Norwich bulletin., 1914-12-15
YOUNG RUSSIA-A LAND
 OF UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES
Though Geographically Great, It io, However, Poor in Natural Outlets.
Especial to The Bulletin.)

tSpec1al to The BuQetn.D Washington, D. C., Dec. 14.-Show- ing how Russia is larger than the en-
 tire continent of North America, with
 the islands of the Caribbean thrown
 in; how 1t occupies three-hfths of Eu- rope and two-fifths of Asia; how its
 Asiatic possessions are one and a half l times as great as those of China and
 three times as great as those of Great l Britain; how it comprises ne-sixth of the landed area of the globe and one-
 tenth of the worlds population, Gilbert l H. Grosvenor, director and editor of the National Geographic society, has 1 just furnished the nearly 350,000 mem bers of that organization with a strik- 1 ing pen picture of Young Russia-A Land of Unlimited Possibilities" After giving an impression of the di-
 versity of the origin of its peoples,
 who come from the Orient and the Oc- cident, the frigid north and the tropic l south; of it's range of climate, which gives the Palm Beach touch to its Crimea and the breath of the north to
 its White sea region; of its vast agri-
 cultural wealth; of the widely varying
 aspirations of its peoples, which differ
 as greatly as those of the Poles and
 the Mongols, as those of the Confu-
 clans and the Jews, as those of the
 Tartars and the Lapps; and of the | vastness of the geographic limits of the empire, MT. Grosyenor says:
 But with all it's geographic great ness Russia is about as poor in natural outlets to the world as the smallest of the countries of the earth. Holland could be hidden in the vast reaches of the Russian plain, almost as a needle in a haystack, yet Amsterdam does more international business than all the ports of Russia together. Not one free outlet to the open sea does Euro pean Russia possess except on the iee- bound shores of the Arctic ocean. The path from the Black sea to the Medit- erranean leads through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles held by alien hands,
 Mir. Grosvenor next shows how there lives within the boundaries of the Russian empire enough people to du- plicate the population of Germany, Great Britain and France combined, with enough left over to duplicate hal5 the population of Austria Hungary.
 Furthermore, if Russia grows from
 1912 to 2000 as she grew from 1872
 to 1912 her population then will be up-
 ward of six hundred million.
 He then continues: From such a record of size, of bigness in everything, we should expect Russia to be an old nation, like Great Britain, with per
 haps a thousand wears of unhindered growth behind her. But, as a matter of fact, Russia is a youth among the
 nations compared with England, a stripling whose full stature and breadth is still subject of conjecture l and speculation.
 Russia is young because she never has had chance to grow until recent years. Her geographical shape or con- dition was such that for centuries her people were constantly being enslaved or deSpoiled by stronger neighbors." After dealing briefly with Russia's remarkable history, especially with the surprising reign of Peter the Great,
 Mir. Grosvenor shows that when Alex
 ander II freed the fifty million serfs l of Russia. he released from bondage a
 population equal to that of the twelve
 leading states of the United States, and a population more than twelve l times as great as was freed by Lin- coln's emancipation proclamation not very many months afterward. Alex | ander bought 350.000.000 acres of land 1 for them, permitting them to buy it from the government on easy terms. He thereby csrried into effect the most extensive piece of agrartan leglHlation in history.
 Each village conducts it's own inter
 nal affairs through town meetings' and 1 not through elected or appointed ofi1- cials. Their lands are held on tho , common ownership basis. and is ap- portioned out for cultivation from time to time.
 with the bulk of its crops raised by the peasantry, and, for the most port, emploYing most primitive means of