Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/72

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56
GREAT RUSSIA

conducted and are still conducting in Great Britain a systematic campaign of calumny such as the Irish irreconcilables have conducted, and are still conducting, in America, against Great Britain.


IV. Geographical Surroundings in Russia

If we wish to be just to the Russian Government and to the Russian people the first condition is that we should try to discriminate between what is owing to the fatality of Nature and what is owing to the intervention of Man. No one will ever understand Russia's political history who does not constantly keep in mind the close interdependence which exists in Russia between physics and politics, between the economic and the moral factors. This truth is so essential that I may be permitted to emphasize a paragraph in a previous chapter because that paragraph gives the key to the Russian problem.

"In no other country have geographical conditions left a more indelible imprint. Nowhere else have men felt more deeply the all-pervading influence of physical surroundings, of climate and of race. There are some countries,