Russia's Decadent Condition.
ROBERT CROVIN LONG, writing to the Hearst papers from Russia, declares that following her `economic decay,'' Russia is declining in civilization and is reverting to savagery.'' This is the result in places `of hunger, neglect, disease, and ignorance.'' ``Savagery is the only word to describe the present state of hundreds of settlements which a generation ago enjoyed prosperity and civilized instincts.'' He quotes Dr. Bilinsky, who has been traveling on the Volga and in Western Siberia: ``Of religion there remain only rudimentary ideas which have no relation to Christianity. Their huts, ill built, undecorated, without chimneys or furniture, are just enough to keep out the winter cold; their bread, which contains as much bark and weeds as rye, is sufficient to keep them alive, but not sufficient to keep them in health, and often a whole family possesses only one sheepskin, so that in winter only one member is able to go out of doors. ``Of domestic life and of morals no conception has survived. Marriage is almost obsolete, because the people can not pay the priest's fees. Children are not considered as human beings until they reach the age of six or seven; the infant mortality is so high that no child is supposed to have a claim on life until it has survived to at least that age; no pretense of grief is made over the death of younger children, who are buried without coffins or ceremonies. Often the villagers, in order to avoid the trouble of burial, carry their dead a few miles out of the village and leave the bodies naked in the woods.'' Now is the time, even tho there must be met the persecution of a decadent, perverted priesthood, to carry the Gospel to Russia. These fearful conditions are omens of the coming King.