The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-03-28
RUSSIA, THE
 < UNKNOWN
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self only in a better position to heartily agree with Count Ilya Toistoi that it is useless for an outsider 10 attempt to know or pretend that he has any right to pass on the trans formation through which the country at present is going.
 Its with this disclaimer that I set down anything about Russia, yet l feel that possibly in my travels. talks with prominent people and studies that ] may be able to point out some things which will prove both interesting and informing. without, and at least show forth the immensity of the problem which is now being fought out in the most unhappy land of the great pow ers and the stake that Europe and America has in order being brought out of the chaos which now reigns from the Baltic to the Black sea and from Warsaw to vladisvlostock.
 In this country when we want to give any one the idsa of immensity we say it is as big as Texas and all out doors" Well Russia Is this big and then much more for the Lone Star state is but a dot when placed in the heart of Russia. Remember I am not now speaking of Russia as it is at present divided but of it as 1t was before the. war and before the Bolsheviks began to play fast and loose with it's terri tory. Furthermore I am not even in- timating that Poland, the Ukraine, Fin land and other parts should not have a right to become self-governing na- tions.
 We used to hear much about the Siav danger to Europe. It was Bismarck's pet bogy to scare Europe with 1t when ever he saw a chance to get some ad- vantage for Germany, but While he overworked 1t the truth is the great white bear of the north did have the power to swallow Europe and then have plenty of room on the inside for Texas. I am now looking at map of Russia with Europe rattling around on the iuSiue llhe pea III q Wdiuut shell.
 The area of Russia at the end of the reign of Peter the Great. which was under three million square miles at the end of the nineteenth century, not counting expenses of water, composed one twenty second of the whole area of the terrestrial globe, or one-sizth of the land surface; it's area being more than two and one-haif times that of Europe; it's width from north to south. 2,4s0 miles, and from east to west. 4,960 miles. The Great Russian plain itself covers surface equivalent to ten times the area of France.
 Except for the urail mountains sep arating Siberia from Russia, and the Caucasus range in the south, it would be difficult to find in the empire a hill much higher than a thousand feet While Western Europe is a land of mountains. plateaus, plains and valleys Eastern Europe forms one single un- dulating plain, the interior of which is traversed by only two elevated tracts of importance. One, in the cen ter of Russia. commences in the gov ernment of Novgorod and ends at distance of 5000 miles from the Don; the other runs southward from Mimi Novgorod.
 It has been prophesied that one of these days Russia may give birth to man who can boom 1t after the manner of an American emigration agent and then its rich plains capable Of rars- ing every kind of food will become the great storehouse for Europe. Its really impossible to get the immensity of the country fixed in one's mind and its possibilities are beyond the reach of the most fertile imagination.