It was against the menace of a German fleet that we had to
incur an outlay of millions of pounds: in the absence of the German fleet
we, too, can do what we please. It is certain also that Russia, so long as
the deep-seated antagonism between Teuton and Slav remained, was under
strong compulsion to reform and reinforce her army.

FEAR OF RUSSIA

There may, it is true, remain in some minds a certain fear about Russia,
because it is difficult to dispel the old conception of a great despotic
Russian autocracy, or, if we like to say so, a semi-eastern and
half-barbarous power biding her time to push her conquests both towards
the rising and the setting sun. But many happy signs of quite a new spirit
in Russia have helped to allay our fears. It looks as if a reformed Russia
might arise, with ideas of constitutionalism and liberty and a much truer
conception of what the evolution of a state means. At the very beginning
of the war the Tsar issued a striking proclamation to the Poles, promising
them a restoration of the national freedom which they had lost a century
and a half previously. This doubtless was a good stroke of policy, but
also it seemed something more--a proof of that benevolent idealism which
belongs to the Russian nature, and of which the Tsar himself has given
many signs. Of the three nations who control the Poles, the Austrians have
done most for their subjects: at all events, the Poles under Austrian
control are supposed to be the most happy and contented. Then come the
Russian Poles. But the Poles under German government are the most
miserable of all, mainly because all German administration is so
mechanical, so hard, in a real sense so inhuman. But this determination of
the Tsar to do some justice to the Polish subjects is not the only sign of
a newer spirit we have to deal with. There was also a proclamation
promising liberty to the Jews--a very necessary piece of reform--and
giving, as an earnest of the good intentions of the Government,
commissions to Jews in the army. Better than all other evidence is the
extraordinary outburst of patriotic feeling in all sections of the Russian
people. It looks as if this war has really united Russia in a sense in
which it has never been united before. When we see voluntary service
offered on the part of those who hitherto have felt themselves the victims
of Russian autocracy, we may be pretty certain that even the reformers in
the great northern kingdom have satisfi