The daily Alaskan., 1915-07-23

umphs of tho Giant Barbarian.
 The chief nobles of Russia, summon ed from all quarters of the empire on April 20, 1898, sat around q table in the czar's palace at Moscow. They were a rough looking lot with their shaggy boards and unkempt hair and with their dirt inCrusted bodies swath- ed in gold embroidered oriental robes.
 At the tables head stood thick set young man whose i'll fitting European robes sat oddly on his giant body. He was rugged of face and was the only beardless member of the conference, In one unwashed hand he wlelded l pair Of barber shears.
 The man was Peter l., cZar of all the Russias, father of modern Russia and known to time as Peter the Great. He had just returned from a tour of Eu- rope, and the Journey had taught him lesson. It had taught him, he said to the nobles, that he ruled barbaric and primitive realm that was about thousand years behind the times; that | Russia had slumbered while all the rest of the world had pressed forward. He announced that he was going to pen q new era for his country; to civ ilize and modernize 1t and make 1t as up to date as the nations which were laughing at 1t. He further informed the assemblage that the reform was going to begin then and there. Modern folk, he told them, did not wear Cnor- nous shaggy boards and long robes. European dress must henCefOrth be worn by the Russians, and boards must go.
 1 To show he was in earnest Peter went slowly around the table and with his own hand cut off the beard of every man there. To seventeenth century Russian the beard was as sacred ns Is n pigtail to q Chlnaman, and nothing but Peters iron authority, backed by his nrmy's loyalty, prevent ed a wholesale revolution. Until Pe- ter's time 1t had been the custom to wear the coatsleeves at least foot longer than the arms. These sleeves he ordered cut off to conform with Flu ropean fashions. AS 1t was, the clothes and beard reform stirred up q dozen hot little rebellions,
 | And thus modern Russia was born. Nor did Peter rest until he had made 1 his formerly despised country q world power. He was a strange man, this czar, who undertook to awaken a sleeping nation to life and activity. Voltalre paints perhaps the best pie ture of the czar's many sided charaC- ter in the words:
 He gave q polish to his people and was himself q savage. He taught them the art of war, of which he himself was ignorant. From the sight of a small boat on the river Moskwa he i erected a powerful fleet, made himself an expert and active shipwright, sailor, pilot and commander. He changed the manners, customs and laws of the Rus slans. and he lives in their memory as the father of bis country"
 One change followed another. Edu- cation, mechanics, the arts, were intro duced into Russia, armies of practical teachers being imported. Then came wars which won some long needed sea ports for the awakened land and new territory as well.
 Peter decided that Moscow was wrongly built and in a bad location for his newborn country's capital. And against an avalanche of opposition he picked out a tract of ground fin the midst of a swamp for a new capital Here with his own hands he built wooden hut and summoned every ar- tisan he could get hold of to help him erect a monster city, to be known, in his honor, as St. Petersburg.
 He superintended the work of drcdg- ing, digging and building, doing much of the labor in person, working side by side with his underpaid day Iaborers. In 17O3 the city was begun. In I'll Peter laid the foundation of his own brick palace there. (And 203 years later one of his successors renamed the capital Petrograd, to get rid of the Ger | man word "DuTg' Tn us tltle) Tn lil3 the seat of government was moved hither from Moscow.
 Peter the Great died in 1725 Mod ern Russia is his true monument and epitaph. He found his country semi savage, and he, savage at heart, left it civilized and progressive. He added six mighty provinces to the empire, and he made 't q leading political, con- mercial and naval power, respected by the very nations that had so lately derlded it, hated and feared by most of | them.
 All through the work of one giant barbarian who had begun his miracu- lous task twenty-seven years earlier by acting as barber for his own nObles.-