SEABOARD AND BOUNDAEIES. 205 



where could a deadly blow be struck in tbis vast eastern world ? The Slav domain 

 is defended by its very immensity. 



Notwithstanding- her power and extent, Russia has fewer advantages for easy 

 communication with the seaboard than many small states, such as Holland or 

 Denmark. Mistress of boundless regions, and even with a coast-line at least equal to 

 half the circumference of the globe, she has no free outlets to the ocean. Peter the 

 Great, who wished at any cost to make her a maritime power, might transfer his 

 capital to the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and found Taganrog on the Sea of Azov ; 

 he had still nothing but land-locked basins. The port of Archangel is blocked 

 by ice for a great part of the year, and the vessels frequenting it are obliged to 

 coast all the Scandinavian peninsula before reaching the busy highways of com- 

 merce. St. Petersburg and the other Russian ports on the Baltic are also closed 

 durino- the winter, and the outlets of that inland sea are guarded by the strong- 

 holds of the stranger. If the Sea of Azov and the Euxine have the advantage of 

 being nearly always navigable, their narrow approach is equally guarded by a 

 double pjrtal, the key to which is held by Constantinople. In Asia the shores of 

 the Frozen Ocean are of such difficult access that they have not yet been 

 thoroughly surveyed. The ports of Kamchatka and Mkolayevsk on the Amur are 

 available only in the fine season, and are otherwise encompassed b}' vast wilder- 

 nesses. Not till quite recently has the port of Vladivostok been secured in the 

 Japanese waters, but even this, although opening a free highway to the Pacific, 

 is ice-bound in the heart of winter, and long years must pass before it can be 

 connected by easy routes with the populous lands of the empire. Between the 

 two bulwarks of Kronstadt and Vladivostok there intervenes a distance of not less 

 than 4,300 miles as the crow flies. 



It would matter little to the nation itself if the commerce of the neighbouring 

 seas could always remain free. But in time of war people sufier for their 

 Governments, and if the straits be closed to the Czar's navies, they may also be 

 closed to the Russian mercantile fleets. Hence, so long as Europe is divided 

 into military states, it is natural for Russia to seek free communications with 

 the sea, and for her armies to renew from century to century the expedition of 

 Igor, to seize the " City of the Caîsars " (Tzaregrad), Constantinople, seated at the 

 portal of the Black Sea. 



To this endless source of rivalries and future wars is added another of a no 

 less serious character. If Russia has long overstepped her ethnological limits 

 in the east, she believes she has not yet reached them in the west. Beyond her 

 western borders there dwell many millions of Slavs, amongst them the Ruthenians, 

 or Rusini, whose very name is etymologically identical with that of the Russians, 

 and who belong to the family of the Little Russians already living under the sceptre 

 of the Czar of all the Russias. However close the friendship of rulers, however 

 solemn the treaties of alliance, it is natural for social sympathies to spring up 

 and develop on either side of the official frontiers, sympathies which an interested 

 policy may utilise to guide and blind public opinion, to stir up rivalries and 

 wars. How much blood has already been shed, and how much must still be 



