Okolona messenger. (Okolona, Miss.) 1900-current, 1902-10-01
IMPENDING DANCERIN CHINA AND Russia

Indications Of impending calamities like signs OI
approaching good, not infrequently prove deceptive.
The world will continue 10 hope, therefore, that
appearances in China and REssia are misleading.
In both, large numbers Of the people have suffered
every want and been subjected to every torture by
the tyranny and ncOmpetency of their governments.
In bcth famine has become chronic oppressive
taxes the rule and misery stalks abroad on every
hand. In both, the fact is beginning to dawn on
the peoples benighted min is that they have rights
and they are cropping about for some means Of Sc
curing them. And in each, a weak sovereign, who
has vague appreciation Of his own danger, and the
peoples wrongs, is hedged about by the forms of
court, and bound hand and foot by the power Of
a bureaucracy, which stands between sovereign and
subjects, refusing to allow the former to communi.
cate his benevolent wishes to the latter, and re-
straining the latter from making known to the for.
mer their agony, their growing craving for liberty
and their gloomy determination to have their rights
regardless of consequences to emperor and court.
There are more frequent lnsurrectiOns in China,
and they more bloody than the riots in Russia;
but the situation in Russia is mere menacing. The
Chinese monarchy is weak and less successful in in.
stantly checking symtoms OF disorder. But while
the powerful Russian government, which has its
secret agents and its soldiers in every quarter of the
empire, has been able to hold the people down, its
greater power is like the greater thickness Of the
walls of = volcano, which may temporarily postpone
an explosion, but which render the terrific and de-
struetsve it does occur The Chinese are neither
well organized so desperate as the Russian rev.
OlutiOniss; nor have they as intelligent and capable
leaders. The spirit of the Chinese is blind rage
excited principally by aversion to foreigners and
extortOnate taxation; that of the Russians or at
least Of the university professors and students, and
poor nobility, who are guiding it, is a comparative
ly enlightened purpose to demolish the old tyrannc-
al government and establish freer one on its ruins.
Like the leaders Of the French revolution, they have
al Hofsr
les and demand a constitutional and representative
government.
That the government OF Russia at least partially
appreciates the situation is proved by the numer-
GUS ress5pts it is issusing to suppress the revolu
tonary propaganda, and by the almost puerile pleas
the weak czar has made to his people to listen to
the advice Of the nobility instead of to the voice O
the refOrmers. But words are ineffective, Neither
threats nor appeals can explain to the people Why
famine constantly hangs the land, causing the
death rate to rise to the enormous heghth of forty
In 900 In the agricultural sections and "a in 00C
in the entirO country. And fine promises of i'm
proved government, from whatever source, cannot
gloss the resorts to the knout and the fusillade
which are being constantly made in every part o
the empire.
The Russians have shown in war that they car
fight as courageOusly and skillfuy and die al
bravey as any other EurOpen people. They have
within the last century produced some of the mOs
eminent writer's scientists and statesmen in the
world. There is reason for believing that they
have vast potential genius. They have made re-
markable Improvements in recent years in spite o.
tyranny and oppression. But unless their govern
ment adopts a different policy their very excellen
cies Of cnaracter will make the revolution toward
which they are drifting much more terrible thar
the French revolution as their numbers are greater
than The population Of France was.
With both Russia and China trembling on the
verge of civil war the outlook for q continuation
of the worlds peace seems less promising than in
many years. Well may mankind shudder al
thought Of the results that would ensue if the my.
rad Inhabitants Of these two vast smpires, amount
ing together to more than half billion OF people,
should become thoroughly aroused and give full
rein to their ierOcity.