March 22, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD 
SERJEANTS' INN. LONDON. W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, MARCH 1%, 1917 
CONTENTS 
The Convicts' Stripes. By Louis Raemaekers i 
Russia's Revolution. (Leader) ^ 
The Enemy Retirement. By Hi aire Be loc . 4 
Freedom and the Seas. By Arthur Pollen « 
Germans in Turkey. By Sir Wilham Ramsay Jo 
Value of the Mark 1 ^ tt r. it 
War-Time Expenditure. By T. H. Penson n 
Ru sia in Revolution. By C Hagberg Wright 3 
\ Village of Northern France. By An Othcer 14 
La Prisfde Bagdad. (Poem). By Emile Cammaerts i. 
Books to Read. By Lucian OldershaW i" 
Andersonsville. By Elsie Fogerty ^ 
The Golden Triangle. By Maurice Leblanc -» 
Kit and Equipment . 
RUSSIA'S REVOLUTION 
THE revolution in Russia has a direct connection 
with the war which we in the West have heard 
reiJeated a thousand times during the last few 
days, birt which it is difficult for us to grasp. 
Very often this connection is put in a false form which 
distorts its real meaning. We are told that the forces 
called "Liberal" Were opposed to German influence, 
whereas the forces called " cons^ervative, ' "clerical 
or " atitocratic " were in sympathy with German in- 
llucnce. Such a division is fantastic. There is, to begin ' 
with no clean division of this kind, nor anything ap- 
proaching it in the Russian State. The cleavage is not 
between methods highly centralised and .uncontrolled 
bv a pariiamejit on the one hand and pariiamentary 
oligarchy upon th.- other. It is much deeper and much 
more real. • • . + 
The Russian State is one more primitive in its texture, 
that is, less compUcated, than any other western or central 
European State. It is agricultural. It is extremely 
homogeneous in its habits as in its landscape. It has 
in the main one reUgion, which enters into the daily life 
of the whole people in a degree which we of the West 
fail altogether to grasp. Within the memory of man 
this vast similar community was not industrialised at 
all Within the last few years some few portions of it 
have been partially industrialised, but only partially. 
This vast body controlled subsidiary and even ahen 
races religions, groups, upon its borders. Tl\e Jews, 
wholly within the Kingdom of Poland, formed a large 
community, for the most part German-speaking. The 
greater. part of the Poles, again, were after the last 
partition placed under the rule of the Russian reigning 
house. The same monarch exercised authority over the 
Grand Duchy of Finland, to which might be added the 
Ruthenian fringe and the Lithuanian belt. 
Now this great homogeneous mass was permeated 
In- a comparatively modern system of government, 
bureaucratic and absolute in the extreme; and the 
directing spirit of all that method was German. It 
was a method which had always been alien to the pro- 
found historical traditions of the Russian people, which 
had be<Mi of late years peculiariy exasperating and out of 
tune with the development n[ the national life. Rut in a 
country of such a character it was supreme, and, as it 
seemed, invincible. The German spirit and traditions 
of this b(idy (which of.course was not German in personnel, 
though there was an element of German personnel in it) 
were not connected with any conscious German effort. 
They were in the -nature of things. 
Medieval Russia had been almost entirely unorganised. 
The Middle Ages in Russia lasted very long— they lasted 
till well into the 17th Century. When organisation came , 
it had to come after the fashion of and as it were dependent ■ 
upon the more highly developed European civilisation 
immediately to the West. That civilisation was German. 
The contrast and the friction between this newly 
organised framework imposed upon the Russian people 
and the national traditions, conscience and character of 
the same people, have been ultimately the cause of all 
the threats within the State throughout the last two 
centuries and more. . 
The present revolution is essentially the violent 
shaking oft— let us hope permanently— of this unnational 
and mechanical tradition. Its immediate occasion was 
undoubtedly the pretty well unanimous feeling of the 
army that the governmental machine was playing it 
false. But its profound roots lay where we have described 
them to lie. Apart from this, which is the true and 
fundamental meaning of the whole affair, there was a 
distinct and conscious German policy which had, ever 
since Frederick the Great, become specifically the 
Prussian policy with regard to Russia. This pohcy sup- 
ported absolurism, for two very different reasons. First 
because it was believed that such a system kept Russia 
undeveloped and therefore less formidable.. Secondly, 
because of the %'arious possibilities in Russia absolutism 
was much the nearest and most sympathetic to the 
Prussian military system. Prussia felt instinctively 
that the alternative to absolutisin in Russia might well 
be extreme experimentalism in democracy. A democracy 
has always been a fatal neighbour to Prussia. 
Lastly, during the present war and for some little time 
before it— say from about 1908, and with especial 
intensity since the Prussian Government in the summer 
of iqii determined on war— there was the concrete 
detailed and thought out plan of permeating Russia with 
spies and hidden influences in a degree which wc in the 
West, familiar as we are with this peculiar modern method 
of Prussia, have no idea of. German was already the 
commercial language. German methods and German 
ideas were already in possession of the economic industrial 
life (especially in the west) and of the university methods. 
A great body of the bureaucracy, specially "in its higher 
branches, was in active sympathy with German ideals 
and German culture. It hardly knew anything else, 
and of the public men who could be called to power a 
portion were German in spirit. 
This recent detailed and carefully planned pro-German 
influence upon our Ally's territory the revolution has of 
course overset. It is much the more striking feature 
of the revolution in our eyes, and the one most immediate 
practical interest in th(> great struggle of life and death 
in Avhich we are engaged, but it must not lead us to for- 
get the larger interests involved and the longer traditions 
which are at issue, nor make us toa confident that the 
hitherto extremely easy and rapid success of the revolu- 
tion necessarily guarantees all the future of the war. 
What wc have to watch and pray against is that 
counter-action which upon whatever scale is almost 
always present after great moments of this kind, like the 
returning tidal wave upon a tropical shore after an 
earthquake. Unfortunately, with the first appearance 
of faction it is morally certain that faction will appeal 
to the enemy. It is upon this chance Germany counts 
to-day. The strong feature on the other side is what we 
have called the unanimity of the army. Ultimately the 
army in any State is the sanction of all authority and of all 
policy, and once the army, especially upon a war footing 
and after months of war experience, determines upoij a 
course of action, nothing can withstand it. 
