The Future War with Russia
The Future War with Russia.—The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, of July 3, publishes an interview with a Russian prince in St. Petersburg, in which the scion of royalty treated lightly the present defeats from Japan, or the loss of Port Arthur and Manchuria, even. Russia, he tells us, was not yet aroused. The Russian race was not European, except on the surface, but Oriental. From his broken English we take the following: “‘It will take a little bit more yet to give Russia—all the Russia of the people—a veritable scratch, and then there will be a Tartar to be caught which will not keep off the grass for the Geneva convention. The Japanese, the more they make war, the more they are European. But we, the longer we fight, the more we are Easterns, and some day, with her back against the wall of a partisan, Europe, fearing, however, to chip in, Russia will come out wonderfully, like a rat in a corner. It is our way. These etiquettes of fighting, these punctilios of making dead people, they cramp our style. But when we get our shirt out, as Rudyard Kipling says, then there will be a high old kettle of fish. There will be such a war as is not written of, a devastation, a fight to a finish, with nobody to say, O, fie! when there is a hit under the zone, and nobody to shout, Please come out of it, when one is down, and the other is engorging him. Think, only! “‘There has not been a war,’ he declared. ‘Not in verity, a war of the true actual. War is the end of law, and it is proper to kill wounded, and hang prisoners, and torture spies, and poison water. It is the real thing, but uneasy to do. Yet conceive a great people of Easterns, fighting for very life, why shall they stop at? What can you forbid, with all to lose—life, credit, power, and all, and all? Ah, but Russia will engage herself,—all Russia, the people and the government, fighting together, with money and blood and brains, like the boys of the old brigade. But not yet, mark! Not simply for the Petropavlovsk and Port Arthur. No! She will take a hand when there is danger, and danger so real that it can kindle what is not easy to find in Russia—his imagination. Ah, but once that is done, we shall be busy, and there will be wigs on the lawn. “‘There will be no revolution [in Russia] when once it is up to us to push the Japanese back or be pushed. It will clear away much of the foolishness that people talk of in peace. Win?—Why, certainly. It is not of a question. When Russia goes to war, it is only a matter of getting her blood up. Make believe you have a lot to lose, and then you fight not only Russia, but the Orient, that knows a thing or two. O, it is no end of a game to be an Eastern,’ he concluded. ‘When you have come to the conclusion of your humanity, you have a fine animal left. It is not only the Western that can make a hog of himself, and you will find that, when Russia is forced to it, she can be simply beastly.’” And then comes Armageddon.