BOOKS.
THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA.•
DR. DILLON'S very able and depressing book on Russia during the past forty years will dispel many illusions. The burden of it is that the Tsardom was rotten to the core, and could neither be main- tained nor reformed. The main inference which we draw from the book is that the Allies could not have diverted the course of the Revolution, whatever they had said or done last year, any more than they could have regulated the blast of the sirocco. Dr. Dillon himself has often blamed the Allied Governments for their action or inaction with regard to Russia, and even in this book he goes so far as to say that " they were impatient to see the Tsardom de- mocratized and, ignorant of the State structure with which they were dealing, they bent its pillars and pulled down the whole fabric." Yet the main argument of his book is directed to show that the Tsardom perished from its own inherent vices, and that the abolition of discipline in the Army by the moderato Revolutionists removed the only force which held together the many diverse nationalities of Russia. Tho Allies did not provoke the Revolution, nor could they have controlled it if they had tried to do so. It is idle to suppose that the warring elements let loose a year ago among the countless millions in that vast country would have been composed by a deputation of guileless British Labour politicians or by a Stockholm Conference as readily as a trade dispute in our favoured land. The Revolution, once started,•was uncontrollable, Neither the Constitutional Democrats, nor M. Kerensky, nor the Anarchists who overthrew him have been able to gain command of the incalculable forces which they set in motion. The Russian peoples are nearly all peasants, and the peasant's land-hunger is the dominating fact of the Russian problem. The workmen of the towns, who have played an active part in Revolutionary politics, form a very small minority of the population, and are dependent on the peasantry for their daily bread. Without a trustworthy armed force no Government can have any hold over the peasantry, who are incredibly ignorant and narrow-minded because they have never been educated or enlightened, nor allowed to take any part whatever in the government of their country. Tho blind masses, on whom the future of Russia depends, had " crude notions of an anthropo- morphic God and of an apotheosized Tsar," but they knew nothing of Western politicalideas and very little about Russia outside their vil- lages. If Mr. Ramsay MacDonald had led his whole Labour following into the steppes last year, he would not have been able to influence these primitive rustics, whose sole idea is to acquire more land. Let us face the facts, recorded very clearly in Dr. Dillon's book, and recognize that Russia, suddenly freed from a stupid and cor- rupt tyranny, will take many years to attain an equality with the least advanced of the European peoples, and that meanwhile she lies helpless before German armies and German intrigue.
Dr. Dillon's history of the last two Tsars is profoundly interesting, and abounds in personal reminiscences. He tells us that he held a Chair in Kharkoff University, that he was on the staff of a Petrograd newspaper, and that through his intimate friend the late Count Witte he had exceptional opportunities of observing the Administration at close quarters. Indeed, Count Witte, whom he regards as the only great Russian statesman of the past two cen- turies, dominates his book ; and the ex-Tsar Nicholas II., who dis- liked Count Witte and never willingly took his advice, is denounced in the most bitter terms as a foil to the wise Minister. Dr. Dillon must not be surprised if his vigorous partisanship occasions distrust. Yet he gives a mass of detailed evidence to support his view. The most damaging fact of all is, of course, the secret treaty of Bjorke for a Russo-German alliance, which the Tsar made with the German Emperor on July 24th, 1905, while Count Witte was in America negotiating peace with the Japanese. The first. article of this treaty, which the Bolsheviks found in the Imperial archives and published, ran thus : " If any European State attacks one of the two Empires, the allied party will employ all its naval and military forces to assist its ally." This treaty was in flat contradiction to the old Franco- Russian Alliance, yet it went on to stipulate that Russia should Worm France of the treaty and suggest her adherence. The German Emperor's object was to frighten France into abandoning her recent Entente with Great Britain. The Tsar was hypnotized into signing this treaty without the knowledge of his Ministers, and Count Witte's first task on returning home was to devise a tech- nical excuse for declaring the treaty void and to persuade the Tsar that he could not play fast and loose with his old ally. A Tsar who could commit such follies was plainly unfit for his position.
• The Eclipse of nuelia. By E. J. Dillon. London J. M. Dent and Sons. Rea. met.; Yet., curiously enough, Dr. Dillon denies that Nicholas II. was on the point of making a separate peace with Germany. He had betrayed his ally in 1905, but the assumption that lie would have betrayed his allies in 1916 seems to Dr. Dillon "most improbable." We hope that Dr. Dillon is right ; probably he is guided in this case by his theory that " the most careful estimates of what a Russian will do under a given set of circumstances, even though his antecedents be known and examples of his past. conduct be there to guide one, cannot be taken as trustworthy and are often belied by the event." Dr. Dillon exposes what he describes as "the Have Conference mystification," maintaining that the Tsar's Rescript of 1898, which astonished the world, had its genesis in the desire of the Russian War Office to postpone the rearming of the artillery mid to induce Austria to do the same, though Germany had just adopted a new gum. Of the Conference ho simply says that it showed " real statesmen, of whom there were two still living," that " the abyss between the two groups of people into which the civilized world is divided was unmeasured—perhaps immeasurable."
Dr. Dillon's picture of the internal administration of Russia under the last Tsar is appalling.. He describes, for example, the career of Azeff, who was at one and the same time the head of the militant terrorists and also a well-paid agent of the political police, and who continued to draw his salary after he had organized the assassination of M. Plchve, the Minister, and of the Grand Duke Sergius, the uncle of the Tsar. The story seems flatly incredible, but Dr. Dillon believes it implicitly. The Bolsheviks, who apparently worked with Germany°, id a Si.n It h 3r at one and (ha same time, afford a parallel to the dull parson silty of Az.311. Dr. Dillon narrates, too, the story of an attempt to assassinate Count Wit te, which failed owing to a quarrel between the two would-be murderers, ono of whom killed the other, and gave himself up. In this case M. Stolypin, the Premier, and the Minister of Justice hushed up the affair, despite Count Witte's insistence, and the Tsar approved of their action. If half that he says about the Tsardom in its last days is true, nothing could save such a system. Dr. Dillon thinks that Count Witte might have prolonged its existence for a few years, but ho does not claim more for his hero. The war dealt the finishing stroke. The end might have come during or after the disastrous war with Japan, but in 1905 the Army was still comparatively unaffected by revolutionary propaganda, and the people were attracted by the novelty of a Duma. By 1917 the Damn had been proved impotent, the Army was seething with discontent, and the Government had failed to conduct the war with oven tolerable efficiency. Dr. Dillon's record of the old Russia that he has known so long and so intimately will be of lasting interest. He looks into the future with foreboding and dread ; yet, despite the immediate harm that the collapse of Russia has clone to the Allies, no reader of the book can doubt that the Revolution which swept away so horrible a system of misrule will ultimately benefit Russia and the world.
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