24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



other powers, or by way of Archangel, which, like Petersburg, is ice- 

 bound for a large part of the year. Nor are conditions better in the 

 Far East where the premature insistence upon the possession of Port 

 Arthur and the consequent war with Japan was largely due to the desire 

 for an ice-free port on the Pacific. Eussia's means of access to the 

 world's commerce are too circumscribed for so large a state, and she is 

 bound to demand a readjustment favorable to her interests from time 

 to time. Indeed that is what she has been doing for centuries ; her coast- 

 ward movement has been in progress for at least four hundred years 

 and we are witnesses to-day of another gigantic step in this direction. 

 The Germans block the way, and ultimately, combined with them, the 

 Swedes and Danes. That Eussia with her population of 175 millions, 

 increasing at the rate of nearly three millions a year, and with re- 

 sources so vast and undeveloped that they can only be roughly esti- 

 mated, will be kept permanently bottled up is not likely. Her coast- 

 ward advance, however, is likely to follow lines of least resistance and 

 the conquest of an outlet by way of Constantinople to the world's trade 

 is as inevitable as is its geographic reasonableness. Towards the Persian 

 Gulf the way is also open and inviting. Indeed everywhere in Asia she 

 has the unique advantage of internal lines of development and therefore 

 also of attack. Geographically the serious menace to British world 

 supremacy does not lie in Germany but in Eussia. 



In the past great rivers and flat plains invited expansion over 

 immense areas of forest, swamp and rich agricultural lands. To-day 

 the lure of rich trade routes and the consequent attraction of the sea is 

 fascinating the eastern Slav. He is building his roads, railroads and 

 canals, and sending colonists out into unoccupied land very much as 

 did the United States in the nineteenth century. Once this is occu- 

 pied, the push to the sea will be irresistible. This youthful giant among 

 the nations of the world is beginning to realize his great strength; the 

 resignation and despair of the peasant empire is giving way to a New 

 Eussia full of confident assurance. 



