| Show ertme IN RUSSIA events in russia have succeeded aach other with a rapidity so starting that we have almost forgotten hat the panorama ot misery and murley now being spread before our eyes a simply a fulfillment of the popular of many years any other ul cone anan russian revolution would lave bea not only a falsification of very historical lesson it would have een also proof that human growth a not a decree of nature and that it 16 lossl blo to arbitrarily impose the bar ot the past upon a world that las to detect them the 0 o eidl that we have hitherto cenowa could cot alvo side by side with there yas no room in the horld for both and every day is now 10 us that only the fittest can survive however tardy or spasmodic th operations of the law may seem to be it needed no superhuman pov er to predict the cataclysm in russia ia was ordained by the history of count ryby abo character 0 its people by the superstitions that in the sacred name of religion were allowed to juggle with the happiness of a nation and by a political system that pretended to confer upon one man the personal proprietorship xi a country very much more than twice the size ot the united states russia had become an anachronism an incongruity a burden that the world could no longer carry and it she Is now to be torn asunder it will be because the explosive forces within herself have been roused into activity by the concentrated scorn ot tho world in the march 0 progress russia has always been a laggard and a camp follower christianity was a thousand years old before it made any impression whatever upon the sluggish and barbaric mind of the slav A century after the invention ot printing there was no printing press to be found in russia and even the most learned of her people had no more than a few tattered manuscripts in 1663 the earl of carlisle was sent to moscow on a diplomatic errand but he and his extensive were assigned only one filthy room tor their accommodation they speak of this however as a fortunate circumstance for had they been differently housed they have been severally devoured by the rats the subsequent russian mission to england excited the amazement and ridicule of the people so incomprehensible was the jargon so uncouth the manners and so filthy the persons ot the splendidly dressed visitors they were indeed described as strewing their path with pearls and vermin even peter the great with his extraordinary intellect was an utter stranger to the decencies and niceties of life to approach him was an invitation to nausea while the apartments assigned to him in the english palace bore every evidence of having been occupied by a savage at a ome when europe had produced her most perfect flower garden of intellect and culture the russian nation was mentally aboriginal physically filthy and still in the trough of an animal degradation from which it has not yet wholly emerged there were of course infinite possibilities there still are but a legitimate growth that has been suppressed a natural development that has been treated as an arch enemy of the most dangerous kind eventually become explosive and volcanic in modem russia the autocracy and tha church cave gone hand in band as fellow malefactors mutually aiding and abetting each other in the enslavement sla of a nation the russian church is nominally christian but its christianity bears no resemblance whatever to the faith ot the west at any rate with the great masses of the people the russian church is naked idolatry with no underlying philosophy and no application whatever to the needs of the human heart without the support ot the church the autocracy would long since have lost both power and place but it would be hard to overestimate over estimate the strength 0 t a temporal and despotic government which can not only inflict barbaric pains and penalties but which can also call upon a compliant and superstitious church to pronounce against the offender other pains and penalties which will be eternal to such twin brethren in iniquity as those the press and education must always appear as the most dangerous ot enemies the whole power ot the russian government has therefore been directed to closing up every chink and crevice lest perchance some ray of western light should make visible the interior darkness newspapers must carried on without news literature must be censored private correspondence must be examined and no resort must be left untried to starve the minds of the people while leaving their elemental passions to grow unchecked all this would be doomed to failure even in the hands of the most benevolent ot despots what must it be when it Is carried out by a vast army of officials and ot secret police whose intelligence is hardly if at all superior to that of the people whom they persecute and who have every reason of their own to perpetuate a system which affords remunerative employment to their natural and ignorant ferocity there la therefore no cause to be surprised at current events or to suppose that they are due to any sudden exciting cause the waters may KI bently pile themselves up behind the resisting dam and may give no warning of the impending havoc but it was nevertheless leverth eless assured from the very be and by the unchanging laws t nature bismarck said that svery nation had exactly as much iberry as it deserved and his gatins sagacity was never better shown it is not to prevent he birth of national ideals although t can be postponed nor s it possible 0 prevent those ideals from being ac when they are sufficiently general and well defined russia has aken care that the masses of her peo lie shall have couo but brute ideals ind it chesi ideals are now being ful llyod in a brutal way she has only her elt to thank |
