240 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



keeping, Russia in the war, in a position 

 of greatly increased strength and vigor. 



The mere fact that in the course of a 

 long and bloody war Russia has been able 

 at the same time to fight her foes at home 

 and abroad proves most strongly her in- 

 nate strength and steadfastness. 



I have often been asked why "Russia 

 has not done better in this war ; why, with 

 her millions of man-power, she has seemed 

 to have had victory time and time again 

 in her grasp only to lose it by some mis- 

 take. 



It has been impossible to make people 

 realize what Russia was fighting — two 

 foes at once, more than any of the other 

 nations engaged in the war has had to 

 contend against. We shall probably not 

 know for long, if ever, what a struggle 

 has been carried on within Russia against 

 the forces which sought to deliver her 



helpless and bound to her enemies abroad. 



Up to now the news has all seemed to 

 favor the probability that the new Russia 

 will succeed in forming a stable and pow- 

 erful government on the ruins of the old, 

 and in doing so she will have the earnest 

 good wishes of all her allies and all her 

 friends, and in the latter category may 

 now be placed for the first time the whole 

 of the United States. 



For it must be admitted that in this 

 country one of the strongest reasons for 

 not entering the war, either actively or 

 passively, on the side of the Allies has 

 been the thought that in so doing we were 

 backing Russian absolutism, the antithe- 

 sis of everything for which our own 

 form of government stands, the symbol 

 of absolutism and terrorism, of autocracy 

 against democracy, of darkness against 

 lisrht. 



REPUBLICS-THE LADDER TO LIBERTY 



By David Jayne Hill 



Formerly U. S. Minister to Switzerland, to the Netherlands, and 

 Formerly Ambassador to Germany 



IF WE spread out a map of the world, 

 for the purpose of comparing the 

 territorial extent of the different 

 kinds of government existing at the pres- 

 ent time, we find that the area covered 

 by "republics" occupies approximately 

 30,250,000 square miles, or considerably 

 more than one-half the habitable surface 

 of the globe. 



If we add the area of the British Em- 

 pire, the spirit of whose government is 

 now entirely democratic, and whose "au- 

 tonomous colonies," as the Dominions 

 are now called, are virtually republics, 

 the area of free government reaches the 

 enormous total of about 41,500,000 square 

 miles, or about four-fifths of the inhab- 

 ited earth. 



Turning now to the proportions of the 

 population of the globe under the "re- 

 publics" and other forms of government, 

 we find that of the total inhabitants of 

 the earth, estimated at 1.600.000,000, 

 more than 850,000,000 are living under 



nominal republics ; and if we add the pop- 

 ulation of the British Empire, which may 

 be called a commonwealth of republics, 

 the total would be about 1,250,000,000, or 

 more than three- fourths of the human 

 race. 



If to these areas and populations we 

 add those under constitutional govern- 

 ments, excluding all those under avow- 

 edly absolutist rule, we find only a small 

 fraction of the globe still adhering to a 

 system which only a century and a half 

 ago was practically universal (see maps, 

 pages 242 and 243 ) . 



FEW republics in 1776 



These facts are the more astonishing 

 if we consider what the result of such an 

 examination would have been if made, 

 let us say, in the year of our Declaration 

 of Independence, 1776. At that time 

 there would have been found upon the 

 map of the world, apart from a few iso- 

 lated so-called "free cities" — like Ham- 



