The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-11-21
RUssIA's PEACE POLICY.

The present illness Of the car of Rus
STA has brought this parsonage very
much into public notice, and incidentally
he has received no end of praise for his
supposed love of peace and detestation
of war. It is true that the present car
has on various occasions shown strong
disinclination to plunging his nation into
warfare with other leading powers, but
whether this is with him a matter of SEN
timent or of Judgment is an open ques-
tion and it is quite possible that he OBJ
jected to war, not because he loved
peace more, but rather because it was
| more profitable and better suited to his
plans and purposes.
By a war with a first-class power Rus
STA could gain but little and she might
lose everything. The only first-class
powers Russia would be likely to get
into war with are England and Germany.
But England could not stand by and see
Germany crushed, for that would leave
her alone to face her two mortal enemies,
France and Russia, and after the de-
struction of Germany England's turn
would naturally come next. Neither
could Germany permit the defeat and
ruin of England, for that would leave
her wedged in between France and Rus
STA as between two millstones, and that
would mean Germany's ruin also.
Consequently, Russia would not be al
lowed to defeat either one of these pow
ers without having both to deal with,
and besides it is very questionable
whether she could defeat either one of
them single-handed. Neither could Rus
STA attack any one of the lesser European
states without having to face one of
these two powers.
1t is therefore plain that Russia could
not hope to gain much by war, but, on
the other hand, she might lose every
thing. Russia's strength is not at all
equal to her bulk. She is a great IN
wieldy mass, held together more by ex-
about 10000, 600 or 10000, 900 are really Rus
| or her population of some 120,O9O,0O0, only
slams. The rest are subject and COR
terna. rorce than by natural cohesion.
quereu races, held down and crushed by
the iron heel of oppression, and waiting
and watching for nothing better than an
| opportunity to break away from their
oppressor.
! II Russia should suffer crushing de-
| feat, Finnland in the first place would
want to gain independence or revert TO
Sweden, of which it formerly formed q
+; part.
[ The Baltic provinces form the most
progressive and prosperous part of the
Russian empire, yet the people of those
provinces are not Russians, and do not
belong to the Greek orthodox church.
the state religion of Russia. They are
Esthonian, Let's and Iithuanians, with
a strong percentage of Germans, and
they belong to the Lutheran Protestant
church. These people would much pre-
fer to have government of their own,
though they might submit gracefully to
! Decorating a part of Germany.
|
stamped indelibly on the minds of some
S,O0O,0oO or 100000 of her sons that live
under Russian rule, and the very first
opportunity would see them rise in open
rebellion to throw off the detested yoke.
In her Asfatic possessions, too, Russia s
rule over the barbaric tribes there is
merely a matter of brute force, and, to a
large extent, but indifferently estab-
>lished.
If the autoeratic bond of brute force
which holds all this heterogeneous mass
together were once broken it would drop
asunder of its own accord. 1t is there
fore clear that, in the event OF war, Rus
sia has everything to lose and very little
to gain, and that alone should put It out
| of the question as a business proposition.
On the other hand, Russia may rea-