THE RUSSIAN CRISIS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 2

THE RUSSIAN CRISIS.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir — The figures you published on Tucsj day as to the estimates for the Russian budget for 1906 are most instructive. You say : "Year by year the peasants, who | constitute four-fifths of the population, 1 have become poorer and poorer." Now, in ,a book published lately entitled "All the Russias," the author (Mr. Henry Norman) has a good deal to say about the contrast between the Russian and Finnish peasants. He says in one passage : "Finland is the home of a. hard-working, thrifty, prosperous peasantry, whose houses are neat and tidy, fences in good repair, gates sound 1 and closed. Their homes and villages are in marked contrast to thosa of the Russian peasant, who is, as a rule, dirty, drunken, and untidy." Then he points out the great barrenness of the country, and marvels at the sums the peasants have invested in the savings banks,- and finds the cause in the following : — "Sobriety rules m the country because the. sale of intoxicants is absolutely forbidden. Almost tho only thing you may not take freely into Finland in your baggage is spirituous liquor. To one wise law the Finn doubtless largely owes his freedom from a vice which cold and poverty and loneliness and opportunity have developed to a terrible degree among his great neighbours to the east ; the sale ,of alcohol in any shape or form is absolutely prohibited in Finland outside the towns," Thus does a traveller declare from his own observation what your published figures prove. You say that only four and a naif million pounds are to be spent on education in Russia in 1906. The estimated gross revenue from the spirit monopoly is over £60,000,000, and the net profit over £40,000,000. This means that in order to give the Government forty millions, the people of Russia (four-fifths of whom are peasants, I wretchedly poor) waste probably one hundred and fifty million pounds sterling in drink, compared to four and a half in education, which is not only a waste in itself, but causes them, according to Mr Henry Norman, to be "dirtj. drunken, and untidy," and to neglect their I farms and holdings. Surely, never was clearer condemnation of the economic error of a Government encouraging wasteful and vicious expenditure among the people for the sake of revenue, andnever a clearer example of the benefit of removing temptation. — I am, etc., G. B. NICHOLLS.