NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12653, 6 September 1904, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

RUSSIA IN WAR TIMS. Apaet from the bureaucracy the great mass, of the Russian people know little or nothing of the ! war, and manifest scarcely any interest in it. So much, at least, we gather from an interesting letter published in the London Daily Mail, from its St. Petersburg correspondent. He asked a Russian editor to tell him what the Russian peasants knew of the cause of > the war. " They know nothing," was the reply. "They are using up the old tales that have descended to them; from the Heldenzeifc. In a village that I know of they believe that we arfi at war because the Cossacks stole a child from' the Emperor, of Japan, and won't give it back." It would be untrue, the correspondent goes on to remark, to say that any section of the community concerns itself gravely with the war. The moojik, after all, doe 3 not disturb himself ; he prays and talks, and works and drinks just the game. If Port Arthur foil tot-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 seats, than the news from the front, which deadens business and closes the theatres. The gardens of St. Petersburg, whore 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 losing ground in a war to the death. The news of a calamitous defeat is circulated at eight in the evening, and rumour adds a nought or two to the tale of the killed and wounded; yet at ten the folk are 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 close to whioh they do not belong. Let that class, then, look to it! A few days ago I saw a detachment of the -mobilised First 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 end faces appeared. All the world seemed the friend of Ivan Ivanoviteh. 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. Rut the following day the second detachment went away. The long line filed across the Nevsky, down the Moifca, and so on, a fine sight hi its way, and, Io! not a civilian soul walked with them, not a girl turned to bo winked at, not a window opened. St. Petersburg was emphatically not interested, and it puzzled 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 moat 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 up itaira 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 solittle to do with the people themselves, that the bands are not heard. When disaster: reaches \ Ivan and Dimitrij, then perhaps there will be interest, hot and penetrating interest, but that will not be of the sort that needs a band!

■' NO MONET ABOUT. This is the general, complaint in the Mother Country, at the present time. Trade is slack, with no sign' of - a general improvement, and, as a consequence, John Bull is economising in a variety of ways { forced by the necessities of his financial distress. The shopkeeper suffers; luxuries and jewels are no longer purchased; the caterer suffers, as I the diner retrenches in his wine bill; chari- | ties are in despair; the Post Office Savings Bank's o'leaposits show a marked decline; while on the Stock Exchange the generally cheerful and prosperous stockbroker can scarcely make both ends meet. There is depression everywhere (says a London paper), the plain indication that something is very wrong with our financial and fiscal system. • It is said that the war in South Africa is mainly to blame for this state of affairs. This, however, is a doubtful proposition. Franca suffered incomparably more in her "terrible year" of 1870-1, yet she recovered with great rapidity and ease from the shock. It looks as though other causes than the war were at bottom the explanation of our present misfortunes. First and foremost among these there is the reckless local expenditure, defrayed by enormous rates upon British industry, which is growing even faster than national expenditure. Here a halt must be called, for at a time such as the present, with a great war raging, Britain cannot think of cutting down its army or navy. She must retrench first in those directions where retrenchment does not i menace national security.