NEW ZEALAND AND RUSSLA

Otago Witness, Issue 2719, 25 April 1906, Page 13

NEW ZEALAND AND RUSSLA

There is a good deal of discussion now in the Russian papers about the Finland question, and from the way in which the Government press, especially the bureaucratic Xovoe Vremya, are always falling foul of Finland, accusing it of secretly arming, and of it wanting to declaie its independence, and even to attack St. Petersburg. I should imagine that Russia may swoop down on Finland at any moment aa-d devour it. The Finns, however, and the Russian Liberals say that Finland should occupy in regard to Russia the same position which New Zealand occupies with regard to England. New Zealand is, in fact, the Russian Liberal's Utopia. He has read much about it. He has written much about it. He knows nothing at all about it. He regards it as the most perfectly governed of States. He lias never visited it. In fact, it seems to appeal to him all the more becau.se it is so far off. It certainly appeals to him more than America, which, although the greatest of Republics, has many unsatisfactory features, to which even the most democratic of Russian w riters is not blind. This sudden sympathy with New Zealand is one of the results of the wave of Republicanism that is now sweeping over this country, of that inevitable reaction against the* red-tape and the hide-bound bureaucracy, and, in short, the tyranny from -which this country has suffered 6O long. People have become tired of the airs put on by functionaries and generals ! and high-born persons, and have even had the effrontery to ask their rulers a number j of disagreeable questions. They want to know Avhy they have not got the Habeas Corpus Act in Russia, why they have got the troublesome passport system, why they are tyrannised over by the police, muzzled bj the censors, wbipjaed b£ tjjg

Cossacks, sent to die in wars that they know nothing about, and a number of other things. They want to know if the Czar is really such a god that he can only be written of in capias and in the cast sentences supplied to the newspapers by the authorities.

This train of thought has led the Russian public to attain to a freedom of speech such as all authorities on Russia would have pronounced six months ago to be impossible of attainment in less than 10 years. The stage they have reacted ma 3* be seen at a glance by anyone who strolls down the Nevsky Prospect at any hour of the twenty-four. It may even be seen by a person who does not read Russian, for there are scores of illustrated papers, especially intended for that great section of the Russian public which cannot read or which reads with difficulty. In one of these popular publications issued some months back the Czar's manifesto granting liberty was printed, and across the face of it was the mark of a bloody hand. Underneath •was the legend : "-And on that manifesto Trepoff laid his hand." Another publication of this kind had on its cover the picture of a sturdy young Russian mechanic, behind whom, on the sky-line, rose innumerable factory chimneys. Underneath were the ■worde — a parody, of course, of the titles of the Czar,—" His Imperial Highness, the Working Man of Ale the Russias." But the caricaturists go further than this. They even attack the sacred person of the Czar himself. They call him by his pet name of Colly (Russian contraction for Nicholas), and, in a series of "fables for children," we see him represented as a little boy breaking his toy soldiers, for which misdeveanour a real soldier holds the front part of him between his knees while a big muzhik belabours the rear with a stick. Verily, verily, things hare changed ia Russia.