Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/70

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54
GREAT RUSSIA

to a people who in the past have been so refractory to the study of foreign languages as the British people. There are, further, the difficulties of distance and size. Russia is not a country which can easily be overrun by hurried holiday trippers. Even as you cannot learn the Russian language in two months, so you cannot "do" the Russian Empire in two weeks.

In the presence of those formidable obstacles, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the field of Russian controversy should have been left free to the enemies of Russia. And, unfortunately, Russia has many irreconcilable enemies. There are the Russian Nihilists and Revolutionists who have legitimate grievances against an autocratic Government, and who for generations have made London a hot-bed of political plots. There are the Polish refugees who for a hundred years have pleaded the cause of Polish freedom in every capital of Europe. And, above all, there are the Russian Jews who in every country have constituted themselves the passionate apostles of an anti-Russian propaganda.

The Jewish problem is a difficult problem in