PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2579, 19 August 1903, Page 75

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

RUSSIA AND THE FAR EAST.

Last week's Witness had a very suggestive cartoon on Russia's grip of the East, .and what she — or he? — may eventually aim at possessing. H:ive you read Fraser's "The Real Siberia"? I have alluded to it once or twice, but have not gone further. Here are the concluding paragraphs of this book : —

" One word in conclusion

" Russia is no longer a second-rate power. She is in the front rank. Whatever be her methods, she dominates the politics of the Far East, and has her share in directing the politics of the world. Her march is east and south, inevitable and unchecked.

" It was Bit-maick who described Russia as a colossus on clay feet. But those feet have hardened since the words were spoken. They have clattered to the Pacific ; Ibey have clattered across Manchuria ; they are in Mongolia ; they are about Persia and about China. Not yet — 'Never!' cries the Biitisher ; but they hope some day to clatter through Afghanistan to India. " India is what the statesmen in St. Petersburg, looking over his coffee and straight into your eyes, calls 'Russia's Destiny.' And when your eyes throw back in defiance, he oilers you a cigarette, smiles, and says, 'We will see — in the future ! '"

In this week's Witness there may not be another cartoon, but there is no danger of our forgetting that Russia is at work. Somo 26,000 soldiers are streaming east during the next six weeks to strengthen the already large garrisons of the East, where there is every accommodation for an immense mass of troops. One town has* quarters for 100,000 men.

How has this rapid concentration in the Far Kast been made possible? "By a twin thread of steel" extending from St. Petersburg through Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific, with a branch line to Pert Arthur, and another to Pekin. The first sod of the line was laid in 1891, and since then the railway has been laid at the rate, roughly, of* a mile a day. Fraser says it is 5449 miles long and has cost £85,000,000 ; but this estimated cost is much higher than appears in standard year books.

"All along the line," says the author I have mentioned, ''at every verst, there is a rude cabin made of logs, painted yellow, and these are inhabited by good-conduct convicts, who signal with green flags that the coast is clear. Many of them looked far above the railway labourers in intelligence ; but on the faces of them all was an abiding sadness born of the loneliness of the life they lead, with never the shadow of hope for the future.

"At night it is a green lamp which is used. Many an hour towards midnight I stood on the gangway between the carriages and ticked oft the green lights as we spun along. Away- down the black avenue would appear » tiny green speck ; as the carriages rumbled over the metals it would grow bigger. Just distinguishable in the darkness was the figure of a man holding the lamp high up. He and his light would be lost the instant it was pas&ed. But when all the train had gone by he turned and showed the light the other way. I instinctively tuned and looked ahead again, and yonder in the distance was another tiny green sp-M:k.

"Just in itself there is nothing muoh in such a simple signal. It is, however, when you think that there are thousands of these men, and that a signal started to-day at . Moscow runs for 11 days until it is broken on the banks of Lake Baikal, beyond Irkutsk, that the twinkling green lights get a peculiar interest."

What is the object of the railway? This, too, Mr Fraser answers. "The main object Russia had in making the line was military, so that in time of Avar she might have a quick way of throwing her ' hundreds of thousands of troops into China or into her great porfe of Vladivostok on the Pacific. Immigration, commerce, and the development of Siberia came ns an afterthought. In 1895, when the line was opened only as far as Central Siberia, the number of passengers wa% just over 200,000 ; in 1900 there were 1,500,000— -seven times as mnnv."

But since the railway was projected events have moved bo fast in the East that tliere has been a creat modification of the

original plan. Vladivostok is now practically abandoned, and (Jjrea, Port Arthur, and Pekin are the objectives. Instead of completing the railway down the left or northern bank of the Shilka and Amur "Rivers to Khabarovsk, the line bifurcates near Nertchinsk, east of Chita, and nukes almost '.!i bee line for Vladivostok, with branch line<» from Harbin down to tli2 Corea frontier to Port Arthur, and also to a connection with Pekin. Still better for Russian domination, a survey has been made for a line from lake Baikal straight across Mongolia pretty well as the crow flies right into Pekin. Wherever these lines of railways are constructed or are being constructed "Cossack soldiers are the directors of policy and bayonets the arguments." The line from Nikolsk (which is just above Vladivostok) to Harbin (on the Sungari nnd nearly south of Tsitsihar) and Chita is 1200 miles long ; yet it is only five years ago when a party of Cossack military surveyors, accompanied by Russian engineers, made a journey across Manchuria to spy out the line. Russia^ has b?en afraid that Japan would precipitate •3. war before shs (Russia) was ready, so has made all speed to have this and other Manchurian lines completed fast enough to fulfil the cbiect of their construction. In nne pln<;e Fraser saw 2000 Russians and 5000 Chinese working day and night to complete a bridge, the electric light being iir?d when necessary. In another place 3000 coolies were hard at it ; and all told "there were hundreds of thousands of Chinere coolies engaged on the railway." Tho rails were beine laid at the rate of three miles a diy. No wonder Fraser says thsit Russia is in possession of Manchurin pnd means to s'-ay. find that it is a very* fcrcre plum drawn out of the Chinese pie. If Minchuria "oozes with gold"' besides rtftroleum. erold. and silver, Russia hns indeed n lirt?e plum both jjs to siz<» nnd va'up. With ctroncr na-val ba*e* at Vladivostok aii'l P"rt .Arthur, whpre she is snenrlinc £10.500,000. t\m\ with a lin« of iv»>lwav nb«olurelv «nfa from attack. Russia's position in the Fast seems imnregnable. What is the future to be? Many retrnrd a collision with Japan for the possession of Corea as inevitable, and from Japm's point of view the sooner the conflict enmes tlis better, for every day is strengthening Russia's position for the struggle. Though the railway across Siberia, like the trans-Caspian line, was built mainly for strategical purposes, yet it will be used for pa«sen"er and mail transit between LondSn and all Chinese ports. A. bo<i.fe from London to Shanghai tnkes about 36 day?, and a passage costs from £68 to £95. By the Siberian route it can be done in 16 days at a cost (first class) of £33 10s. "You go riding over the trans-Siberian line one day, two days, » week, and still those twin threads of steel" stretch further and further. The thing begins to fascinate you, and you stand for hours in the rear car and watch the rails spin under your feet— miles, miles, thousands of miles!"

And the travelling is comfortable. Though there may be 40deg of frost outside the car, an even temperature of 65deg or 70deg, at the wish of the occupants, is kept within. There are electric lights, hot baths, the best of cooking, a good library, , pinno, ladies' boudoir, observation car glassed- in, etc., etc. And this ' goes through Siberia, that vast tract we used to look upon as an immense snow waste, but which is to Asia, what Canada is to North America. It is already sending tens of thousands of buckets of butter to the London market, and the output will in a few years have an appreciable effect upon t.he price of butter in New Zealand. Further the millions of acres of wheat lands will provide wheat at a price perhaps unheard of before. Such is Russian progress.