THE RUSSIAN REFORMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13278, 10 September 1906, Page 4

THE RUSSIAN REFORMS.

The reforms promised to the Russian people in the official communique which declared that all lawlessness would be ruthlessly suppressed appear to have fallen like oil upon fire rather than like oil upon troubled waters. It was at first announced that the new stand of the Government had created a favourable impression in the country, but this opinion was evidently rushed into by those who are very desirous of the restoration of order and of the resumption of business, necessarily a very large and influential class. We are now told that analysis shows M. Stolypin's programme to be altogether unacceptable, being simply the renovation of the old system with all its evils. The barbaric warfare which is being waged between an irresponsible autocracy on one side and equally irresponsible assassins on the other will be continued. How the innocent thus suffer with the guilty is shown by the plight in which a well-known English newspaper correspondent found himself when seized by Cossacks, and by the horrible mutilation of M. Stolypin's daughter in the recent attempt upon the Premier's life ! The fatalism of the Asiatic mindand Russia is only a little less Asiatic than Japan— enables officials to remain at their posts under a terrorism which would break down any European rule, and enables revolutionists to maintain terrorism at the certain risk of their own lives The army could decide the question against the Tsar to morrow, and there is considerable evidence to show that the army as a whole is inclined to sympathise with reform But the Government has a co-ordination which the revolutionists are not able to establish, with the result that the organised minority holds in check the. unorganised majority, as it has done since the world began. The Asiatic incapacity of the Russians for automatic self-organisa-tion on emergency—which is the strongest political feature of the Teutonic nations—drives them to confront tyranny by assassination and reduces the issue to the problem as to which side can endure the slaughter longest.