THE GROWTH OF RUSSIA isl 



basin was to the adventurous pioneers be^^ond the Alleghanies, what 

 it now is to all the opulence and enterprise of the imperial center of 

 our nation, that nature designed from all eternity the current of the 

 Bosphorus should be to the inhabitants of that northern plain. For 

 that natural outlet the Russian nation waits with the assurance of 

 the patient and strong. 



THE IxNFLUENCE OF RUSSIA AS THE HEAD OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH 



The foreigner can hardly appreciate the peculiar influence accru- 

 ing to Russia in Eastern Europe from the relations which she sustains 

 as the political head of the eastern Orthodox Church. During the 

 "Age of Woe " she was herself the victim of Mussulman Mongols. 

 What she suffered then is still handed down by countless traditions 

 and is burned into the national memory. Western Europe, even in 

 Spain, has never experienced such horror and terror at the hands of 

 Islam. Hated as oppressors, the Mongols were abhorred as infidels. 

 When at last the Russian broke his chains his thanksgiving was for 

 a double victory. Orthodox Christianity had triumphed over Islam 

 and the natives of the soil had triumphed over the invader. Russia 

 stood forth as the victorious champion of her faith. Under the Otto- 

 man Turk, in a later and less barbarous age, she saw repeated among 

 her coreligionists something of that treatment she had herself ex- 

 perienced at Mussulman hands. In the East the tie of a common 

 faith is strong. To her, as to no other human power, the subject 

 Christians of the Balkan Peninsula generation after generation ever 

 stretched their su})plicating hands. 



On the part of the Russian people rather than of the Russian gov- 

 ernment there was always present for the members of their common 

 church an intense sympathy, of which state polic}^ might take advan- 

 tage, but which it could not wholly check or restrain. 'J'he Russian 

 peasant calls a war with the Moslem "God's battle." In 1877 the 

 sympathies of the common people for Bulgaria forced the govern- 

 ment into a war, of which neither the Czar Alexander II nor his 

 chancellor, Gortchakoff, approved. There is a burying ])lace in 

 Constantinoi)le where more than three hundred Russian soldiers rest 

 in a common grave. Taken prisoners, they died in captivity during 

 the war of 1828-'29, which Russia waged for the freedom of CJreece. 

 The epitaph on the white marble describes the manner of tiieir death 

 and closes with the verse, " Greater love hath no man than this, that 

 lie lay down liis life for.his friends." To Russia Roumania, Servia. 



