democracy in all countries, and the example of Russia will have a great influence, as may actually be seen by the discussion which has arisen in Germany on this point. The fact that the war has been conducted by the peoples themselves has already undermined the position of absolute monarchism in other countries besides Russia. Monarchism in the future, so far as it prevails at all, will be put on a new democratic basis.
4. The first practical result of the Russian revolution was the cheapening of bread and food; the great task of new Russia is to reform the bureaucracy, to turn it from the absolutist regnare to the democratic gubernare. In absolute Tsardom every bureaucrat is a tsar, and, in his own domain, the tsar. Russia is handicapped by her size; the war has revealed her lack of communications and its significance in the economic organisation of the country. She must be enabled to utilise her natural riches and to make her agriculture more effective by substituting an intensive for the old extensive cultivation of the soil.
Such a culture of the soil is impossible without education; Russia must have schools and compulsory instruction.
5. Reform of the whole administration and of education is impossible without great financial sacrifices; economic reforms are therefore of the greatest importance for the new Government. In this connection the question of Constantinople is of first importance. When the Russian Minister announced in the Duma that the Allies had already assigned Constantinople and the Dardanelles to Russia, he knew that such an endorsement of Russia’s paramount aim in the war would encourage the whole nation. Russia would thereby obtain what she has always desired with an almost religious intensity. In her anti-Turk policy Russia remained true to the traditions of the Crusaders of the Middle Ages, while the West became reconciled to the Turks. The religious significance of Constantinople is the inheritance of the medieval theocracy; the modern Russians demand the Dardanelles for the purpose of exporting corn, her natural products, and her growing industries. It is well known that Catherine, though the friend of Voltaire, contemplated Constantinople as the capital of a “Russo-Greek” empire; in modern times Danilevski and, above all, Dostojevski have preached the religious standpoint, whereas modern historians
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