BOOKS OF THE'DAY.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2523, 31 July 1915, Page 9

BOOKS OF THE'DAY.

RUSSIA OF TO-DAY. ■ There is probably no other living Englishman, not excepting even the.Hon. Maurice Baring, whose acquaintance with Russia and Russian life, more especially the life of the Russian people, .equals that possessed ; by Mr. .Stephen uraham, a copy of whoso latest work on the country and people he knows so well,' "Russia and the World," reaches me from Messrs. CassslL ajid Co. In. previous books Mr. Graham has described his pedestrian tours in the Caucasus and in various; parts of Russia proper, well off tho usual track of the tourist. : He has written, too, on the social and political changes which were Jri "progress in Russia before tho war; he' has told us of his wanderings with Russian pilgrims to the sacred shrines at ' Jerusalem, and of his experiences on the trains and steamers which convey Russian emigrants to' the United State's and Canada. In his noW) his seventh vohime of Russian stories, the war' is uppermost,, the war as' it affects the Russian peasant, the Russian, soldier,' every class, indeed, of the great people which acknowledges the Tsar as its •"Little Father." When the War broke out, Mr. Graham was far away in 'Asiatic .Russia, resting, after long journeyings through Russian Turkestan and Siiidaria, at a little ■ village, a Cossack' military station, high upon thq slopes of the Altai Mountains, close to what is nominally the boundary lino of China.

The sketches and studies of which-the present, voluine is composed constitute as -a whole a ; study of the war and a statement of the world-problems which now confront. Russian and Great Britain. The earlier chapters describe the mobilisation of the Altai Cossacks, and wo at once grasp the immensity of the Russian Empire, and can the better understand the apparent delay in the mobilisation of the Russian forces when the author fells us that many of the Altai Cossacks had to ride over a thousand miles before they reached; the railway by which they would journey , to. the fighting lipe'in North-Eastern Russia— another three thousand miles. .-, In succeeding chapters Mr. Graham desoribes ;the mobilisation in the villages, and the scenes he witnessed at Moscow, Petrograd, and Warsaw during the first months of the wax. ' After the section headed "War," he passes on to discuss under .the title: "Nations." How the conduct of the war is affected by; the national and individual traits of character of the Russians, Germans, Poles, Jews, and Turks. Next follow three character sketches : "The Great White Tsar,"' M. Sazonof (tho Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs), and the Giand-Duke Nikolai; other subjects, such as the vodka prohibition, "distrust of Russia," "settlement of peace,". "naturalisation," • 'conscription," and similar important questions arising out of or coimected N with war, being grouped together undor the heading of "Policies." K

If is noticeable' how. insistent is Mr. Graham, this Englishman who has mado it his life work's and pleasure to .'study the Russian nation and the Russian oharacter, iiipbn the all-pervading spirituality, natural gentleness,' ana freedom; from that selfishness which comes from advanced rommercialism,. which, everywhere finds in the' Russian, people:. The . Gorman, the highly-organised German,"' regards the Russians '' as little , 'better ' :indeed than • barbarians. He.wants to Germanise Russia. To the Teuton, as Mr. Graham says, "Russian .mysticism , and impracticability, and, above all things, ;Russiau conditions are intolerable. It is precisely because Russia has for a long time .been subjected to a strong Gorman, influence,; that this "war has come as a relief 'to Russia, uniting- all .parties under one idea." So far froin accepting the. German idea of their'inferiority," :the Russians; regard _the German as the incarnation of a spirit of hardness, of selfishness, of an individual .and national brutality, which is unspeakably abhorrent to the Tsar's 'subjects. . The German' title 'Graf" is related, to.' the' Russian verb . "grabit," to grab, to stea, says Rozanof, "of tho : "iSovoo -Vremya." The Germans have always been, a predatory, race so 'far. as

the Slavs are concerned. They are tho very opposite .of the-Russians.- In the j whole of Russian literature there is not, so Rozanof proudly declares, one page in which mockery is ma.de of poverty, iof suffering,"of a girl who has been ' betrayed, or of a child that is' illegitimate. : Russian literature is one long hymn to the injured and insulted. Mr. Graham contends that " ' 'the whole of Russian popular feeling is of tenderness rather than rapacity," and though he admits there may lurk .in the Russian soul not • only the brutal German, but the more brutal Tartar, "yet it is love to one another, fellow sympathy in suffering, and gentle sociability that keep the great nation together. It is these which unite them round the sacred ark of tho race. The Germans, sneering • at the weak ■ and at the victories of ■ their .lusfc for power, with their brutal, materialism and their . cruelty, represent that which is most' foreign to the Russian heart, and consequently that which is most abhorred by all the people." • ' "Russia, above all things; is fight-> ing that she may go on .being her- • self. Everyone who loves' Russia believes in her personal desttny. She is the youngest of the nations, she has a great life before her.";

• Mr. Graham devotes moro than one chapter to "Suffering Poland: A Belgium of 'the East." There is, he says, rtr.ly tho difference that Belgium was a" prosperous and happy country to start with, and Poland for the most part was miserable 'and poverty-stricken'. • At first Poland suffered moro through fire and lead rather than robbery. After the retirement of the Russians, Lowever, Poland began to suffer moro seriously, Mr. Graham says: 'When the Germans pursued the,' . Russian Army back to the river Nieman and advanced and occupied 7 Soutli-Wesfc Poland, they were-bent oil revenge. They looked no longer' disdainfully on the filth and poverty of Poland. • Orders had evidently' . been given that everything .service- . able was to bo removed from the, / country—that no rag that might .. ' give warmth to the German soldiers . in tho winter campaign was to bo —' left uhtaken. Following the German Army.came an innumerable train of light wagons, at first almost empty,, hut at last filled—bytho process of taking froni Tier wlio had naustht even that which she had. 'At the retreat of the Germans from tho Nioman, tho'Russian airmen remarked on the hundreds and thousands of wagons full of stolen goods traversing _ the country towards Germany, like a sort of black cloiiS moving over tho surface of tho land. .German dead on the battlefield'before Warsaw were found to be wearing the clothing of I'dlfsli peasants under their uniforms. Some . were, found wearing Russian boots, and many carried women's shawls and flaimel pettiooats f

When one rends of how the Huns, these "gallant apostles of German Kul!tur," according to the Kaiser and our dear frisuds the Profcssoreu, wore mean enough to rob the poor womenfolk of Poland, tho poorest people in all Europe, of their petticoats, it comes to me, at least, as an unadulterated joy to read, in another of Mr. Graham's chapters, that by "February, 1915, there wore "200,000 Austrian and German prisoners in Siberia, even at far-away Yakutsk, with a winter where sixty d& grees of frost is nothing unusual, there are many prisoners." And they are not wearing the petticoats stolen from Polish women; either. We may be sure lof that! These German prisoners are employed in constructing the Central Asian and Altai railways. If there be i amongst them any of the gallant petti-coat-stealers, I am un-Christian enough to hope that the-Russian gangers will apply the knout very liberally whenever this forced labour- is inclined to shirk its' full dose of toil. There are two chapters m this book of Mr. Graham's which deserve special and careful study by all who are interested in what may be termed the racial 1 problems of the war. The one deals with the future of Poland, the other with that ever-burning question in Russia, the Jewish difficulty. Limitations of 6pace forbid quotation, but this jis perhaps just as well, ,fo'r ■what would be necessarily' short extraots would be unfair to the author. To many New Zealand readers of.the book, one of its most interesting chapters will be that in wliioh the now "world-famous prohibition- of . vodka, is discussed. Even before the war the vodka question was. one universally debated in Russia. The consumption of the spirit had increased in. a, .simply stupendous degree. In 1913-14 the Russian nation spent nine millions sterling more on vodka,than it had done in 1912-13. It spent fifty millions sterling more than it did ten years ago. According to the estimate of Count Witte, made iii February last year, the nation would have spent during the then current financial year no less than nine hundred millions on strong drink. Early in 1914, says Mr.- Graham, -when the Tsar gave his famous rescript to M. Bark, asking him to limit the sale of vodka, "the whole of Russia, froin Tsar to Peasant woman, was swept with a .wave of temperance ardour. Finally the drastic thing arrived. The ■war broke out, and immediately by Imperial ukase in the Kingdom was closed ... a stroke of the pen, - ; vodka was unobtainable. Contrary to expectation there was not, even : any illicit trading tin spirits—at least none to speak of. Russia was made sober, not by Act of Parlia•',men.t, but - by something . more '■ powerful than .that,, more ready, more simple—by word of Tsar. .

Not only this, but the Tsar, receiving a temperance deputation just before the war, answered them in the following significant sentence: "I had already decided upon total_ prohibition before I read your petition." Mr. Graham vouohes for 'the fact that the prohibition is a reality. ■. "Not only," he says, "has the sale of vodka been stopped, but the sale of'beer. also. ... ;It is. quiet in the industrial villages, in.the factories, and in' the mining settlements. The old songs are sung; there is the 'old but it is over tea and around the samovar. In every province of/Russia there has been an astonishing decrease in crime, in the breaking. of heads, in immorality. The papers in the great cities continually "have to spare columns in their well-filled issues; in order to give the facts of sobriety, and •comment, upon them. Russia is greatly pleased -with.herself as a non-drinking nation."

In view of the special importance, at the time of writing, and of .the position of Warsaw, Mr. Graham's descriptions of this , city and its population are exceptionally interesting. But indeed ■tliero is not one dull :or uninteresting page in the whole hook, wliichi personally, I have found most fascinating reading.. Some well-reproduced photogravure illustrations, from photographs taken by tho author, add to the general interest of a book which gives a. wonderfully intimate view of Russia and its people as they are in these sad and dreary days of war. (New Zealand, 12s. 6d.)