Decaying Russia

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume IV, Issue 1083, 2 September 1904, Page 3

Decaying Russia

l Perhaps the most serious danger for tho & futnro of Russia is tho eompleto lack of K a powerful middlo class which knows what K it wonts and means to get it. Listen to this B description of middle class provincial lifo B from the columns of tha Russian Times— B the Novqo Vremya itself;—" It is a fact W that at the present moment Dot 01% w villages but evon our district towns aro {tiling into decay, In the first place tho number of their inhabitants has remained r stationary in most of them for decades & past, bo anoient n town as TJglitsoh has f even, like many others, declined in population ; its former figure of 13,000 inhabi • tantß being now only 9000. Postal communicuion has not progressed beyond tho early stages, Two or threo times a week the post comes, and nobody thinks of making a change in this state of things, although tho organisution of daily sorviro would entail only a very moderate expenditure, No libraries, no teading-rooins, no theatre. Social life is non existent. In a number of towns thcro aro not even clubs, and whero thoy oxist they are used by the local intelligence, which frequently consists ontiroly of drunkards, as a sort of high-olnsa publichoueo, Decay is evident ovorywhero: tho streets aro overgrown with grass, tho fonces crooked, the littlo houses of tho humbler inhabitants aro half in ruins, ovorywhero you 83e unused building plots. Trade and the revenue of the towns aro decreasing hopelessly, The towns nro burdenod with taxes upon trade, upon immovables, with the quartering of (ho military and by otber taxes of the Government. They are deprived of one sourco of iueomo niter an- } other in lavour of tho Treasury. In nnuy districts, whero tho population is declining at an alarming rate, the cause is to bo [• found in the loosening ot the ties between [ paronts and childron, "Tho now-born infant," says Baron von dor Briiggen, an observant German," is generally irom the first day not treated with love, but as a Ik burden; it lies in it box suspended by a mk hook, and is rocked there by Iho BB foot of the knitting mother, until it falls ■B asleep or is put to sleep by tho over-ready MK poppy jqine It is brought up in a poslilonmm tial atmosphere upon the mo- inferior kind HB of food; it has no strength, i;,:ii easily pines P* away if iialuro has not ciul-Hvod it with an iron constitution. For this reason onehalf, or more, of tho children die at an oarly age." When one coi'trusts this fativl policy of drift with tho methods obtaiuing in Japan, where everything is ruin on the most up to-dato ami ;ci<nlili(.' piinciples, it is easy to seo wherein lies the weakness of tho colossal cinpiro now suffering such humiliations in this field of battle.