RED RUSSIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2142, 26 July 1907, Page 4

RED RUSSIA.

BRILLIANT IMPRESSIONS OF THE CZAR’S EMPIRE. FOSTER FRASER’S NEW BOOK.

Of the writing of books about Russia there is no end, and tho reading of thorn is frequently a weariness of t'lie flesh. Air. John Foster Fraser’s “Red Russia” is an exception. Mr. Fraser has eyes to seo, and a brilliant lien to describe wliat' he sees. His pages are unpretentious. He has no pose of authority, but in a few sentences he makes the reader understand the country and the people as the learned treatise generally quite fails to do.

Take the following, for example. The scene is at St. Petersburg cafe in the evening. A military officer and a student have had a quarrel, and the soldier has fired at the civilian. “Look what this blackguard has done,” exclaimed the student'. He half raises his arm and shows a hand dripping with blood. Bang! Another shot has been fired. The student groans and sinks in a heap. Bang! Bang again! Once more bang! The soldier empties his revolver into the body of the dead man. Some women shriek. But- tho band is busy and laughter is loud, and people in distant parts of the room mistake the shots for popping corks. The man is dead 1 The lady who is with him bends over him and sobs.

The Tarter waiters bring a long table cloth. They spread the- cloth and hide It from sight. And now let jollity continue. Tho band plays a waltz. “Champanski!” is the order. Again come the tinkle of women’s laughter, the guffaws of well-fed men. . . .

It is the law in Russia that nobody touches a corpse till the Perfect of Police arrives. An hour goes before he comes. Cjisual interest is shown in his arrival. He arrests the murderer. As the two walk towards the door, eyes follow them. Suddenly a civilian springs to his feet. He seizes a full champagne bottle and crashes it- on the head of the murderer. It tears the scalp ; blood and champagne drip down the uniform. “Bravo 1” shout civilians in tho room.

On with the merry-making. Another rag-time, cake-walk tune! “Champanski 1” A PRISON SCENE.

Another example. A troop of cossacks are attacking an unarmed mob—- “ You brutes!” screeches a young woman. “You are brave when you have defenceless women to fight. You were not so courageous when you had the Japanese before you.” She is surrounded, thonged, and arrested. She is marched to the barracks with officers'about her. In the yard of the barracks annears General Prince .

“What has this woman done?” he asks. .

“She has insulted tho army,” is the reply. “Then let her be flogged now, hero, in tho open, and naked.” Instantly the clothes are ripped from tho woman. Not a shred is left upon her. She stands naked, as God made her, before the jeering officers and soldiers, in the dim light and bitter cold. She is flogged before them all.

This is fine descriptive writing. The whole scene lives before one, and it is written without one superflous word.

NO PARTISAN

Mr. Foster Fraser is no partisan of either bureaucrats or revolutionists. He realises the Government’s incapacity and corruption, but he has no illusions about their opponents, the “intellectuals.”

Much of' tho political trouble in Russia is due to the fact that there are not sufficient Government uniformed posts to go round. AVhon a man tries and fails to secure a post under Government he comes to tho conclusion tho Government is rotten, and requires fundamental change so it can be representative of tbe people. And, unfortunately, Russia has already far more public servants than it can afford.

The Russian public service is stuffed full, chock-a-block; it is swollen by numbers. When a telegram is sent, there is one man to count the words, another to mark the cost, another to take the money, and a fourth to give tho receipt l —all of which would bo done by a girl in an English telegraph office. All these men have to be paid. The taxes with big leakages, are enormous, and it is the intelligenzia—tho more or less educated neoplo, and not necessarily the “intellectual” as I have seen tho word translated in English prints—who are shut out from Government service; it is they, and not so much the peasants—wretched, starving down-trodden though tlieso be—who cry loudest for constitutional government.

Good intentions go hand in hand with mediaeval abuses. Here is a little scene in a prison, illustrative of this common conjunction :—■ chief warder came lpirrying in; “There are ninoteen mon’ in'the yard on tho point of mutiny; they have bad nothing to eat for two days.” He was in distress. They were all men awaiting trial, and were desperate with hunger. Moil in custody. said the chief, can be supplied with food by friends, while others—! “Well, what happens to the others?” I asked.

Ho raised his shoulders, and then ho raised Ids eyebrows. “They just lie,” he said.

But afterwards I learnt that this man, whose life was sought by tho revolutionaries and who was always carefully guarded, spent two or three roubles each day of his private money to provide some of the prisoners with food.

THE JEW.

In writing of the Jew, Mr. Foster Fraser is again strikingly impartial. The Jew is cruelly treated by a halfcivilised people, who liata him because bo is an alien, and an alien" who is clever enough always to beat them. From many suggestive sayings one may quote tho two following:— As a race the Jews are better off in Russia than the Russians themselves, and there is a half-understood gamble in the .mind of the between massacre and money-making. He is willing to take his chances of massacre so long as on the credit side he can bring his sharp wits into competition with the dull wits of the Russian and profit every time. The Jew is not courageous. He has not the pluck to bo an assassin himself.—not all a fault of race, but due in large measure to being an alien, and keeping alive, not by resistance, but by submission to everyone who wished to kick him. He has the intellect, the craftiness of the East, the preference to do a thing by underground ways rather than boldly and in tiie open. He matures the revolu-

tion. Behind all the turmoil—a nation in agony—its the Czar Nicholas, a helpless,'pathetic figure. Nicholas II is neither the callous

monster nor tho short-sighted fool lio is often represented to be. Ho is a kindly-hearted, well-meaning gentle man, who would like Russia to be poaceful, would go a long way in sin rifioing his royal prerogative to secure it: but lie is weak, lacking initiative,

irresolute in decision, commands and countermands, is vacillating, and is rather sick of the whole business.

A nation without cohesion, without faith, without hope, without guidanei —that is the impression one gets irom Air. Foster Eraser’s fascinating pages.