A Far-Away War.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 80, 1 October 1904, Page 13

A Far-Away War.

ST. PETERSBUEG, 19th July, 1904. It is a very comfortable thing, in most relations of life, to be free of the critical faculty. The art of "taking things as they come" follows spontaneously on the elimination of criticism from one's mental progress, and it is, I think, along this line of argument that one proceeds most accurately to an understanding of a popular view of the war iv Eussia. The people of the country are so com-, plctely removed from any share in the control of affairs that the workings of Government, :the adjustment of policy, vith its consequences of war or peace, flssume all the qualities of fate. While the valour of Bu^ian soldiers and the justice of their cause and pivine countenance to their endeavours are taken as known factors, counted on and weighed against the assets of the other side, the conduct of the war by the bureaucracy is recognised as a thing which cannot be calculated beforehand. It is the unknown factor, the influence which imports the unavoidable element of chance into the transaction, and which, when its operations turn out ill, is as little to be blamed as the lie of the ground or a change in the weather. The mental attitude of the Russian middle and lower classes towards the Government in its bearing on the war would be a most profitable study in political psychology, were not its manifestations even more interesting and illuminating. LETTERS HOME. There is, of course, a personal factor. There is haTdly a family that has not furnished food for cannon, and for whom the tide of battle swirls about a single well-known figure, Ivan or Dimitri, as the case m?,y be. This alone suffices to turn all eyes to the East, whence any_ mail *nay bring tidings of sorrow. There" com; letters, too, from 'time to time, and some of these I have seen. Such naive epistles, so full of frothy, boyish battle-lust! "When we get to Japan," they say, we will do this and that to mark our arrival. The Mikado's grave has been dug in the mind of every soldier. *'Let us get at them, just once," they repeat, and after all this comes a chronicle of the pettinesses of % campaign just started — how a samovar at Liaoyang is just like the big one at home, but the tea is not nearly so good. The cows have humps on their backs, and the Chinamen charge twenty kopeks a glass for vodka. The boil on the neck that was poulticed two months ago has broken out anew with astonishing, vehemence, and P*ml (tell Paul's people) has got a bullet in the stomach. No ! Russia will learn no geography by this war. It will only retain it« faith in Ivan and Dimitri, and its affectionate interest in their personal and domestic history. Still, Russia as it stands to-day is not without a warlike history, that it should regard the present conflict :.s xinprecedented. In the villages r.nd •■" the land tradition fills the place of information. I spoke yesterday with a Russian editor, whose knowledge of his own pople is beyond the ordinary, and I asked him to tell me what the peasants knew of the cause of the war. "they k;now nothing." "They know nothing," he replied. "They are' using up the old tales that have descended to them from the Helden?eit. 'In a village that I know of they believe that we are at war be'oause the Cossacks stole a child ijrom the- Emperor of Japan, and won't give it back." It is hard to credit, but so it is. There was a day when Cossacks rode into Asia and inaugurated, personal w.ars with khans and kings, stole' beautiful ladies, and gained for themselves the tradition with which the moujik still invests them. Myth and history combine to shape his, conception of events, and he imagines implicitly that they are at work in the Far East to-day just as picturesquely and with the same heroic lawlessness as in the padt, when neither khan nor kaiser could hold or bind them. He has not learned that the age of chivalry is dead, and brave men crawl to battle on their bellies. It is this tradition that carries Russia on and makes up the sum of popular patriotism. The priest ably seconds the old men's tales, and holds the position which Western countries under the same' circumstances allot to Red Cross organisations at home and societies for promoting the comfort of soldiers. These corporations enable the public itself to, take a personal interest in the war, and often a valuable' and considerable one, but since such activities are not possible on any great scale in Russia, measures are taken to associate every man's somewhat prominent religion with the national cause. Prayers in the churches, do not suffice ; they are conventional ; but each moujik is impressed with the fact that his own constant supplication, f,or victory has a value and a virtue. NOT THEIR BUSINESS. He wears his religion as he wears his , beard. It is a part of him, inherent in his personality, fills the half of his thoughts, and stands him. in the stead of an ideal. To blend the war with his worship is thus to command a patriotism at least more convinced than any political partisanship couM inculcate, and it is none the less efficient as conducive to the maintenance of order and the cheerful paying of taxes, because it is a little vaguely ethical and ignorant. Yet it would be untrue to Bay that any section of the community concerns itself gravely with the war. The mouuk, after all, does not disturb himself; he prays and talks, and works and drinks just the same. If Port Arthur fell to-morrow it would not touch him closely. He is not up in the subject of Port Arthur, and knows nothing of its significance. And in the towns it is rather the summer which carries off the richer people to their country seatß, than the news from fche front which deadens business and closes the theatres. The gardens of St. Petersburg, where a band competes with a luncheon bar, fill every evening,, and no one would guess from the demeanour of the happy people, who take their cheap pleasures with such a healthy gusto, that Russia was daily losin<* ground in a war to the death. The news of a calamitous defeat is circulated at 8 in the evening, and rumour adds a nought or two to the tale of the killed and wounded; yet at 10 the folk arc drinking and fooling as though nothing had happened. And nothing has happened to matter. It is not their business, this war. It is the peculiar property of a class to which they do not belong.- Let that class, then, look to it! THE BAND. A few days ago I saw a detachment of the newly-mobilised Ist Army Corps marching to the Nikolai station on their way to the front. A band and the drums led them, playing something very like Sousa, and I noticed that a great crowd jostled along the pavement to see them off. As they passed windows opened and faces appeared. All the world seemed the friend of Ivan Ivanovitch. St. Petersburg was interested at last. Thinks I, it only needs something visible, a sight of the machine itself, to capture their attention. They are too detached ; the war is too far off ; but show them the men and you have them. This is the whole secret. But the following day the second detachment Went away. The long line filed across the Nevsky, down the Moika, and so op a fine sight in its

way, and, lo! not a civilian soul walked with them, not a girl turned to be winked at, not a window opened. St. Petersburg was emphatically not interested, and it pazzled me. I knew they were off to the front, as the others had been; they belonged to the same unit, and drew their men from the same locality. What, then, could explain the indifference of all the world to their passage? Suddenly it dawned on me. The second detachment had no band! That, after all, explains mos6 things in Russia as between the people and the Government. Loyalty is so largely a matter of the senses, and if you make laws in a, back-parlour, and administer them from an upstairs office, you must not expect obedience to be greased with enthusiasm. You must have a band. The war is so far away, concerns such peculiar interests, and has so little to do with the people themselves, that the bands are not heard. When disaster reaches Ivan and Dimitri, then perhaps there will be interest, hot and penetrating interest, out that will not De of the sort that needs a band! — Percival Gibbon in the Daily Mail.