The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-13
RIVAL CAPITALS
 INLAND OF GAR In Spirit Moscow Belongs to
 the Orient TRAINS ARE ON TIME Engine Drivers Heavily Fined When They Arrive Behind Time-Mos- COW Headquarters of Ortho-
 doxy--Russians Devout
TRAINS ARE ON TIME

F. G. Aflalo in London Morning Post. l The traveller comes suddenly on St. Petersburg, out of great plains more
 comedy in their winter garb which brightens their desolation, since snow, | like charity, hides "a multitude of sins,
 and the most fertile shires in England
 look no better under these conditions than the untitled versts that fly by the windows of the Nord express as it heads for the Warsaw station. Nor is the ap-
 proach to Moscow vastly different, save
 that the dazzling splendor of the Krem- lin catches the eye from afar Those sparkling spires and cupolas, their red
 and blue and gold radiant in winter sunset. recall the Orient, to which in | spirit Moscow belongs, and suggest some corner of old Bagdad transported to an Arctic climate. Moscow is to Petersburg as Canterbury to Liverpool. Peter the Great, who preferred shipping to sym bols, shook the dust of Moscow from off | his feet without a qualm. He should have been born a Dutchman, for he loved | the ships of the Dutch, and 1t was he who brought their samovars to Russia. l He loved the rough clothes and tanned | faces of seamen better than the long sleeves and longer boards of his boyars. | Yet if Moscow meant little to him, it | meant, and still it means, very much to | his countrymen. Only Jerusalem itself ] is more sacred to them, and l have seen l the same glow irritate the faces of Rus
 sian pilgrims bathing in the Jordan and of Muscovites who passed bareheaded under the sacred SpaslSiia Gate or who
 kissed the nail from the True Cross en- | cl1r ri ba nf ha A (. sumption.
 Commercial Petersburg
 1 To all such woTm-eaten traditions, mod ern Petersburg Is blind, deaf and indif- | ferent. Its pride is in it's modern prog ress It has no monument much older | than the citadel of Quebec. It is the European capital, the seaport It sets
 more store by the masts of ships than by | church steeples. Men say that 1t stands
 in water. They might as truly say that
 1t was built on blood. for the reluctant citizens of Moscow were driven to build and populate it under the knout and plet, and the heaps of their slain are the ce- | ment of it's foundations. Moscow is a | city of hills, and stands on the tradi- | tional seven, like Rome. It's streets, in 1 addition to these gradients, which are | unknown in the sea level thoroughfares | of Petersburg are worse paved than l those of the northern capital, the cabs smaller and worse horsed, motor cars | few and far between. and taxicabs un-
 known. By way of compensation the | tourist finds the tramway system of Mos COW more perfect than any other nearer l than Vienna. All said and done, St. 1 Petersburg is a city of the west The Nevsky Prospekt. it's main street, might adorn any othe.a European capital Mos
 COW, on the other hand, Is of the east,
 gorgeous. sunny, gay. and quite unlike the sadder capital which lies buried half the year in a pail of fog from the Gulf of
 Finland. St Petersburg affects western
 thought, and It's finest gallery, the Her itage is crowded with the work of for eign masters, whereas in the Treviatsky collection of Moscow may be found the most appalling war pictures of Verest- chagin and the haunting sea pieces of
 Sudkowski. As if to emphasize their an- tagonism, the two cities even keep diff ferent time, though, for the convenience
 of travellers, a uniform standard Is adopt ed on the railway.
 Russian Trains
 Seeing how comfortable the journey is between the two cities 1t Is remarkable how few people take the trouble to visit
 Moscow, which is infinitely the more al-
 turing of the two. The trains invariably arrive a few minutes in advance of
 schedule time. and an employe of the railway commission. with whom I struck up an acquaintance on the journey. ex- plained this commendable punctuality by the system of heavy fines imposed on
 engine drivers whenever their trains are
 behind time. The train which brought
 me back to St. Petersburg had come all
 the way from Sevastopol, yet 1t reached
 St. Petersburg four minutes before 1t was
 due, surely a praiseworthy feat in any country. and in America unknown. The beds on these trains are remarkably comfortable, and there are precautions
 to ensure the perfect cleanliness of the arrangements that might well be adopted in some countries which pride themselves
 on such details. The one weakness of these express trains between the two capitals is the commissariat. On a run
 of il hours, leaving at Il at night and
 not arriving before 10. one would have thought that Russians of the better class, who have the knack of looking after themselves, no matter how it fares with the moujik, would have exacted facilities for breakfast on the train, but there is, as matter of fact, no such accommodate tion and the most that can be obtained is a cup of tea, with lemon. and an un- welcome roll of no particular pedigree Uhough old enough to need one) at one or other of the little stations along the route.
 l. Religion and Temperament
 Moscow is the headquarters of ortho- doxy and the Russians are more devout