Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/103

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RUSSIA STANDS FOR PROGRESS
87

III. The Coming of the Slav

After a thousand years of striving and suffering, of oppression and suppression, the Russian is at last coming into his inheritance. This war, which will end in the collapse of the three Empires, Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, will also result in the advance of the Russian Empire as the controlling power of Continental Europe. The future Peace Congress will realize the dream of ages. Byzantium Tsargrad will become the capital of Holy Russia.

But Europe need take no umbrage. The Russian Empire of to-morrow will not be a centralized military Power like Rome or Germany. It will take the form of a federation of self-governing communities. The logic of the Slav political tradition, the pressure of economic and political circumstances, the shaking off of the German influence, the influence of the allied democracies, all point to a Liberal Orientation of Russian politics.

The other Slav States will be finally liberated. Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria will be drawn into the orbit of the leading Power to which they owe their independent national existence. Russian influence will be all the stronger as