(Contributed).
Jan. 19.
WHILE statesmen are devising means of reopening communications and commerce with Russia in the belief that her prosperity will thus be reinstated, it is worth while considering' prospects from another point of view. For while Russia is assuredly a great field of production and a promising market for distribution, she has more than a mercantile function to fulfil in the history of the world: she has a genius and an opportunity that far transcend material considerations.
Two momentous things have happened which have no. immediate bearing on the market or on the political issues. of the
sequences. The first is the lop-day but auh bregnnne with con-ping off of the western provinces from Finland to Georgia. The detachment of Lithuania, Esthonia and Poland obviously mean a geographical and imperial loss, but may be of great service to Russian nationality and genius. Just as England found herself in the 16th century largely through the loss of her French provinces that proved to be a continental entanglement not worth the cost, so Russia may win her soul through her severance from the provinces that grappled her the West. For it must be remembered that the Russians are a mixture of Mongolian and Slav and have never felt at home in a civilization that has been inspired by the genius of other races. The present crisis means the undoing of the policy of Peter the Great two centuries ago and farewell to the German infusion and the French ideals that have hitherto characterized St. Petersburg. Petrograd will probably never be the capital again. The Western outlook is closing. The Slav world is turning on a new pivot. The Russian centre of gravity has moved definitely towards the East.
The other event that means so much for the future first of Russia then of the world is the separation of the Church from. the State. There are reasons for
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.