RUSSIA AND HER ASIAN EMPIRE.*
THERE are few points of resemblance between the two works we have classed together save in the subject and a certain appreciative temper of mind. Both writers confess them- selves enthusiasts for the great Eastern Empire, but Mr. Bookwalter is the undiscriminating eulogist, while Mr. Jane is rather the kindly critic. The former is a peripatetic American gentleman who made a tour of the Central Asian railways, and has published the contents of his note-books with many admirable illustrations. He travelled on certain lines of railway where passports are hard to obtain, and he had certain opportunities not vouchsafed to all of gaining accurate information. His book is a picture of Russian internal development, the slow organising of her distant frontier provinces, and her unexampled activity in railway construction ; and though we may sometimes dislike the traveller's manner, there is no question about the respect- ability of the matter of his tale.
The fact which most impressed Mr. Bookwalter was the great agricultural interests of the Russian peasant popula- tion. Evei the artisans and labourers in the towns, he says, are almost invariably the owners of a plot of land, sometimes even in remote quarters of Russia. To a male population of about twenty-two millions there were allotted by the reseript of 1861 over three hundred and sixteen million acres, which is an average of nearly fifteen acres for each. The perpetual emigration of the surplus pGpulation to Southern Siberia is gradually reducing the steppes to a great farm. The place is becoming, he says, a kind of "semi-domestic domain," and large game has almost disappeared. Beef can be bought anywhere in the railway districts for about ld. the pound, and other agricultural produce is correspondingly cheap. It is this aspect of Russian progress in which he finds the best security for her future wellbeing. Internal prosperity is not sacrificed for naval and military extension. The great net- work of railways which is being spread from the Caspian to the Pacific is not a purely military enterprise, and still less is it a commercial speculation. It is unlikely that it will ever pay the cost of its construction. But it is to be the means of binding the Empire together in all its provinces, and carrying to the most distant parts the same traditions of life and government which are found in the home country. It is an attempt to provide, with the additional help of canals, a great system of internal commerce, by which all parts of the Empire will realise their interdependence and their common interests.
It is in the account of these Central Asian railways that the chief value of the book is to be found. Some of the author's details still exist only on paper, but in the main the system which he describes is already on its way to com- pletion. For our purposes the great Trans-Siberian railway is the least significant; it is in the branches which run to the south that the strategic importance is to be found. At Samara, on the Volga, a branch leaves the main line
* (I.) Siberia and Central Asia. By John W. Bookwalter. London : C. A. Pearson. [218.)—(2.) The ImpericaBussianNavy. By Fred. T.Jane. London : W. Thacker and Co. 130s.] and runs to Orenburg, in south-eastern Russia. This line is to be extended south-eastward around the Aral Sea, and up the Sir-Dana, to the very centre of Turkestan. A branch of the Trans-Caspian railway already runs from Mery to Kushk on the borders of Afghanistan, and, according to Mr. Bookwalter, it is to be soon extended to Herat. The railway from Tiflis to Erivan in Armenia is to be pushed down the Araxes to Tibriz Teheran, and Ispahan. A route is projected to ran from Samarkand to Karshi, on the north-west border of Afghan- istan, which was the strategical base of Alexander's operations against India. Finally, a line is projected from Samarkand, through Ferghan, to Kashgar in the Pamirs, which is very near the northern border of Kashmir. Such schemes, some half-completed, some still on paper, impressed the traveller with the magnitude of Russia's power and her tireless energy, and in a long passage he sketches the importance which such wide railway ramifications would assume in any war with Britain. We do not doubt it for a moment, but the old question remains untouched. Russia is busy laying up material, but it is material which for many years can only be used for her internal development. She must populate Central Asia, and she must create commerce, and till she has so completely reduced the most sparsely peopled regions in the globe to the compactness of the home country, it is idle to raise the cry of "danger to India." We believe that in that Central Asian country lies the hope of Russia's future greatness, but many millions of money will be spent, and many generations of men will pass away, before the hope is realised. Let her establish a dozen ports on the Persian Gulf, let her cover Turkestan with railways, let her push her Empire well into China, and the fact remains untouched. It is not a Russian colony that is at the back of the Pamirs, but Russia herself, an Empire developing slowly towards its outer limits, and healing the maladies of the older part by experiments in the new. It would be as germane to British interest to object to some new dockyard in the Black Sea, or some municipal change at St. Petersburg, as to put diffi- culties in the way of the arduous, praiseworthy, and all but impossible task which Russia has set herself in Asia.
It is only fair to add that though we believe the view stated above to be in the main the true one, there is another aspect to Russian frontier policy. The great schemes are undertaken for internal benefit, and only in the second instance with military aims, but the frontier is also the happy hunting- ground of the adventurous Russian soldier, and that gentle- man, when given a free hand, is apt to be mischievous. We believe that it will be long ere the Russian Army, so invincible on paper, will be a really efficient instrument of war, but meanwhile it has developed in a surprising degree the petty tactics which often go with very inferior military strength. In the book on Innermost Asia, which Mr. Cobbold has just published, there is a curious account of the frontier soldiery. They are badly paid and consequently eager for any new adventure. They are clever, diplomatic, and abundantly untruthful ; and they have the useful gift of omnipresence. But they take bribes in the dispensing of justice and make no secret of it, so that Mr. Cobbold thinks that their apparent influence among the border peoples has no sure foundation, and that however well the other portions of Central Asia are administered the extreme edge is far from the same perfection.
Mr. Jane's book is the counterpart of Mr. Bookwalter's, an analysis of the Russian Navy and the Russian policy by sea. The author is a strong admirer of the Russian character, and something of a naval expert, but he is also a witty and trenchant writer, whose common-sense is tinged at times with a love of paradox. The work is monumental in its weight (avoirdupois), and is composed from first-hand authorities. It is dedicated to the Grand-Duke Alexander, who put special facilities in the author's way. He seems to have been taken everywhere and seen everything ; he was allowed to explore the Russian dockyards, and he penetrated even to the in- accessible Kronstadt. The first half of the book is an interesting history of the growth of the Russian Navy from the time when Queen Elizabeth lent a boat to Ivan the Terrible. From this he passes to the developments of recent years, and in particular analyses the "types" of battleship in use, and classifies the present navy. The subject is treated in great detail with many statistical tables, and chapters are devoted to such matters as "Pay," "Flags," "Discipline's "The Russian Admiralty," and "Armament and Equipment." In the second part the author attacks more general questions. He is a convinced Russophile, believing that "the future of the Russian Navy is in great measure allied to Russia's relations with that Power who has been it nurse, doctor, schoolmaster, and foster-parent." On the whole, as contrasted with recent writers, he tends to minimise Russia's actual power. "To properly understand the country," he says, "one has to picture Elizabethan England, with two or three railways, and electric light in the towns." There are too many married officers in her navy, and, as in our own army, there is far too little professionalism. He analyses the Russian character and finds alike in its strength and its weakness no possibility of danger to Britain. Some of his argu- ments seem a little far-fetched, as when he dilates on the reports of the Mahdi's-head affair and the supposed massacre of the wounded in the recent Soudan War as having produced throughout Russia an immense terror of the British soldier. A reasonable dislike to financiers leads him into some extravagances, which had better been omitted. But on the Chinese question, and, indeed, on the whole matter of our relations to Russia, be talks much admirable common-sense. From some of his conclusions some readers will dissent, as when he writes :—" The Russians are not traders ; some other nation will have to do the trading. It is a canon with us that Russia is hostile to British trade, but we forget that we do things to force her to take a step as dis- advantageous nearly to her as to us. Russia is our great future market if we have but wisdom." And again :—" Russia wants Constantinople, and every bit of tussle in the Far East has the city on the Bosphorus as its axis.. . . The key of all the fuss in China lies upon the Bosphorus ; and here too, perhaps, may be found the raison d'etre of the great Trans-Siberian railway that can never pay its cost of construction." Bat, for ourselves, in the main we agree heartily with his results. Briefly, they are these :—Russia has neither the money, forces, nor desire for war at present, and she honestly wishes peace in her own interest. Again, she is building, not for to-day, but for the future, expanding her borders, partly because of that ideal of a great Slav Empire of which so many Russians dream, and partly because such expansion is necessary for her internal growth. Finally, a little plain speaking and honest statement of wishes is all that is required to bring about an understanding with her, which has more possibilities of stability than with any other European Power. "With the sea its highway," writes Mr. Jane, "the British Empire is the really homogeneous one, Russian homogeneity is decep- tive; no lines of railway can act like the sea highway." We believe this to be true ; it rests with ourselves whether or not it is to be true in the future.
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