120 



The Review of Reviews. 



February 20, 1906. 



satisfied 'with their navy. To have spent su many 

 millions and then to learn from the war in the Far 

 East that their ships are too small and carry guns 

 of too short range to be fit for fighting under modern 

 conditions, is enough to dishearten any nation. 

 Until Germany has a stronger fleet than Britain or 

 America, her navy is virtually a hostage for her 

 good behaviour. That Germany should want a coal- 

 ing station at Madeira, and should tr\ to bluff 

 Portugal into ceding it. is also natural enough, and 

 it is equally natural that she should have recoiled 

 when she found that if she blockaded the Tagus she 

 would have lost her fleet. It is natural that Ger- 

 many should like to have a place where the sun 

 is not quite so hot as in Damaraland or New 

 Guinea, but it is not reasonable to think that. 

 in order to secure a habitable colony, she will set 

 about plundering her neighbours, especially when 

 those neighbours, like ourselves, allow her as much 

 use of our colonies as they enjov themselves with- 

 out any of the responsibility and expense of defend- 

 ing them. So far as can be seen at present Brazil 

 is the only place where there is a chance for the 

 establishment of a Germany oversea. They have 

 made a good start there, and there is no need for 

 them to run their heads against the Monroe doc- 

 trine in order to create a greater Germany in Brazil. 

 If the new German nation in South America were 

 as independent as Venezuela or the Argentine, 

 the United States would not object. Xor does the 

 Monroe doctrine forbid a sovereign independent 

 American State making treaties of commerce, or 

 even of alliance, with any other sovereign indepen- 

 dent State either in the old world or the new. 



All European politics are over 

 The Russian shadowed by the fact that the 

 Revolution. Russian revolutionary volcano is 



still in violent eruption. The 

 Baltic provinces appear to have succeeded for the 

 moment in severing themselves from the Empire. A 

 Lettish Social Democratic Republic, based on syste- 

 matic terrorism and enforced by murder and arson, 

 has got itself into some kind of shape. In the 

 Caucasus affairs are in such a pass that there is 

 nothing impossible in the rumour that the Sultan is 

 thinking of sending an armv to restore order. In 

 various provinces the peasants are looting and de- 

 stroying the property of the nobles. Warsaw is 

 palpitating with the revolutionary fever. Odessa 

 and Kharkoff throb like craters of volcanoes on 

 the eve of eruption. But it has been reserved for 

 Moscow, the famous mother Moscow, to afford the 

 most appalling spectacle of revolutionary frenzy. 

 The old Tories of the old Russian capital recently 

 went on pilgrimage to Tsarskoe Selo to protest 

 against the innovations in a constitutional direction 

 made by the Manifesto of October. Thev were 

 sent away with a flea in their ear, and returned home 

 in ill-humour verv much disposed to let the Tsar 



see what came of these Liberal reforms. The mili- 

 tary garrison of Moscow was low, only 6000 men. 

 The inhabitants of Moscow number a million, who 

 inhabit a vast area which has never been Haus- 

 mannised and which is a perfect maze of winding 

 streets. Fifteen thousand revolutionists of both 

 sexes, principally students and young girls, with 

 bombs of high explosives in their pockets and such 

 anns as they could buy. beg. borrow or steal, de- 

 cided that they would abandon passive for armed 

 resistance. 



The revolt began and ended in a 



Moscow Under week. If at the first outbreak the 



fire. troops had shown an) indisposition 



to lire, and if St. Petersburg had 

 followed suit, the result might have been serious* 

 As things turned out, the troops fired with the 

 punctual regularitv of automatons; St. Petersburg, 

 not being a rabbit warren like Moscow, did not 

 follow suit, and the six days' fighting in the sti 

 was mere purposeless carnage. The revolutionists 

 built barricades by piling tramcars ami droshkies in 

 the streets, covering them with snow and then freez 

 ing the mass into solidity by pouring water over the 

 improvised rampart. Wire entanglements were 

 stretched across the streets. The object of both 

 barricade and wire entanglement was the same. 

 The insurgents had no notion of fighting behind 

 the barricades, they only sought to obstruct the 

 movement of the troops upon whom they fired from 

 the nearest convenient window. It was something 

 like our Boer war, in which lofty inhabited houses 

 took the place of desolate kopjes. The troops, de- 

 spite some reports to the contrary, are stated by the 

 Zemstvo representatives to have behaved with ex- 

 emplary discipline and forbearance. It is hardly in 

 human nature not to lose patience when invisible 

 hands rain bombs in the darkness upon patrols in 

 the street. Cannon were employed to shell the 

 houses used as insurgent strongholds, but when 

 shelled out of one house the wily revolutionist, like 

 the ubiquitous Boer, betook himself to another 

 coign of vantage. This fighting between bombs 

 and artillery, between revolvers and quick-firers, 

 lasted six days ; not more than 20,000 combatants 

 being engaged on both sides, and the fight raged I 

 over, on and through the homes of a million men. 

 women and children. 



How many perished in the fighting 

 The Madness no one k n ' ows Estimates vary from 



Jack Cade. ^ ve hundred to twenty thousand. 

 What is certain is that there was 

 an appalling loss of human life and a still more 

 appalling amount of suffering inflicted upon inno- 

 cent non-combatants. But the City Council of 

 Moscow seems to have sympathised with the insur- 

 gents throughout, the Conservatives held aloof, and 

 the Liberals everywhere denounce as " reaction " 



