Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1915 — TAKES WAR LIGHTLY [ARTICLE]

TAKES WAR LIGHTLY

Russia Shows Little Evidence of Great Conflict. Determination to* Win and Break German Militarism Is the Spirit of the Czar’s People—No End to His Armies. By SLOAN GORDON. Correspondent of the Chicago News. Petrograd, Russia. —How the great war has drained the human reservoirs of France —how the boulevards of Paris are manless wastes; how the call - to arms has taken male Germans from the farms and the villages and the cities; how rare are men of fighting age upon the streets of Budapest and Vienna, and how, even in London, there .is noted a marked falling off in the number of visible male beings — all these evidences of the effects of international blood letting have been set forth in countless columns in the newspapers of America for months. That the stories are true of those German and Austrian and French and even British centers there can be no reasonable ground for doubt —the numerous authorities attest their accuracy. But it may be set down that this is not true of Petrograd. To all outward appearances in this war capital there is no war. There are evidences here and there of great military activity. There are daily drills upon the public squares and there are Red Cross signs in great profusion. But of men, or, rather, the absence of men—there is no such thing. Great, mysterious, brooding Russia —the unfathomable Russia —goes about her daily ways with a nonchalance that is baffling to the western mind. Her streets are crowded —the streets of Petrograd and of Moscow and even of Warsaw, where the fighting lines are but a few miles distant Tens of thousands, literal hordes of men of all ages jostle and crowd along the famous Nevsky Prospekt from morning until night and far into the night The hotel lobbies are jammed with men and women in furs and

finery. “Is it always like this’’’ exclaimed an American who has spent many years in Petrograd and other parts of Russia, in response to inquiry. “Well, just about I wouldn’t know there was a war going on if it weren’t for the newspapers. “Russia,” he continued, “is going about this war business with an air of confidence that I have never seen before. It is not quite the same confidence that your typical Britisher displays, the sort we always associate with the English and which has been variously classed as bullheadedness, arrogance, egotism and plain nerve. It is none of these with Russia. It is merely a concrete national example

of what is really underneath the surface —a Russian individual characteristic. Your Russian is a fatalist in great crises. When it comes to something really big he settles down to an Imperturbable calm, shrugs his shoulders, and takes his medicine." That the general attitude of Russia toward the war has changed since hostilities began is testified to by those who have observed. "In the beginning of the war,” said one of these observers, a Russian merchant with large interests in Petrograd and Warsaw, “we felt that we were fighting only to repulse an enemy—to prevent invasion of our territory. There was little show of bitterness against the Germans. But it is different now. This war has done more to make Russians think and to draw them together than anything that has ever happened in the history of the country. Today there is a fixed determination to fight it out to a finish and to end the probability of future conflict by destroying Prussian militarism. That may sound strange to those who have looked so long upon Russia as a military nation, but it is nevertheless true. A new feeling of patriotism has been born.” “And do you know," he added, much as though it were a matter of course, “that it is impossible for Russia to lose—for the allies to lose this war? Russian resources of men and money are too vast. Why, there are a million young men arriving at military age every year. Russia could lose a million every 12 months, which is inconceivable, and still keep-her armies in the field in undiminished number. Russia can feed her armies, and never feel it All the blockades in the world cannot affect us! We raise our own food, and can and will make our own -supplies of every sort. If necessary. We -have the money, we have the men, and, by heaven, we have the spirit!”