Everything in Russia has had to be built up in a few generations. The Trans-Siberian Railway is as stupendous an achievement as the Canadian Pacific Railway. The cyclopean highway through the Caucasus is one of the wonders of modern engineering. Ten years ago I witnessed for six months the horrors of the Civil War and the disasters of the Japanese War. Returning to Petrograd after five years I expected to find a ruined, disorganized State. I found instead an extraordinary change for the better: the public exchequer full to overflowing, a thriving industry, universal optimism, a superb confidence in the future. We notice the same progress in every province of human activity. No British newspaper would think it worth while to report about those twenty thousand agricultural co-operative societies which have risen in recent years in the Empire of the Tsars. One Nihilist plot or one Jewish Pogrom would have attracted more attention. Yet think of the enormous significance of those twenty thousand autonomous social organizations which everywhere are reforming agricultural methods and stimulating the most important national industry.
Russia is the country of gigantic social and
