The world storm and beyond

Front matter

THE

AND

DWIN DAVIES CHOONMAKER

Table Of Contents

OHAPTBB PAGH

I FROM O^SAB TO KAISER 3

II RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 29

II Eussia And The Open Sea

WHATEVER may happen to tlie other nations whose swords are crossed in the great conflict that is now waging, no one expects that the destiny of the colossus of the North will be seriously interfered with. France may be overrun or a similar fate may overtake Grermany, Austria may disappear from the map or the British empire may be broken up; but between Eussia and any great harm still lie those impenetrable spaces where the armies of Napoleon lie buried — those armies that Europe has not forgotten. When the swords that are now clashing are put up and the game is over, Germany and Austria or England and France may divide the present, but the future belongs to Russia.

Let us look for a moment at the history and aspirations of this great people, and see how she lies with relation to things that are happening and to things that will happen when the wounds that are now opening are healed, and the children of fathers that are now dying have become the masters of Europe.

For centuries the Slav has lived and, so far as the rest of the world is concerned, still lives just beyond the horizon. There is about him something of the wonder with which our forefathers regarded the hyperboreans, something of the awe with which dwellers in valleys look upon high mountains, upon the Alps or the Himalayas. He appears and disappears, strikes or is ever about to strike. He is the Apache of Europe and Asia, the Ishmael of the Caucasian race. To the south of a ragged line touching the civilizations ancient and modern of virtually the whole earth, eyes are eternally fixed upon the North, wondering where he will appear next. Indeed, this anxiety is a kindred bond uniting the heterogeneous peoples of the temperate zone of the two continents. To find anything like it we must go back to the days when along borders much less extensive tb3 people of the Eoman empire looked toward the north, where a similar menace was gathering. While the Swede is out on his watch-towers in the west, the Japanese is patrolling his coast, and between them what motley sentinels move to and fro, what strange tongues are naming the common fear ! Where will lie appear next? In what numbers will he come! And how much land will he seize? Not a year passes, not a month probably, that the matter is not up in some cabinet or other of Europe or Asia. And a good guess is fame for any statesman.

But what scant material to work upon ! One could take a map of the earth, and in nine cases out of ten lay his finger upon those spots where England or France or Germany or any other of the leading commercial nations will appear, provided he knows where, in unappropriated regions, rich mines or timber or reservoirs of oil will be found. But what of the Slav, who is still almost wholly outside the pale of the commercial age? With him it is enough if it is only land. There are times, of course, when even England will pick up a piece of territory that is not too dangerously attached to a strong nation — a piece that has none of the allurements I have mentioned. But if you will look closely, you will see that it has at least population. For a market for finished products is quite as essential as sources of raw material. But Russia, stupidly unmoved, it would seem, by these refinements, gathers up with the same avidity the mountain fastnesses of the Caucasus and the cities of China. This it is more than anything else that makes it difficult for the statesmen of commercial nations to understand Russian diplomacy or to predict with any certainty just where along her interminable borders the Cossack will appear. To know, as every one knows, that Russia is seeking always an outlet to the sea, to the open sea, is of little help. For experience has shown that she is quite as capable of moving upon one a thousand miles away as upon one within sight. And coupled with the capacity for a quick stroke, like the cobra, what glacier-like patience! Other nations must hurry or stand still,, choose either the present or the future; Russia can do both. Hence the wonder and the perplexity, the eagerness to thwart her, and yet the certainty of ultimate defeat. For while other nations are obliged to conquer peoples, Russia can seep out from her own land and absorb them.

What is it that has made Russia the great enigma, the stranger both to Europe and Asia! Beyond doubt the fact that she is herself neither one. To the Asiatic she is something of a European ; to the European she is something of an Asiatic : yet to both she is not wholly either the one or the other. She is like a great tree with her ancient trunk rising up out of the Caucasus, the early home of the Slavic people, and towering up into the ices of the North, and with her branches extending east and west into the sunrise and the sunset. And yet her leaves are neither of the East nor of the West. She is white like the European, and yet the brown man and the yellow man understand her. And under her immense shade what multicolored garments, what a strange cluster of tongues ! People of the older races of Asia have often observed that the cosmopolitanism even of the Briton,, the European world-man, is a matter of manners, the affected suavity of the drummer, whereas the Slav, certainly that type which the great mother throws out in inexhaustible thousands along her borders, is hon vivant with all the races and classes of the earth. The other nations of Europe have made the acquaintance of alien peoples, but Russia — ^Russia, it would seem, has always known them. Their small lives found comfortable places in her vastness, their children are at home in her great lap.

It behooves the nations, especially those that expect to travel the road of the future, to learn something of Russia, as it behooved the Roman to learn something of the Gaul. They cannot afford to go on drawing the sword whenever she appears. But right now, when new alinements are being made for the future, they should begin that rapprochement which will admit Russia into the family of nations not as a menace, but as a friend. At least we here in America, aloof, it is to be hoped, from the prejudices of the Old World — ^we, young as Russia is young, heterogeneous as Russia is heterogeneous, and entering upon our world life as Russia is entering upon hers, should without delay turn with open and friendly mind to this great stranger. We should not be satisfied with a report of her crimes delivered to us over the cables of other nations, or even with the reading of her novels, or the viewing of her dances. We ourselves would not be satisfied with a judgment of our own country based upon such materials. We should try to find out something not only of what she is, but of what she is trying to be. And to understand her, three things at least are indispensable : first, a general knowledge of European peoples and institutions ; second, a similar knowledge, smattering at least, of the great peoples of the near East and the far East, who for generations have felt the push of this human glacier along that ever-southward-moving line between the Black Sea and tlie China wall ; and thirdly, a knowledge, of what two such ingredients will produce in the way of a third. It is this last, of course, that has made Eussia the despair of travelers and psychologists. For human chemistry, while it may be, as some claim it is, a science, is as yet a science of the future. *' Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar" is a formula too evidently drafted for the convenience of those who contemplate a summer sojourn in this immense land, a reed too slight at least for statesmen to lean upon.

But let us ''scratch" this Russian, and this Tartar, too, and see if we can discover what it is that has made him the world figure he is and that threatens to make him the figure of the world, though at present he is only beginning to be seen behind the towering shadows of Germany and France and England that for centuries have filled the horizon.

Looking first, then, into his past, we find during the short thousand years that, properly speaking, he has occupied the stage of history, three events stand out as of prime importance. One of them is a call to Europe, another a call from Asia, while a third has tied him to that unsettled region between Europe and Asia, that boiling-pot of the races where the sword for centuries has never dried and which has at last set all Europe aflame.

The first of these events is an invasion, if we may call it so — an invasion of that same Scandinavian race whose vikings at about the same time were pouring down into England and France, down even into Sicily and southern Italy. But upon these latter lands they came as brigands, sword in hand, at first for booty, and then for permanent homes in the comfortable sunshine which they found there. But into Russia, so the story goes, they entered not as robbers, but upon invitation, and that, too, not as the Saxons were invited into Britain, to help stem the rising tide of rapacious neighbors, but to aid in the establishment of an orderly government. It was an extraordinary procedure, certainly, and one which should not be forgotten; for here we see for the first time, and that, too, far back in the twilight, the hand of the Slav held out in brotherly friendship, asking help. * ' Our land is great and fruitful, but it lacks order and justice; come and take possession and govern us." Significant appeal!

Just how much of the subsequent history of Russian conquest is due to this fiery drop of viking blood which, infused in a somewhat larger quantity into Britain, has goaded her out over the seas into every comer of the globe, it is of course impossible to say. In Russia the Northmen never acquired that complete and permanent control which they secured in Britain. For the expanding Scandinavian race, instead of following in the path of Rurik, preferred to turn their ships to the south, and Russia was again cut off.

When next she appears, it is again with hands outstretched, not this time for governors, but for teachers. The Dark Ages, which had come over Europe with the fall of the Roman empire, were giving way in the South to the light of civilization, and missionaries, who were wandering everywhere, finally reached Russia. But when they came, they came, unfortunately, not from Rome only, but from Constantinople also. For the great schism was already a fact, and there was now an Eastern as well as a Western church.

Probably nothing in all the history of Russia has so affected her destiny, and possibly also the ultimate destiny of Europe and Asia, as this great schism in the South. For more than anything else, possibly more than all other things combined, this it is that has opened the chasm between Russia and the rest of Europe. For when once the ambassadors whom the ruling prince Vladimir sent out to canvass the religions of the world with a view to determining which was the best for the Russian people, returned and reported in favor of the Orthodox, or Greek Catholic, with its seat at Constantinople, and the prince indorsed this recommendation, from that moment the face of Russia was turned toward the East. From that moment she began to be a stranger. Henceforth her music, her architecture, her government, her whole national character indeed, began gradually to be molded not after the models of Europe, but after those of Asia. Henceforth there was to be misunderstanding between the rest of Europe and their Northern neighbor — a misunderstanding which is utterly incomprehensible without this explanation. For the Slavic people are full cousins of the German, of the French, of the English, of all the great peoples of Europe ; for all these, including the Slav, are Aryan.

This, then, is the seed out of which have arisen those tremendous complications which to-day embroil the world.

EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA

The last event, second only in importance to the one I have just mentioned as far as its effect upon the character and institutions of Russia is concerned, came as the result not of a peaceful sending of ambassadors among the civilized nations to inquire into and report upon things which might be of value to the Russian people, but as a sudden and irresistible deluge of wild barbarians from the East, the horde of that greatest of all conquerors and autocrats, Jenghiz Khan. To Europe, waking to the first rays of the Renaissance, the coming of these savages was as though the mineral kingdom should suddenly rise and attack trees and grain and grass. In the South, however, thanks to the knowledge and practice of Roman arms, the plague was stayed and finally beaten off; but over Russia, disorganized and cut off from this advantage, the horde swept on, and for more than two centuries raped and pillaged and oppressed at will. And all this while the rest of Europe, to which at this time a half-Christian was more execrable than a heathen, looked on with unconcern, possibly with gratification that God at last was punishing the heresy of her neighbor. During these centuries of outrage such as Italy never experienced in the darkest days of the Goths and the Vandals, the spirit of the Russian people was broken. Little wonder that among these cousins of the Gaul, the Saxon, and the German, revolutions rise and spend themselves in foam.

This was the call from Asia — a call that has since been answered even to the shores of the Pacific.

With the ebbing of this dark tide that had overwhelmed her, at last Russia awoke to the fact that she was cut off from the rest of Europe; or at least one man awoke and, looking about him, became aware that during the long night of his country's enslavement a new day had dawned in the South, while in the North all was torpor and darkness. What Alfred the Great is to early Britain, that Peter the Great, in his crude way, is to Russia. If ever a race of people found adequate expression in one person, that race was the Slavic race in their great czar. As an acorn enfolds an oak, the type of a great forest, so Peter the Great enfolded the Russian people. Into him they have flowed from the twilight of time, and from him they have gone out to the ends of the earth. And this was one of his dreams, that his country might have ample boundaries.

But wide boundaries are not greatness. Had 40

Peter imagined that they were, he would probably have taken his place in history among those secondary men whose names are known simply as conquerors. But it was primarily of the Russian people he was thinking, of the Russian people taking their place and marching in the van with the other peoples of Europe. Former czars had made pilgrimages to Asia, to prostrate themselves at the feet of their Tartar masters; Peter's pilgrimage was in the opposite direction, to Prussia, to Holland, to England. Here, then, we have a third instance of that Slavic hunger for higher things and that willingness to learn from her more advanced brothers, uttering itself in this case not in invitations to a neighboring people for ** order and justice," or in ambassadors seeking the fittest religion, but in a journey of the czar himself for the purpose of bringing back to Russia the much-needed civilization of Europe.

Only the keenest realization of the immense chasm that yawned between these countries and his own can account for the tremendous energy with which this man, single-handed and in the face of such opposition as few reformers have ever encountered, set to work to dispel the barbarism of his people. Having discovered civilization and having tasted its snnsMne, lie determined that his country should share it and that never again should she go back into the. darkness. Soldier, statesman, absorber and disseminator of knowledge, builder, captain of industry, brutal, of course, as his age was brutal, but with a brutality aimed mainly at the great goal toward which he was striving, it is exceedingly doubtful if there can be found in all history another ruler who wrought so strenuously and persistently for the elevation of his people as didi this great czar. Petrograd, that "window into Europe '^ which he built, and through which he expected the sunlight would shine forever — Petrograd, rising out of the fiUed-up swamps of the Neva, is only a symbol of these gigantic labors. No wonder the Russian people think of his spirit as still with them, shaping and directing their destiny.

Unfortunately, the work so energetically begun has not been carried on. With the exception of the great Catharine, who introduced into Russia the arts of Europe, as Peter the Great had introduced the mechanics, subsequent czars have, for the most part, been cast in a different mold. Russia is still the backward brother of Europe. The short day has given place to twilight. The ''window into Europe" has been closed. There is probably a wider gap between the Russia of to-day and those enlightened lands which Peter visited than there was before he began his work.

What is the reason for this? Why is it, for instance, that Russia is shoulder to shoulder with the most advanced nations in rifles and behind the most backward in schools? Along her borders, where her armies mingle with the armies of other nations, she seems one of them. But pass into the interior that the great Peter labored so long and so prodigiously to waken and transform, and you have passed, as far as the great mass of the people is concerned, from a world of stir into a world of slumber, from the age of the biplane into an age not far removed from that of the early Gauls. What, I repeat, is the explanation of this tragedy, this retarded growth of millions upon millions of people?

It is easy enough to lay it upon the czars, upon the bureaucracy, that wide-reaching, never-relaxing hand within whose grasp generation after generation has lain benighted and helpless; but there is another cause, one of which possibly even czarism and bureaucracy are results.

Peter the Great had a third dream, one which lay as close if not closer to his heart than either of the other two, and one which his country has ever since labored with vast zeal and patience to fulfil — a dream of the open sea!

It is astonishing that this inland-born man should have heard almost from his birth the call of the distant oceans. It is pathetic to watch him in his early boyhood, like some interiorexiled viking, groping for his native waters. If one can tell him something of the sea, with what hunger he clasps him to his bosom ! A toy boat upon a canal near his home, and he is restless until a whole flotilla is launched ; and even this only adds to his hunger. He must have larger boats that he can manage and sail. And once he has learned this upon a neighboring lake, there wakes within him the call of the seas.

Immediately upon attaining his majority, he starts for the north, to Archangel, and is the first of all the rulers of his land to look upon wide waters. And having looked upon them, he resolves that his country, too, shall look upon them ; shall, like other nations, have ports and ships and commerce. For even then Peter divined the meaning of the sea ; and straightway he set to work to learn the art of the sea, the

EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA

construction and management of sMps. And how like a modem American he began, this czar of all the Eussias ! Just as before in learning the new art of European warfare, he had begun, this autocrat, as a drummer-boy in the regiment, that he might master the whole thing from top to bottom, so he began again at the bottom, sweeping the deck, serving in the cabin, fetching coals for the skipper's pipe. Then, and then only, up the masts. And in learning to build them it was the same, not with guides, but in a workman's blouse, in the shipyards of foreign lands. And from here came memorable words, which he wrote back — words which have ever since been the cry of his country, "It is not land I want, but water." Within a few years after his return home he had won for his people ports on the Baltic, the Black, and the Caspian.

But why did Peter dream of the open sea? For the same reason that, from the dawn of time, humanity has dreamed of the sea. Land is existence, but water is life. The open sea is the open mind. The oceans are civilization.

Watch the movements of the progressive races. It is from land to water, from water to wider water. First there are the rivers, like the Euphrates and the Nile, and the civilizations upon their banks are vastly superior to the civilizations of the interiors. But once the seas are discovered and mastered, the civilizations of the rivers sink into second place, and nations like Greece and Rome wake into life. Then the oceans. And once the oceans are conquered, you have France and Germany and England.

Suppose back there in the long ago, a naked sword had been laid across the mouths of the Euphrates and the Nile. And suppose humanity, having discovered an overland route to the southern peninsulas of Europe, had found barring their further march another sword across the Strait of Gibraltar. And suppose that thereafter all overland routes to the oceans had been blocked, say, with long lines of cannon. If the democracy of Greece never arose on the Euphrates, and the strong type of the independent Roman never developed on the Nile, or if, in the second case, that sane, stable constitutional government that is the pride of England never bloomed in Greece, and the splendid educational system that is the pride of Germany never flourished in Rome, upon which lands would the blame lie, upon those on the inside or upon those on the outside, upon those that found the sword across their path or upon those that laid it there 1

Ahnost from the day that Peter the Great set forth to blaze for his country a way to the open sea Russia has found across her path the swords of virtually all the nations of Europe and Asia. And the sword most often confronting her in her march toward the open sea, toward freedom, commerce, civilization, has been the sword of England, mistress of the seas. In the West, in the South, in the East, as a silent menace or a sweeping blade, leading the way or urging others on, but always there with unwavering purpose, is the sword of England — England, the Enlightener !

And what have been the consequences of this ** caging the bear,'* as it is facetiously called in the chancelleries of Europe, this shutting out of Russia from intercourse with civilized nations and compelling her to be eternally the companion of barbarians'? Within a little more than half a century, to go back no further, there have been four great wars, every one of them, if we will only look behind the mask of diplomatic pretext, clearly traceable to this one cause, this arresting of a great people in its march toward civilization.

THE WOELD STOBM AND BEYOND

First, there are the Crimean War, and the Eusso-Turkish War. Though the professed reason of these was to protect the Christians and pnt an end to Turkish atrocities in the Balkan States, no one familiar with the eternal pressure behind Eussian diplomacy can fail to see that the underlying motive of these two wars was the acquisition of Constantinople. In the Crimean War this ambition was thwarted by England, who, with the help of France and Sardinia, clasped hands with Turkey against Eussia, with the Moslem against the Christian, with the brown man against the white man. And all for the purpose of laying her sword across the Dardanelles and preventing Eussia 's exit to the Mediterranean.

In the Eusso-Turkish War, after she had won from Turkey, by the Treaty of San Stefano, a protectorate over the Slavic Balkan States, whose liberation from Turkey she alone had secured, Eussia was forced by the European powers, at the Berlin Congress, to withdraw, whereupon the spoils of the war were very largely seized by Austria, a power that had no racial connection whatever with the Balkan peoples and one that had lifted no hand to put a stop to the outrages of the Turk.

EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA

It would be interesting to know what England thinks to-day of the statesmanship which she displayed in these two wars. Does she think it was a good bargain to exchange Eussia for Germany in Turkey and Asia Minor ? Is Germany, seeking land, a safer neighbor to India than Eussia would have been, seeking the open sea? Is it well for England to-day that for decades she has been the self-appointed protector of the Turk?

If Eussia had been allowed to take Constantinople, which, had Europe not interfered, she could undoubtedly have done, there is no question that Europe would have escaped many of those troubles which have plagued her in the intervening years. For there is little doubt that Eussia would have policed Turkey on the one hand, and, on the other, who will say that she would not have kept peace in the Balkans f Not England, not Germany, but Eussia is the natural bridge between Europe and Asia, and by every consideration of race and religion and character is the logical power to keep order in the near East. For be it remembered, that not only the Balkan States but many of the provinces of Austria itself, are old Slavic territory and the people there are full brothers of the Eussians.

Indeed for years, thirty millions of Slavs have cried out to their elder brother for liberation from the Austrian yoke and other bordering millions for an ending of the Austrian menace. Bnt for the meddlesome interference of powers that had no rightful claim upon this territory, Russia would here have had her harbor, a small price, it would seem, for the elimination of those crimes which for more than half a century have shocked the civilized world.

But with all the powers of Europe arrayed against her from the very beginning in the West, and now shut out in the South, Russia, as a last hope, was obliged to set forth on that long journey across Asia to the far East. And there, strange to say, she was allowed her heart's desire — allowed, that is, to spend millions in the construction of her great harbor. Is England asleep? Are the nations of Europe aware of what is going on? Or is it that they have come to see that perhaps Russia has the same right to civilization as themselves? Not at all. The sword is a little late in appearing, that is all. And again we have a war, this time not with England, but with England's ally, Japan.

And now we are in the midst of a fourth war as clearly traceable as are the other three to this fatuous determination to keep Eussia from the open sea. Or let us rather say this present war is the aftermath of the other three, the inevitable aftermath. If Eussia were a less powerful nation than she is, or if the spirit of liberty were dead in the Slavic race, these three wars would probably have been sufficient. But with a territory three times as large as all the rest of Europe, with a population larger than that of England, France, and Germany combined, and of kindred blood with those nations that, despite every obstacle, have won their way to the oceans and a world life, it would have been strange indeed had the Eussian people resigned themselves to the barbarism of the steppes. Instead, she turns back to that old pass where for more than two centuries her dreams have centered and where, as we have seen, she logically belongs, and with a vigor and determination worthy of her Aryan blood and the high aim for which she is battling, she begins once more her struggle for the open sea. And that which happens is what always happens when every safetyvalve through which a great people can express itself is closed. There is a rushing of mighty forces toward those weaker seams in the Balkans, and — the explosion !

It is fortunate that circumstances have again drawn Eussia Enropeward, for Eussia needs Europe, needs her now as in the past when more than once, as we have seen, she held her hands out toward the West. And Europe, aristocratic and suffering from a false conceit of cultural values, will sooner or later discover, as I shall try to show in my next chapter, that all these years she might have been learning as well as teaching. Especially is it fortunate not' only for Eussia and England, but for the world, that England has found it to her advantage to join hands with Eussia. England, whose life is a world life, can, if she will, become the dooropener for the Eussian people. England, the advanced, can become the tutor of Eussia, the backward. It is to be hoped that England realizes her great opportunity, and will avail herself of the present crisis to take her sword from the path of the Eussian people in their march toward civilization. Credit may still be won by yielding to the inevitable. And it is inevitable. Turkey must go back to her ancient home in Asia where ample tracts of fertile land lie waiting her ; and Eussia must come out of her long prison to the free and open seas.