HOW GERMAN INFLUENCE IS GROWING IN RUSSIA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2480, 10 May 1909, Page 8

HOW GERMAN INFLUENCE IS GROWING IN RUSSIA.

To the uninitiated it must seem a peculiar fact that, while Russia succeeds in borrowing enormous sums of money from France and a little from Fugland and Holland, she raises not a single kopek from her wealthy German neighbor, whose friendliness with Russia has been a tradition since the time of the Napoleonic wars. Why does not Germany, on her part, seek to acquire the profit and polltical influence that always follow on the advance of important sums of money to a foreign nation? In modern times a large body of cash deposited with a foreign people is about the most serviceable corps diplomatique imaginable; its’ presence is always felt for the promotion of the lender’s interest; its integrity is regarded by international consent as something sacred and inviolable ; and, far from requiring remuneration for its Services, it pays its employer for the honor of being allowed to work for him, and that, too, at- a handsome rate of interest. Can Germany be blind to this, while France is so clear-sighted ? Tho truth is that Germany has satisfied herself that she is obtaining a far more real and tangible hold on Russia by actual occupation of Russian territory and the centres of Russian commercial life than she would by holding any amount of the scrip issued by the Imperial Rank of St. Petersburg. It is easy to see this from the tone of the German financial press, which does not think much of the credit of tho Russian Government, but is fully awake to tho resources of the Russian nation, and these it knows Germany holds in the hollow of her hand. Tho Frankfurter Zoitung, for example, will have nothing even of the immediate issue of Russian railway bonds, the security lor which it considers reducible to the security of the Government, into whose mouth it puts the cynical utterance of the reactionary old Austrian statesman: “Uns tragt es nodi' —“We are still endured !” Rut, in the Frankfurter's view, the revolutionary movement in Russia has only called a. temporary halt in its progress, and the time cannot be far olf when the traditional vested interests will be endured no longer, and then—who guarantees the value of the paper? But land, and trade, and factories, and house property, and acquired social position are always worth having, for they never sink beneath their face value, and all these Germany lias in Russia.

There are certain facts little tajked of in England, because little known, but which nave boon brought to light recently through the activity of the leaders of the Panslavist movement, and should he kept well in mind by students of the Near East problem of to-day. For readers of Russian they are well summed up by tho ardent editor of the Slavenskje Vjk, M. J). X. Vergun, but many here be stated in brief as follows: First, the fact as to population. The last Government census, made as far hack as 1897, sots down the German residents in Russia as 1,783,000, to which number must bo added 5,110,000 Jews whose language is a German dialect intermixed with a little Hebrew and whose racial ties and traditions are German and not Russian. This makes dose ou 7.000,000 Germans of a total population of 104,000,000 in European Russia at that time. The proportion is not appreciated in its true significance till it is remembered that the towns and cities of Russia only contain some 15,000,000 inhabitants, and that the German and Jewish elements are concentrated almost entirely in the towns and cities. They are thus seen to constitute about one-half their entire population! The paramount position hold by German tradesmen in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Lodz, and the other great commercial cities is too well known to need emphasising here. It is more interesting to note the progress of Germany influence in less known districts, where it amounts almost to an autonomy This is particularly the case along the Lower Volga, where the German residents elect civil magistrates who scarcely ever speak a word of Russian in the exercise of their functions, it is very noteworthy how the various German colonies are kept attached by political ties and organisations to their country of origin. In the Vistula and Baltic Provinces entire German villages have been received as immigrants en masse; the site of their new home is always some point of strategic importance on Russian territory, and they are generally financed for the enterprise by certain of the Berlin hanks. Along the Vistula German social and socio-political institutions have flourished for years past, gymnastic clubs, cycling clubs, singing dubs, even rifle dubs, the members of which are drilled to the use of the service weapon and regularly inspected by German officers. This all takes place on Russian territory and under the full observation of the impassive Russian authorities, who seem to attach no significance to the fact that whole regiments of German riflemen march unrestrictedly through the villages of Russian Poland, courting police sympathy and enthusiasm with their stirring chorus of the "Wacht am Rhein.’ To use a cant phrase of the day, the Germans in Russia “lead their own life” ; they hold their little “imperium in impeno” without molestation of any sort. They have their own newspapers,' their own churches, their own theatres, their own banks, their own schools and system of education. The political organisation of the German residents under tho control of the great centralised club known as tho “Altdeutscher Verhand” would deserve an essay for itself. But what particularly arrests serious attention in Russia at tho present moment is the amount of land they possess. To give a single concrete instance, of the 695 manors registered in Yurieff district only seven or eight belong to Russian proprietors; tho rest belong to Geimans. Proceeding to generalities, in Russian Poland no less than 4220 square miles of the total 49,160 square miles comprised by that province are held by Germans as their own property; in the southwest— i.e., Volhynia, Ukrania, and Now Russia —another 4220 square miles of a total of 104,970 square miles; in Lithuania 1260 square miles of a total of 47,040 square miles; in addition to which, in these provinces alone, M. Vergun estimates that 4500 houses and 1800 factories, representing a 1 value of 300,000,000 roubles (£30,000,000) } arc possessed by Germans. The districts mentioned take in roughly the whole of Western Russia—i.e., most of the land lying west of a line drawn from St. Petersburg to the Crimea. Of this tract the figures quoted show that about one-twentietn is owned by Germans! Their total holding of land in European Russia, exclusive of Finland, M. Vergun places at 31,640 square miles/ which makes a little less than a-sixtieth of the entire area of 1,951,000 square miles.

To sum up, it is estimated that in Russia at the present moment there are over 2,000,000 Germans, mostly of Prussian origin, distributed in 2765 colonies, and largely under military organisation. There are besides 5,250,000 German-speak-ing Jews, whose national sympathies at least—to avoid all discussion, on ethnological points—are _ German, and who arc mostly grouped in the western provinces, where tnere is most fear of invasion. There is thus to-day a German host of 7,260,000 in Russia, rooted to some 32,000 square miles of the soil, controlling by far the greater portion of the trade of the country, backed up by a formidable amount of capital, to the large extent under military organisation, and innocent of any pretension to Russian citizenship. It is no longer a German invasion; it is a German occupation; and no one is bet ter acquainted with the fact than, the wellsatisfied financiers of Frankfort and Berlin whose solid gain would remain undisturbed by any political convulsion.