WESTERN SIBERIA AND THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS 



505 



Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams 

 THE SPIRIT OF SIBERIA 



Yellow sunset and boundless expanse of fine country, in the midst of which a raging 

 forest fire is sending up a wisp of smoke more than twenty miles away. The photograph was 

 taken from a swiftly moving train. 



Whether Siberia will remain politically 

 a part of Russia, it is impossible to pre- 

 dict. An able English observer, who 

 traveled there forty years ago (the late 

 ]\Ir. Ashton Dilke), told me he thought 

 Siberia would break away, peaceably or 

 otherwise ; but nothing I could learn in 

 the country confirmed that forecast. 



The Transcontinental Railroad has be- 

 come a bond of union, and the Ural 

 Mountains, though they would form a 

 good natural boundary if the peoples liv- 

 ing on each side differed in race, speech, 

 and religion, do not, the facts being what 

 they are, constitute a barrier worth re- 

 garding. 



It is much to be wished that they were 

 such a dividing line, for the Russian 

 Empire before 191 4 was an un wieldly 

 mass, too big for any one set of men to 

 govern, even had such men been more 

 capable than any Russian ministry has 

 ever been. 



Yet in 191 3 the Russian Government, 

 moved by that insane impulse which in- 

 duces states to extend territories already 

 too large, was trying to establish political 

 control over Mongolia as far as the fron- 

 tiers of China. 



The portentous expansion of Russian 

 dominion and the growth of Russian 

 population had become a danger to the 

 world. It was a danger much reduced 

 by the stupidity and corruption of the 

 government, but if a malign fate had set 

 a genius like Frederick the Great or 

 Napoleon on the throne of the Tsars, 

 things might have gone ill for Europe. 



PERHAPS A UNITED STATES OE SIBERIA 



For its own sake, as well as for the 

 world's sake, it is much to be desired 

 that Siberia as well as Transcaucasia 

 should be disjoined from Russia ; and if 

 the inhabitants of Siberia were capable 

 of working a system of federal govern- 



