Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1902 — CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE IS THREATENED [ARTICLE]

CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE IS THREATENED

BY RUSSIA

That the vast empire of Russia Is a power essentially Asiatic in its character , with a mere veneer of western civilization, is a truism. “Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar” is a saying which was born of facts. Time after time has the barbarism of Asia assailed the civilization of Europe, to be beaten back in blood and battle. Today Asia threatens Europe through Russia, whose rapid increase in population, territory and military power presses down with tremendous force upon the nations of the old world. Russia would replace Western civilization by her own Asiatic savagery, and it may be that the time will come when the nations of the world will be obliged to combine for mutual protection against the northern Colossus. Her troops in China, when brought into contrast with the troops of the other powers, showed that they were a horde of armed savages and ■ their crimes were many and horrible. Russia’s peasantry is the most stupid and ignorant in the world, and her officials are the most tyrannical and cruel. Yet this semi-civilized nation, with its strong Asiatic characteristics, occupies one-seventh of the land surface of the globe, and has a population of about 130,000,000. Upon every nation which she subdues Russia impreses her own autocratic savagery, so that each step in her advancement of territorial aggrandizement adds to the peril of civilization. A few samples of the characteristics of Russian civilization will illustrate what sort cf a nation this is which looms so vast and menacing. Just now accounts are reaching the outside world of the terrific condition of the starving peasants in the government of Cherson, a province of the Black Sea. Here can, be seen one of the phases of the great empire of the czar: starving Russia. The authorities there object to the interference of private charities in the work of relief, and any one attempting to help the distressed peasants is liable to get into serious trouble. In one whole district there is but one relief kitchen, and that is conducted by a philanthropic woman, Mme. Shuravkaia, who has special permission from St. Petersburg to do

*o. People not in a position to get a permission from the czar dare not try to feed the starving people around them. In the happy land of the great White Czar the profession of journalism is never a dull one for those who do not agree with the government. The entire editorial staff of the Shisn newspaper is now In jail, and dispatches from St. Petersburg say that that is not the only Russian journal whose publication is suspended from the fact that its editorial staff has “gone to a dungeon cell.’’ There is, for instance, the Mir whose editors are now reflecting in the solitude of their dungeons on theVvicis■ltudes of a newspaper life. \ The recent outbreak of the students has caused the greatest uneasiness to the officials in the Russian capita\ and, for that matter, to the official! throughout the empire, because of its revival of nihilism. So alarmed hsjye the authorities become that dCimicillary visits are now nightly pLid by the police to the homes of the highest officials. Tne most dangerous symptom is the sullen attitude of the working classes, who are known to side with the students.

All sorts of crimes are rampant. In St. Petersburg a man has been going about the streets stabbing young girls. Recently he killed five girls between the ages of seven and fifteen in one day. Ali Russia is honeycombed with strange religious sects. An idea of the intelligence of the Russian peasant may be gathered from the account which came from St. Petersburg the other day of one Ivan Plotnikoff, who went to a public library and asked for a book which would tell him how to "live true.” He was given a copy of the Bible and read therein, “If thy right hand offend thee cut it off,” which he took to be a literal command. So he procured an ax, with which he chopped off his right hand, taking four blows to do it. Professional “exorcists” go about “driving out devils,” and not infrequently the ignorant peasants are driven insane by the conviction that they are possessed of a devil, and tear and mutilate themselves. Russia's oppression of Poland and how she stamped the national life out of that nation is a matter of history, and she is now making similar history by her violation of the ancient rights and liberties of Finland, which she is bringing under the knout. While the czar is generally credited with being a humane man he is really governed by his advisers, who use him as the civilized mask for a barbaric government. , Four men of great power in the empire are Klegils, Dragomiroff, Koifropatkin, and Vanoffsky. These are the men who are brought most often into direct contact and conflict with the people and whom the people fear. General Klegils belongs to a Scottish family that settled in Riga. The original name was Clayhills, but, as the family became Russianized, the name suffered the same fate and became Klegils. The general is prefect of St. Petersburg, and. his arrangements for trampling on the students in the recent disturbances were carried out to the letter. Klegils is as thoroughly Russianized as his name, and is detested by the people whom he holds in awed subjection. General Dragomiroff, the commandant at Kieff, is a far more merciful

man than Klegils. He has made himself popular with the people by his protest against the harsh methods meted out to the students by Bogolepoff, the former minister of education and against the compulsory enlistment of the students in the army. General Kouropatkin, now minister of war, makes a specialty of Asiatic warfare,, and is an able and autocratic soldier, who believes that to spare the knout is to spoil the subject. Vanoffsky, the foreign minister of war, now the minister of education, is a stern man, whose specialty is organization. He believes in shooting students who object to serving a certain allotted time in the army, and is applying military methods to the reorganization of the Russian school system. From all these things some Idea can be formed of what Russia really is and what the Russianization of Europe would mean.