[A Letter to the Russkia Vedomosti, No. 231, P. 2, Oct. 8, 1914.]
The population of Poland has been forced to experience the first horrible onslaught of the wrathful enemy. All points within the sphere of the German offensive offer a picture of utter desolation. The people are fleeing in horror before the advancing enemy, leaving their homes and their property to sure destruction. An uninterrupted line of arson fire shines on the sorrowful path of the exiles. Their fields have been devastated and furrowed by the trenches, their animals have been taken away, their savings have been wasted, and all their chattels destroyed.
The prosperity of millions has been destroyed and men have been turned into homeless beggars without a morsel of bread.
The flight of these people is beyond description. One cannot fail to realize the stupefying horrors of such a deep and overwhelming national calamity. The strokes of fate have come down upon the people of Poland with a most merciless cruelty. Shall we gaze upon these horrors with indifference? Can the Russian people remain neutral witnesses of the sufferings and privations thrust upon the population of the devastated country?
The Russians are making heavy sacrifices for the war, but in these historic days we must speed up our energies still more, we must double and treble our sacrifices. Let us not forget that despite all our sacrifices, despite all our sorrow and alarm we are not deprived of peaceful work, we have not been drawn into destruction as the people of Poland have been. Without further delay we have to hasten to their aid.
A widely organized social aid must be brought to the fleeing people. We must provide them with shelter and food. These victims are flocking to the central provinces of Russia, to Moscow, and they must be a.s.sisted up to the time when they shall be able to return to their country. It is necessary to ascertain the degree of their distress and to help to provide them with the necessities of life in places already cleared from the enemy by the aggressiveness of the Russian Army.
Of course, the main duty in the regaining of the prosperity of Poland lies with the Government. Only the Government is able to stand the expense of millions required for this task, only the State through its legislative organs is capable of creating the social, economic, and political conditions making possible the reconstruction of the civilization of Poland. But we also owe a duty of help, a sacred duty of immediate sympathy to those stricken with disaster.
To carry out our task we need funds. In submitting this problem to the Russian people, in calling upon it for the solution of this tremendous and pressing issue, as far as possible, I herewith forward my little contribution of 10,000 rubles for aid to the people of Poland suffering from war.
A. KONOVALOV,
Member of the Duma.
Moscow, Oct. 7, (20,) 1914.
Note.--Konovalov"s appeal met with a most generous response. Not only individuals and charitable a.s.sociations came forward with funds and food, but a large number of Russian cities organized permanent aid committees for the benefit of the war victims in Poland. Street and house-to-house collections were organized, and considerable funds have already been collected. Not only Russians, but also the Armenians, the Jews, and other nationalities of Russia have shown a deep and substantial sympathy for the Poles.
Prince Trubetsko"s appeal emphasized the political side of this campaign of succor, while Mr. Konovalov has given prominence to the human side of it. Prince Trubetsko"s appeal follows.
I AM FOR PEACE!
By LURANA SHELDON.
I am of New England! A daughter of mountains, Wide-stretching fields, broad rivers that smile With the sun on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I am of the hills-- The great, bald hills where the cattle roam.
The peace of the valleys still clings and thrills, And the joy of the tinkling fountains, Where the deep-creviced boulders pile.
I am of it, New England, my home!
The tenure of conflicts, the feeble thriving, Are lore of the past. Now the giant peaks May sleep and sleep. Their watch is ended.
The beacon towers may crumble and fall.
So well have my people defended-- So well have they prospered through striving-- Today her triumph New England speaks In the mantling calm that envelops all.
They have come to New England, the woeful invaders.
The hills attracted, the valleys lured; They have sowed their seeds of disturbance and fear.
They wrought for destruction, but all in vain.
They were told that order was master here.
The hills turned censors, the streams, upbraiders.
No war of men should be fought, endured!
They need wage no battle for peace again!
Like my native hills, my strife is ended; Like my sleeping hills, I have earned life"s calm.
The sun that smiles on New England"s streams Bids human conflicts forever cease.
Let those who must, writhe in their dreams At thought of days with horror blended.
For me, the meadow"s gentle balm-- I am of New England--where all is peace!
United Russia
By Peter Struve.
[From The London Times.]
Prof. Peter Struve, editor of the monthly, Russian Thought, is recognized as one of the most acute political thinkers in Europe. He was one of the chief founders of the Const.i.tutional Democratic Party (the Cadets) and was member for St.
Petersburg in the Second Duma. He is also known as an economist of great erudition.
PETROGRAD, Sept. 16.
The future historian will note with astonishment that official Germany, when she declared war on Russia, was in no way informed of the state of public opinion in our country.
This is all the more astonishing because not a single country to the west of Russia maintains so close a communication with Russia as Germany. The Germans, better than other peoples, could and should have known Russia and her material resources, her internal state, and her moral condition. When she declared war on Russia, Germany evidently counted, above all, on the weakness of the Russian Army. There was nothing, however, to justify such an estimate of the armed forces of Russia. Certainly Russia had been beaten in the j.a.panese war, but in that war the decision was reached on the sea, and after the fall of Port Arthur the land war had no object. The Germans have probably convinced themselves already how superficial was such an estimate of the forces of Russia, but in reality their mistake was due to an entirely superficial view of the national culture of Russia and an extremely elementary idea of our internal development. The Germans did not believe that there is in Russia a genuine and growing national civilization, and did not understand that the liberation movement in Russia had not only not shaken the power of the Russian State, but had, on the contrary, increased it.
Not understanding this, they thought that any blow from outside would tumble over the Russian State like a rotten tree. German aggression, on the contrary, united the whole population of Russia, and by this alone strengthened a hundredfold her external power. This, of course, would have been the natural effect of any attack from without upon any sound people or any State that was not in decomposition. But in this case there was something else. Such a war as this could not fail to take on at once the character both of a world war and of a national war. That is why in this struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary, elemental forces united in one impulse and spirit both the Russian Radicals, with their tendency to cosmopolitanism, and the extreme Nationalist Conservatives.
Nay, more than that, all the races of Russia understood that a challenge had been thrown out to Russia by Germany that morally compelled her, in the interests of the whole and of the various parts, to forget for the time all quarrels and grievances.
This showed itself in the most natural and inevitable way with the Poles, of whose national culture Germanism is the sworn foe. The well-known manifesto of the Commander in Chief did not awake this feeling among the Poles of Russia, but simply met it and gave it support. Equally natural and elemental was the patriotic outburst that spread among the Jews of Russia. In their case the political and social Radicalism which we always find in the Jews turned by some sound instinct against German militarism, which had shown itself the chief cause and occasion of a world catastrophe.
The German declaration of war on Russia at once dispersed all doubts and hesitations in the many millions of the population of the Russian Empire. Some may put in the forefront of this war the struggle with the uncivilizing militarism of Prussia. Others may see in it, above all things, a struggle for the national principle and for the inured rights of nationalities--Serbians, Poles, and Belgians. Others, again, see in the war the only means of securing the peaceful future of Russia and her allies from the extravagant pretensions of Germany. But all alike feel that this war is a great, popular, liberating work, which starts a new epoch in the history of the world. Thus the war against united Germany and Austria-Hungary has become in Russia a truly national war. That is the enormous difference between it and the war with j.a.pan, whose political grounds and objects, apart from self-defense against a hostile attack, were alien to the public conscience.
There is one other consideration which cannot be pa.s.sed over in silence.
In Russia many are convinced, and others instinctively feel, that a victorious war will contribute to the internal recovery and regeneration of the State. Many barriers have already fallen, national and political feuds have been softened, new conditions are being created for the mutual relations of the people and the Government. There is every reason to think that some members of the Government--unfortunately, it is true, not all--have understood that at the present time of complete national union many of the old methods of administration and all the old Government psychology are not only out of place, but simply impossible.
In one question, the Polish, this conviction has received the supreme sanction of the sovereign and of the Commander in Chief, and a striking expression in the latter"s manifesto to the Poles. Further than this, the actual att.i.tude of Russian Liberals and Radicals toward a whole series of problems and relations cannot fail to be changed. Thus the war will help to reconcile and soften many internal contradictions in Russia.
How far we are, with this state of public opinion and these perspectives of the internal development of Russia, from those fantastic pictures of civil disunion and revolutionary conflagration which were antic.i.p.ated before the war and have sometimes been, even since the war, portrayed in the German and Austro-Hungarian press! Our enemies counted on these domestic divisions, and they have made a bitter mistake. Const.i.tutional Russia, precisely because of the radical internal transformation which it has experienced in the period that began with the j.a.panese war, has proved to be fully equal to the immense universal and national task that has devolved upon it. The national and political consciousness of Russia not only has not weakened, but has wonderfully strengthened and taken shape. As one who has had a close and constant share in the struggle for the Russian Const.i.tution, I can only note with the greatest satisfaction the striking result of Russia"s entry into the number of const.i.tutional States, a result which has so plainly showed itself in the tremendous part that Russia is playing in the great world-crisis of 1914.
Prince Trubetskoi"s Appeal to Russians to Help the Polish Victims of War
[Russkia Vedomosti, No. 231, Oct. 8, (21,) 1914, P. 2.]
A new era of Russian-Polish relations has begun, and the n.o.ble initiative of A.J. Konovalov, who has donated 10,000 rubles for the needs of the war victims of Poland, offers a shining testimony.
Up to the present the Polish people have had relations with official Russia only. The war has brought them for the first time into immediate touch with _the Russian people_. Thousands of Polish exiles have gone forth to our central provinces. In Moscow alone there are not less than 1,000 former inhabitants of Kalisz, to say nothing of fleeing people from other provinces. Moscow, of course, attracts the largest number of these unfortunates. Some particular instinctive faith draws the Poles to Moscow, to the centre of popular Russia. To my query why she had chosen Moscow among all Russian cities, a poor Polish woman, the wife of a reservist, said:
"I was sent here by the military chief. "Go to Moscow," said he. "You won"t perish there.""