Siberia showed me a Russian in a character quite different from that in which one generally sees him. He was full of enthusiasm for the future of Western and Central Siberia. "We have a land of magnificent prospects," he said. "We are in the condition that your Canada was before British colonization in the north-west, with the additional advantage of being even a richer country. The natural resources are in the land: furs, minerals, forest wealth, and a fertile soil for dairy and cereal produce; but the human machinery at present is not here in sufficient quantity, and that is what we want. We Siberians have been impressing this on the St Petersburg authorities. For years past we protested against criminal exiles being sent here to poison our social life. Now we have got our way in that respect, and the Government is alive to the necessity of encouraging the best class of peasant from old Russia to come and settle here, but what we still want is a better development of our natural resources, by means of branch railways from the trunk line, Government subsidies for public works in our chief centres, encouragement of Siberian industry, and, above all, a more forward education policy to suit the practical life of a Siberian trader and settler. We do not want to see our money spent on unnecessary military railways in the Far East, such as the Amoor railway, or on naval armaments on the Baltic. We want Siberia developed for the Siberians."
It sounded so much like the talk of a Canadian to an Englishman from the "old country." Western enterprise has laid its seed even here, accompanied by the material ideas of wealth and of general dissatisfaction with existing conditions.
