RUSSIAN DESPOTISM.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 275, 13 August 1908, Page 8

RUSSIAN DESPOTISM.

AN HISTORIAN'S INDICTMENT. Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, the historian, makes a very serious indictment of Russia in a long letter to "The Times." "Tho just requirements of our foreign policy havo brought us to a friendly understanding with Russia on Eastern affairs. That is a great blessing' and a groat step in advance. But if that policy is pushed boyond the point of moderation, it will no longer carry with it the consent or oven - th'b acquiescence of the nation as a whole. If .England iS' asked to condone and oven applaud, under names however specious, a system of domestic government in Russia which I will describe in this letter not by adjectives but by statistics, it ,will not bo done without strenuous ana unremitting protest from many who have hitherto kept silenco out of respect for Ministers or for the causo of peace.. " In more than one of tho powerful journals which have most influence with our upper and middlo class, and to some degree in tho utterancesj>f Sir Edward Grey, wo seo tlio idea advanced that Russia already cnioys the blessings'of a Constitution. Now, if I could lay this flattering unction to my soul I would most willingly do so; for there is no one who more thoroughly appreciates tho value of tho general lines of foreign policy common to Lord Lansdowne and Sir Edward Grey, thanks to whom our foreign policy, is now raised ■ above the atmosphore of party strife where it moved so unliappily in tho days of, Gladstone and Disraeli; our policy now, by the consent of all our. parties, seeks peace with all tho world as tho criterion of our action abroad. But if wo push the Russian entente about Eastern boundaries into a close personal friendship with the Tsar, if we desist from speaking out in our Press the truth about his home policy, if we take to lending him money, if, in fact, wc do exactly what the French Republic has perforco been doing for many years past under pressure of national exigency, then such action will break up the harmony on foreign politics now existing among ourselves at home. Noithor will it in the long run make for the world's peace, for if once tho -Russian despotism recovers its old sense of- security by our help, it will no more bo a factor making for the world's peace than it was before tho Japanese war. Worst of all, such a policy will destroy in our island the old tradition of befriending the struggle of European races for personal liberty —our heritage from the Conservative Canning.

" Tho following facts about Russia at tho present day should give pause equally to Labour men, to Liberals, and to tho party which takes defence of liberty- and property as its watchword.

"The freedom of tho Press under the now existing Constitution was respected as follows :—

" From Juno to October, 1907, eighty-four nowspapers wero suppressed, tbirty-fivo editors put in prison, threo exiled, 133 newspapers fined, and sixty editors had criminal proceedings taken against them. Under these conditions the utterances of the few remaining newspapers, living from day to day with the sword of Damocles over their heads, will hardly be taken as a free expression of opinion.

" The following statistics are arrived- at by adding up tko figures of tho gangs of exiles which are sent out eastward from the Central Transportation Prison of Moscow—the Butyrki Prison—every fortnight or every week. From those figures we find that 78,000 exiles have been.sent to Siberia, or 100,000 to Siberia and the Northern Provinces of Russia taken together, since the amnesty of November 2, 1 1905. From tho samo sonrco of information, controlled by tho prison committees, we find that upwards of 30,000 departed eastward during .the year 1907. Tho statistics for tho present year aro naturally not to hand, but many thousands a month have been passing through in 1908 as in 1907, and those of us who havo been trying to collect a little money over hero for theso unfortunate victims havo had heartrending accounts from eye-witnesses of tho spectacle presented in Moscow by tho long iines of educated mon, suddenly dragged from their homes, setting out as unconvicted convicts for their hopeless' exile."