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Show THE SIBERIAN ROAD AND THE WAR. H A writer in the Chicago Chronicle describes at H length the trans-Siberian railroad and takes a H gloomy view of Russia's ability to keep her forces H in the Orient supported by reinforcements and to H keep her armies there supplied with food anj H war material. He says the rails are only 6 H pound rails, that much of the rolling stock is bad- H ly worn, that the gauge is five feet which makes H it impossible to reinforce the rolling stock except H It is made to order; that Lake Baikal is a mighty H obstruction; that the Japs know the road per H fectly and will raid it north of Port Arthur and H west of Vladivostok continually. The account was H laid before Col. Holmes, who last spring came over B the road, and Mr. S. H. Babcock for an opinion. B Col. Holmes does not believe the road Is In nearly B so bad a condition as is described in the Chron- B icle. He made memoranda of the trains they B met in coming across; thinks the Russians can B send out fifteen or twenty trains a day if neces- B sary; says that Siberia supplies 25,000,000 bush- B els of wheat and rye annually, which can be in- fl definitely increased; that Russia already has a B vast army in the east and more ammunition and B stores than the world has any idea of and has B been preparing for possible trouble for years. B Mr. Babcock says 5G-pound rails were about the B heaviest we had during the great civil war and B they were Iron, whereas the life of a steel rail Is B twenty times as long as that of the Iron rail and B from a railroad point of view it is only, in his B opinion, the putting on of trains enough to per- B form the needed work. fl But it all indicates a long war and what will H come of It all is the world's concernment. The fl Japs are not pure Mongolians. They have a Malay mixture in their veins, which is fierce and unrelenting; they are feeding the war frenzy of their people. Suppose they drive Russia back from the shore and destroy the Russian fleet In eastern waters, where will they stop? Will some chief develop into a Jenghiz-khan or another Ta- merlane and set the whole Mongolian hive to swarming? With the scent of Asian victory in fl the air, how long could the 900,000 white men in fl India control the hordes there, especially If the Moslem power, taking advantage of Russia's In- volvement, enter the fighting arena? No wonder the world Is disquieted over the prospect. But the Tartar and Cossack stocks of Russia are fighters, and the world does not estimate rightly either Russia's power or persistency. Then if China should be drawn Into the war we do not see how a partition of that country can be avoid ed. And with that move on, where would the United States be? It surely is a disquieting out- look for the peace of the world. If our advice was asked, we should say, hurry the warships to completion, forge all the guns possible, for the more ships and the more guns, the less will be H e liability of trouble, and to the farmers we H would say, "plant all the wheat and raise all the H pjgs and cattle possible for we may have a flght- m ing world to feed when the next harvest Is gath- H crcd." |