FROM an article in the Melbourne Age we take the following extract which will be of interest in view of the Titanic struggle now on in the Orient:
Japan is an example of unselfish patriotism making for national effectiveness in a supreme crisis. Russia is a house divided against itself. Its princes have schemed to amass wealth at the risk of exposing the people to untold miseries.
Corruption and malversation among Japanese officials are almost unknown; whereas, it is an acknowledged fact that the Russian officials are, as a class, almost the most untrustworthy in the world. A sample of the kind of fraud which they perpetrate on the nation is mentioned by Baron von der Bruggen in his book on ``Russia of To-day.'' Five years ago a census of the people was taken at enormous expense. The total cost of the enumeration has amounted to £4,000,000, and yet not one single page of the information collected has been published. Thousands of clerks exist for nothing but utterly useless routine duty, the creation of their positions being entirely fraudulent. In order that this staff may seem to be doing some work a system has been devised under which, when a minister makes a long journey, it is necessary that not fewer than 17,000 missives should be neatly written out and despatched to an equal number of officials all over the Russian Empire. While all grades of officials9fatten on corruption, the towns and villages of the once prosperous rural districts of Russia are fast falling into decay.
When the Christian missionaries were murdered by the Boxers in China, the Japanese government acted up to the spirit of the national sentiment of justice by joining in the European demand for reparation. But what course did Russia adopt? One of the China Bluebooks supplies the answer. The Russian government announced, in formal language, that ``the murders of the missionaries is a subject in which Russia is not interested.''