to the world as the 

 smallest of the coun- 

 tries of the earth. Hol- 

 land could be hidden in 

 the vast reaches of the 

 Russian plain, almost as 

 a needle in a haystack, 

 and yet Amsterdam 

 alone does more inter- 

 national business than 

 all the seaports of Rus- 

 sia together. Not one 

 free outlet to the open 

 sea does European Rus- 

 sia possess except on 

 the ice-bound shores of 

 the Arctic Ocean. Pet- 

 rograd and Riga find 

 their waterways to the 

 sea only through the 

 narrow straits that di- 

 vide Germany and Swe- 

 den and Denmark and 

 Norway. On the Black 

 Sea is Odessa, with its 

 immense harbor works, 

 but the path from the 

 Black Sea to the Med- 

 iterranean leads through 

 the narrow channels of 

 the Bosphorus and Dar- 

 danelles, held by alien 

 hands. Asiatic Russia 

 possesses Vladivostok as 

 an outlet to the Pacific, 

 but that is 2,000 miles 

 farther from Petrograd 

 than New York is dis- 

 tant from San Francisco, 

 and a home port nearly 

 6,000 miles away is al- 

 most as distant in in- 

 fluence as though it were 

 foreign. 



Photo by Gilbert II. Grosvenor 



MKDALS 01^ SERVICE 



This decorated individual is not a high officer or the hero 

 of many battlefields, but the messenger boy at police head- 

 quarters in Petrograd. Permission to take photographs must 

 be obtained from the police in every city or town, and this 

 necessitates a personal visit to headquarters. This man occu- 

 pies the lovi^est position on the police staff, that of errand 

 boy, and was delighted to pose for his picture. The medals 

 denote length of service, presence at an anniversary of the 

 Tsar, etc., and are greatly prized. 



THE MOST PROEIEIC PEOPLE ON EARTH 



If Russia is an empire in the extent of 

 its dominions, it is none the less so in the 

 number of its people. Within its bound- 

 aries and under its flag live enough peo- 

 ple to populate the United Kingdom, the 

 German Empire, and the French Repub- 

 Mc, with enough left over to repopulate 

 ialf of the dual monarchy of Austria- 

 Hungary. 



Nor has Russia reached the limits of 

 its human resources if it shall emerge 



from the war with the integrity of its 

 territory maintained. Its 172,000,000 

 people are the most fecund on earth. 

 During the 40 years from 1872 to 191 2 

 European Russia, notwithstanding her 

 excessive death rate, doubled her popula- 

 tion and the larger ratio of that growth 

 was toward the end rather than toward 

 the beginning of that period. Assuming 

 that the same ratio will keep up, at the 

 end of the present century Russia will 

 have over six hundred million people — ■ 



425 



