three great routes of migration and invasion, the three highways of commerce, as they have determined the direction of the whole history of the Russian people—we may say that Russia, in "orientating" her foreign policy southwards and eastwards, has not only obeyed an instinct common to all that lives and breathes, but has merely followed the trend of her enormous rivers, carrying slowly but surely the destinies of those Northern Barbarians towards the Sunny South.
III
But in addition to the heliotropic instinct characteristic of all Northern peoples, in addition to the "oriental" trend of the great rivers, there is still another potent impulse which has given its direction to Russian history, and which an Englishman ought to be the last to ignore, and that is the desire to possess a free outlet to the sea—the sea which, so far from separating nations, binds them together, the sea which will bring Russia nearer to the cradle of religion and civilization, which will transform the agricultural Russia into a commercial and industrial Russia, which will bring trade and wealth, freedom and power.
