ANOTHER CAUSE OF RUSSIAN FAILURES.
WE attempted some weeks since to explain some of the causes of Russian failures, and pointed out as the chief of them the semi-divine position allowed to the Russian Royal family. Real patronage, the power of promoting ability, or pre- sumed ability, very quickly, and in advance of the usual regula- tions, is deposited in a single family, and falls, therefore, into the hands of those who in any way whatever make themselves agreeable to that family. The consequence is a system of favour- itism, which is fatal in time of peace to the rise of unfriended ability, or ability accompanied by independence either of bearing or spirit. There is, however, another cause for Russian failures which is gradually making itself visible, and on which a great many writers, most of them special correspondents, are expend- ing a good deal of thought and an enormous quantity of ink and paper., There is some defect in the Russian character which seems fatal to efficiency, as efficiency is understood by the successful nations of our day. Military experts complain that with all his bravery and stubbornness in battle, the Russian soldier does not accomplish the ends for which he offers his life, but falls short of them often in a wholly unexplained manner. Thousands perish, but the redoubt is not taken ; hundreds of horsemen charge bravely, but the convoy moves to its destination ; ably-designed vessels are built, but no enemy's ship is captured. In the Crimean war the mass of the Russian army never seemed to give it momentum, and in the present war the most visible defect in the great army in Bulgaria is a certain want of " go." Everybody is brave and means are ample, but the army does not advance a step, does not even continuously try to advance. Private employers, if Germans or Englishmen, make, we believe, a precisely similar complaint. If unprejudiced men, they get, in the course of years, rather to like their Russian "hands," appreciate their good-humour, delight in their docility, and admire a certain shiftiness and handiness, in which a Russian often rivals a British sailor. But they all say they are, in the aggregate, poor workmen ; that you do not, in the long-run, obtain from them either the quantity or the monotonous excellence in quality of work obtainable from Englishmen, Germans, Italians, or even Chinese. " They have too many Saints' Days," observes an engine-maker, who bears the total suspension of labour in England for two days a week with the coolest philosophy. They " hang on the foot," says an Intendant, who has seen English labourers do the same thing all his life without either surprise or annoyance. " They are too easily contented," says a Scotch foreman of a philosophical cast of mind ; " and want governing every minute," adds the German, who, of all men, gets most out of Russian workmen. It is observable, too, that the German, who has most to do with the Slav, as Russian, as Pole, and as Bohemian, never changes his note. He may hate the Slav or he may appreciate him, he may admire his proneness to sentimentality or he may despise it, but he always charges him as human being with what the Scotch call " feckless- ness,"—an incapacity to be efficient. The Pole, the Bohemian, or the Russian is always in his eyes a slatternly being, who will not even for his own profit do things nicely or be careful, who will let valuable things go to rack and ruin rather than be troubled, who is the victim of a kind of mental indolence which to an Englishman, or German, or American is difficult even of comprehension. It is probable, too, that a perception of the same truth, begotten of long experience, is at the bottom of the Russian system of administration, of the ex- cessive rigour with which obedience to an order is enforced. Governments which are not resisted are generally careless, and the Russian has in him a strong vein of indulgent, easy-going kindliness, but throughout Russia disobedience to " an order " is punished with what seems to onlookers use- less and cruel severity. There is, we suspect, a tradi- tionary feeling that, deprived of this impulse from with- out, nothing would be done,—that there would be no organisation at all, that, as one writer has remarked recently, " the quicksilver could not be held together." " You do not understand my Russians," said Peter the Great to some one who remonstrated on his severity,—" they would never move if they were not driven ;" and this contented incapacity of move- ment is apparent now in all Departments. The Russian Army seems to be managed as " Glenbarnie " was by its " cottagere." Russian doctors are fairly good, but filth accumulates round the Imperial quarters. The Russian engineers are able men, but no hard roads are made till rain has made the soft tracks of the country impassable. The Russian Store Department has plenty of money, but shovels have in the fifth month of the war to be brought post-haste from Tula and St. Peters- burg. All correspondents, favourable or hostile, testify to the same defect, a carelessness about details, a slovenliness in management, which coexists with the most stringent and even cruel official discipline. The inquiry into the cause of this defect is not an abstract one, by any means. If it arises merely from the organisatiou of Russia, which cripples individuality, and makes every- body rely either upon a superior or upon his Commune, it may be entirely cured for the time by a wise selec- tion of individuals to give orders, their habit of pre- cision making up for the carelessness of the mass ; but if it is inherent in the national character, as discontent, for example, is in the English or caution in the Scotch, it is incurable, except after centuries, and must be taken into permanent account in any estimate of Russian power. The frequent success of Russian armies when well led would seem to point to the former explanation—no carelessness, for example, having prevented the Grand Duke Michael's victories in Armenia— but the entire history of Russia points rather to the latter. The Russian tendency, like that of the Scotch Highlander, has always been to let things drift, to be careless about preventible evils, to let the morrow shift for itself, or be shifted for by the official or the Commune, the latter of which, be it remem- bered, he organised for himself, without help or guidance from his Czars. A certain helplessness or want of faculty, and there- fore of self-reliance, has been visible in them for three hundred years, ever since the Tartar expulsion, and has, we believe, assisted more than any other cause to build up the autocracy. Of course that may be due, as many observers would suggest, to serfage, but as it is also found in Russians who never were serfs, in whole classes such as the free peasants, and in regard to matters such as agriculture, on which the peasant has for ages been let alone, it is more probable that it is inherent in the national character, and that in considering Russia we must allow for a certain child-like incapacity and want of prevision, as in considering England we must allow for the national unreadiness. Both defects are serious deductions from power, but the Russian is the graver one, because it operates always, and immensely increases the difficulty of driving the machine. Those who guide it and give it momentum have to expend five times the energy and display twice the severity which other- wise would be required. They have not only to order, but then to provide, either by incessant supervision or cruel threats, that the order is not good-humouredly neglected or forgotten. The vice is in its effects as bad as the almost incurable indol- ence which makes some races the despair of their task-masters, an indolence more than half of which is the result not of dis- like to work, but of want of perception of the uses of trouble. The Russian is not indolent, but—like some Irishmen, most Highlanders, and all Negroes—he is " feckless," careless of troublesome minutia:, to a degree which makes effective organi- sation a work of endless difficulty and labour. After huge labours have been performed and huge expense encountered in collecting food, everybody forgets that man requires water on a long march, and a whole expedition is spoiled, as happened once at least in this very campaign, through that bit of incapacity or negligence.
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