LAND AND WATER 
September 18, 1915. 
with Germanj fce M.c^ed by just sudi a capture of 
earnestness as iL^p'-ed the host.s of the (. rusades in their 
groat spiritual campaigns of eight hundred years ago 
How then shall wc account for, how explain, tl is 
implacable instinct of hostility ? The answer to the 
question will be discovered in the past relations be ween 
Russia and Gerirany. but not so much in their political 
as in their intellectual relations. Russia and Germany 
have stood to each other for the last two centuries as 
pupil and teacher. The semi-barbarism of the Uarlc 
Ages, which lingered on in Russia long after the Ke- 
nais-ance had awakened the intellect of liurope. was by 
degrees penetrated by a European culture received 
mainly from the hands of Germany. It was to Ger- 
many, owing to her geographical position, that the task 
naturally fell of transmitting Western ideas Eastward. 
It wsis her mission to hand on to the barbaric nation 
the ideas and intellectual culture which, emanaling in 
the first instance from Italy, had overspread the 
European nations. In a word, Germany was called 
upon— or, rather, Prussia was called upon, for it was 
under Prussian auspices tJiat the Russian policy of Ger- 
many was developed— to introduce the Renaissance to 
the Slav race. 
It was an enormous opportunity. We all know the 
immense prestige which the position of teacher of a 
higiier culture gives to the more advanced nation. We 
know how Athens in this way conquered Rome, and 
how Italy at one period in our history almost as 
completely dominated the thought and taste of Eng- 
land. Germany, conveying to Russia her own version 
of Renaissance' culture, was greeted with a humility 
and respect natural to the simplicity of the Slav people 
and proportioned to the depth of the intellectual twi- 
light in which they were immersed. 
Prussianising Russia. 
It would be impossible here to enter into an account 
of the Prussianising of Russia. It has been to an extra- 
ordinary degree systematic and persevering and has 
extended over a couple of centuries. Its operations have 
had two objects — namely, the control or direction of 
the Russian Government and the prosecution of a 
system of peaceful penetration of Russian territory. 
The latter scheme has been enforced with particular 
energy during the last few years. Great tracts of 
Western Russia have passed into the hands of German 
colonists. Between two and three millions have acquired 
land in Russian Poland alone, where, acting in concert 
with a Germanised Government, they have received, in 
connection with the acquisition of property, the endow- 
ment of schools, and other matters, extraordinary 
privileges. Moreover, it has lately been shown beyond 
question that this extensive colonising scheme has been 
under the supervision of the German Government and 
has been carried on with a kind of military discipline 
and even, it would seem, with the co-operation of the 
military authorities and intelligence department, under 
whose guidance the colonists were distributed to points 
of vantage, there to carry on the work of military 
pioneers by sending in intimate reports and plans to 
headquarters, as well as by accumulating stores, con- 
structing gun emplacements, and effecting such pre- 
parations generally as could be undertaken without 
arousing suspicion. Occasional hunting parties offered 
opportunities for German officers to visit these colonies 
to receive information and issue instructions. We have 
It from both Russian and French sources that these 
expedients have proved of great advantage to the pro- 
gress of the German armies. 
But what, far more than this, has determined the 
estimation in which Germany is held by the Russian 
people has been the fact that she has used her great 
political influence steadily and strenuously to strengthen 
the bureaucratic, or official, system of government, 
and to stifle the national aspirations of the Russian 
people. If the tragedy of the Russian situation consists, 
as assuredly it does consist, in the oppression of the 
emotional and spiritual instincts and aspirations of the 
Slav race under a solid phalanx of official administration 
we must remember that it is to Prussian teaching and 
example that this has been mainly due. If this is what 
for generations has been breaking the heart of Russia,, 
nothing is more certain than tliat the cause of the evil is 
the success with which Prussia instilled her own auto 
cratic tradition into the Russian Government. 
BHnd Submission. 
Remembering, as we must, that Russia's own blind 
submission under Prussian tuition has been responsible 
for her exploitation and has again and again enabled 
Prussian diplomacy to use the Russian influence and 
Russian arms for its own selfish ends— remembering 
this, we must admit that Russia in her European dea - 
ings has suffered from terrible ill-luck. It was ill-luck 
that she should be moored cheek by jowl alongside the 
German, and particularly the Prussian, people. It was 
ill-luck that, looking as she naturally would to the 
horizon where intellectual light was dawning, she 
should find that light dispensed to her by Prussia, and 
her own confiding ignorance delivered into the hands of 
the most materialistic, most selfish, and most ruthless 
of modern nations. 
This is the point I would leave to the reader's con- 
sideration. He must figure Russia, semi-barbaric, un- 
instructed, living into and through the centuries of the 
Renaissance scarcely aware of the intellectual ferment 
that was taking place, but at last, dimly conscious, 
stretching out her hands for guidance, and eagerly 
craving instruction in the new knowledge which 
so evidently contained the elements of a superior 
civilisation.' The spectacle of Russia at this moment is 
not without its pathos, and it is with something of a 
revulsion of feeling that we discover, as the spider 
springs upon the fly, Prussia hurrying to take the 
occasion by the hand. Prussia as the interpreter of 
ideas ! Prussia as the evangelist of the Renaissance I 
Prussia as the child of light I The humour of th« 
situation receives a yet more satiric edge from the con- 
centration of purpose with which Prussia herself set 
to work to wring the last ounce of profit out of so unique 
an opportunity. Reflecting on the consequences which 
ensued, one is in doubt whether to wonder most at the 
insatiable appetite of the aggressor or the inexhaustible 
docility of the victim. 
Slow Absorption. 
A community like the Russian, vast and unwieldy 
and little given to conscious thought, absorbs a new 
idea slowly and is enlightened by degrees. It has taken 
Russia a great many years to discover the real motives 
and character of the nation in which she had reposed 
so implicit a trust. She is, however, now at last 
making that discovery, and she is making it with a com- 
pleteness and thoroughness proportioned to its slow- 
ness. She is awakening, as a nation and a people, to the 
nature of the opposition she has had to struggle against 
and to the origin of the impediments which have been 
placed in her path. Duped, exploited, overreached,; 
her confidence betrayed, her national hopes outraged, 
Russia has reached the conviction that the ejecting of 
the German element is the condition of her own health. 
Moreover, she has reached and holds that conviction, 
not as a matter of conscious and superficial knowledge, 
but as a slowly acquired, subconscious instinct. The 
body, when a foreign and discordant element is intro- 
duced into it, makes its own interior efforts, unprompted 
by reason or the mind, to cast forth the poison, and it is 
iri a somewhat analogous fashion that the energies of 
all Russia are concentrated to-day in the supreme task 
of ridding itself of the poison of Prussianism. The con- 
vulsions and huge rumblings which startle the world 
are no more than the internal accompaniments of such 
an effort. At the same time, it needs only to observe the 
nature and origin of the malady to be sure those efforts 
will continue until they have achieved their object. 
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