinces and in her new acquisitions. If the Japanese succeed in persuading her that it is time to try other methods, even by the stern logic of bayonets and shells, they will do the Czar's empire one of those immense services that, as Burke finely said, only come when " our antagonist is our helper."
The last book on our list, Mr. Wyon's admirably picturesque and vivid account of the Balkan States as they exist to-day, bears indirectly upon the same point, —the failure of Russian statesmanship to see things in their true relationship. He testifies to the excellent material for empire-building that is found in heroic little Montenegro, among the wild but chivalrous Albanians, and in the ranks of the promising Bulgarian levies. A really great Russian statesman would have seen that the shortest cut to the " warm water " was by way of Constantinople, and would have perceived the great possibilities which lay in a steady propaganda among the Balkan races, all of whom look to the Czar as their natural overlord and protector against the Turk. Perhaps we ought to be selfishly glad that Russia has preferred to fritter away her power in wild dreams of dominion on the Pacific coast ; but from the Russian point of view the game to play was that of Balkan confederation under Russian auspices. Mr. Wyon's book shows how deserving of help the Balkan peoples are ; but perhaps it is as well for them that Russia has abandoned their cause, and left them free to work out their own salvation.
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