RUSSIA'S INITIAL VICTORY,
[COMMUNICATED.]
ANY one visiting Russia after a year of the war, and able to compare the conditions as he sees them there to-day with those that obtained during previous decades, must quickly have become aware of three very striking changes. In the first place, he would notice that an intensely passionate love of country—a deep and tender feeling for Russia—has developed, which tends to take precedence of all other loyalties, and become the ultimate test of all activities. In the second place, he would realize how the will of the people was rapidly becoming the determining factor in Russian politics, and how the Duma, as expressing this, had secured for itself a growing and lasting place in their affections. And finally, he could not fail to observe the remarkable results following the prohibition of vodka. Of the last, some were easily calculable in advance ;_ others were unexpected ; yet others have not had time to develop, although there are hints of them. The views, moreover, of those who are opposed to the measure are very instructive, while even the untoward results to date are interesting when subjected to exami- nation.
Although only one year has passed since the introduction of prohibition in Russia, enough has been achieved to show that the place of Nicholas II. is secure in history. Or, as a village correspondent puts the matter in reply to. an official inquiry : "Judging by the results of four months, it may be said with confidence that if temperance becomes inseparable from our Russian life, this prohibition manifesto will in its issue prove to be a very great reform, which can be compared only with those of Peter the Great." Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that there had boon a movement in this direction in various districts in Russia previous to the Order of July 18th, 1914 (0.5.). Before the Government once again took over the spirit trade in 1894, all the village communes had the right to interdict the existence of the public-house. After the monopoly was re-established, this right was con- tested by the Government. " Nobody has the right," said the Minister of Finance (Kokovtzeff) in effect in the second Duma, " to oppose this." Many peasant com- munities protested. The Government gave way, and in the end recognized the right of the communes to shut up a public-house or refuse to have one set down amongst them. These things are cited to show that the movement had commenced amongst the people themselves. The Emperor, however, had a vision of his kingdom without vodka, and the sympathetic confidence in his people that trusted them to support him. Accordingly, as the leader of one of the Duma parties put it to the writer, "while everybody thought that we were in for a long preparatory campaign, perhaps of a century, there was fortunately 'accomplished a miracle. Like all miracles, it had in a measure to be prepared for ; but Russia drinks no more."
"As the result of this prohibition," said the Mayor of one of the capital cities, " we have quite a different sort of people." And it was not difficult for him to substantiate the statement. On the day on which he made it (July 7th) his principal prison, with five hundred cells, formerly "always filled to overflowing," had thirty- coven occupants. His regular city hospitals have four- teen thousand beds. Not only were these always all occupied before prohibition, but they had to put in extra beds often to the number of two thousand. Since prohibition they have usually had, on an average, one thousand beds free. With the banishment of drink there had also been an improvement in the moral tone of the community. The suicide rate had dropped. Ordinarily it averaged two or three cases a day in summer, and in winter a little less. For some weeks past there had not boon a case. Hooliganism had practically disappeared. Of all these different types of result severe statistical evidence begins to accumulate, but we aro dealing here mainly with general impressions. The evidence of large employers of labour is uniformly favourable to the good results of prohibition. One factory owner employing four thousand bands said that the efficiency of his men had noticeably increased from ten to fifteen percent. In his mills they were not working longer hours, as in some cases they are empowered to do, but they did better work in the same time. He also observed improvement in their dress and a marked increase in self- respect. Another large employer also testified to the great improvement in the character of his men's work. His men now came regularly every day and did steady work, Formerly it might happen that a design in connexion with some new machinery was shown to a man by the foreman late in the afternoon. The man went off and got drunk on the way home ; perhaps be stayed away for two days. When he returned he bad forgotten part of the explana- tion about the machinery and was afraid to ask. Con- sequently his work was imperfectly done. All that sort of thing had come to an end. He bad not noticed any marked difference in the number of accidents and disable- ments, but for this reason. Ordinarily his was a ten- hours day. In the production of munitions, however, his men were allowed to work as much longer as they liked, and accidents tended to occur which were due to fatigue. He also stated that the relations between master and men had visibly improved since prohibition had been introduced.
If now we pass to the country, we find the same general results. " In a little town that I know, one hundred versts from Moscow," said a member of the Duma, "you cannot now find a man who does not work. The people used to close their outside shutters at night for fear they should be robbed ; they do nut do so now." Look into the life of the people from any angle you please, and 80100 expression of enhanced well-being meets you. The changes may not all be directly and solely due to prohibition, but in the new atmosphere life has taken on a new form. As the published statement of an official correspondent puts it: " I simply cannot describe the good results, because with the shutting of the Government shops the people are as if they were born anew, or as if they were freed from servitude, as it was in 1861."
Take a district town like ICinyeshnt, the centre for the agricultural district around. They show you that the average monthly deposits in the twenty-three district Zemsky banks were 170,000 roubles previous to the war ; in July of this year they were 300,000 roubles. In the Imperial Savings Bank in the same district there were on August 1st, 1914. 7,165,000 roubles ; on July 1st of this year 7,941,000 roubles. You enter the large store for the sale of agricultural and other implements, and find that while in 1913 they did 230,000 roubles' worth of business. in 1914 the figure was 390,000 roubles. The remarkable contrast is increasingly apparent of villages never so rich and a Government, in recent times at any rate, never so poor. In the towns the economic advantages from prohi- bition are largely nullified by the increased prices due in part to lack of transport. Finally, you turn down another street into one of the police detention-houses. It has but a single occupant. The records for 1914 show that two hundred and twenty men and thirty-five women bad been under detention there. For seven months of this year the figures were sixty-three men and five women, and five months of 1914 were temperance months.
If now we widen the area of observation and push our investigations in different directions, we are confronted with the same kind of result. For forty-three Govern- mental districts the Zemstvo insurance statistics show that while there were 7,436 outbreaks of fire, with damage estimated .at 1,708,158 roubles, during the first throe months of the war, the figures for the corresponding period of 1913 gave 13,216 outbreaks, with damage com- puted at 3,850,906 roubles. The Reunion (Industrial Insurance Company) makes the general statement that crime has diminished sixty-two per cent. In the Govern. meat of Tamboff during the first nine months of the war the number of cases had declined from four thousand to two thousand four hundred---ti.e., thirty-six per cent. Within a sub-district near Moscow the cases for discipline in the factories had diminished between sixty and eighty per cent : absenteeism had diminished by sixty per cent. In a printed document by a member of the Extreme Right Party in the Duma, summarizing results in his district., he notes amongst other points : " Great diminution of fires and of criminal cases ; peace and harmony in families; no more insults from drunken people ; public assemblies calm and reasonable; hardly any bribery registered now ; labour more productive ; the great sums which were spent before on vodka—from ten to fifteen thousand roubles in each large village—now go to increase the well-being of the population; pauperism and va,gabondage have absolutely
disappeared." Professor Belchteriev notices a general diminution in insanity, criminal cases, and prostitution. Of the more unlooked-for results—which, again, are not claimed as always wholly due to prohibition—eue may he found in the statement of the Mayor of a G overn ment capital, who said that before the war they could get mu iks (peasants) to do all sorts of jobs for thirty kopecks a day : now they bad to pay them a rouble and a half. The inujilcs did not require to work so hard as usual, because they had saved money as the result of prohibition, and their constitutional laziness tendial to assert itself. The Russian peasant is not like the French peasant in his love of work ; the Russian does not like to work long, as a rule. Again, the well-being of the peasants has affected the food supply : articles like cultivated berries and eggs, and even meat, which he did not formerly eat, have become dearer in price because he and his children either feed on them themselves, or because he can now afford to wait and watch the rising prices, Finally, the death-rate from drunkenness has risen since prohibition was introduced. This paradox finds its solution in the fact that dipsomaniacs have turned to methylated spirits and other fatal substitutes. It is not pretended that every Russian is pleased with prohibition, but it can be said, so far as the evidence goes, that the great majority of the people are alive to the results, and that a majority, at any rate, consider that permanent prohibition of vodka is not merely possible but desirable. To any one who knows, the complicated agony of the past months in Russia—bp to July 1st, to illustrate by one aspect, it may be stated that 715,879 wounded were treated in, and passed through, the Moscow Red Cross institutions alone—has called for an endurance whose moral source has been in large measure the consciousness, admittedly in varying degrees in different individuals, that a serious issue was faced and met in the only possible manner. " If it had not been for this decisive measure, my firm conviction is that our war would have already turned into a revolution, without speaking of our armies, that would never have been able to carry out their gigantic retreat, keeping up through it all their wonderful spirit of reasoned self-sacrifice that has now become historical."
Many Russians will agree with. these words of one of their distinguished diplomatists. In Russia the Army and the nation are one, in a degree with which there is no com- parison in Britain, fused together in the fire of a common sacrifice. One of our many national self-deceptions of the day is that we have a choice of action in this matter ; in reality we have none. For the history of life, throughout the ages of its slow ascent, clearly shows that there have been recurrent periods of environmental stress during which the forms that survived were those which proved to have the requisite ale' tness and plasticity, enabling them to adapt themselves to the changing environment. To-day we find ourselves in such a time of stress, and it is only as we have the understanding and the courav,e to effect the changes which will produce more efficient adaptation that we can hope to maintain our position as a leading nation. Russia has had the vision, has acted, and confidently endures. And we P
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