Russia : Its People and Politics. 29 



educated draw from the divers social and political sciences, and 

 the uneducated from their traditions, which are the depositories of 

 the collective wisdom of past generations." Statistics recently 

 taken showed only 20 per cent, of recruits literate. This is a most 

 deplorable state, but it seemed to point to what the future of 

 Russia must be when some 60 millions of her peasantry received 

 the benefits of an education which would enable them to rise to a 

 sense of their duty to their country and themselves. 



President Hamilton said he was not one of those who were 

 possessed by a great admiration of Russia. Mr. Horner, he 

 believed, was, as he knew from personal conversation with him. 

 But it did not seem to him that the Russian Empire ought to be 

 very much an object of admiration. One ought, however, to draw 

 a distinction between the moujik and the empire. The Russian 

 peasant was all, he thought, that had been claimed for him by Mr. 

 Horner — a well-meaning, honest, ignorant man — but, taking the 

 country as a whole, it seemed to him (the speaker) to be a vast, 

 unwieldy mass of semi-educated, semi-barbarous people, governed, 

 he supposed, by one of the worst systems of government which 

 had ever cursed a nation. Mr. Horner had held up before them 

 a picture of what might happen to them from what was currently 

 described as the yellow peril ; but he did not know that they need 

 very much dread the ascendency of the yellow race if that yellow 

 race was to be such a people as they had seen in recent years 

 the Japanese prove themselves to be. It might be that Russia 

 could call itself Christian, while Japan was not Christian ; but 

 he confessed if he had to make a choice between seeing Asia 

 dominated by a Christian nation of the type of Russia, or by a 

 non-Christian nation of the type of Japan, he should not for a 

 moment hesitate to choose the latter. They had within the last 

 year had a marvellous revelation of what a little nation by means 

 of education, by means of a splendid patriotism, and by means of 

 adapting itself to Western ideas, had been able to accomplish in a 

 short space of time. He very much questioned if throughout the 

 entire audience that evening there could be found half a dozen 



