RUSSIA’S SECRET NATIONAL PROGRAM
There are in existence in the secret archives of the government, Kuropatkin’s work discloses, documents containing the definite program of Russia, fixed by headquarters years ago, for its future growth and aggrandizement. Results of campaigns and diplomacy are checked up according to this great program, and decade after decade Russia is working secretly and quietly to carry it out. The Japanese War constituted a great mistake in the development of this national plan.
During the twentieth century, says Kuropatkin, Russia will lose no fewer than two million men in war, and will place in the field not fewer than five million. No matter how peaceful and purely defensive her attitude may be, she will be forced into war along her endless borders by the conflict with other national interests and the age-long unsatisfied necessity of her population to reach the sea.
Russia will furnish in this century the advance guard of an inevitable conflict between the white and yellow races. For within a hundred years there must be a great struggle in Asia between the Christian and non-Christian nations. To prepare for this, an understanding between Russia and England is essential for humanity. Kuropatkin deals with this necessity at length; and the future relations of Russia with Japan and China are treated with an impressive grasp.
His exposition of the sensitive and dangerous situation on the Empire’s western border contains matters of consequence to the whole world. The relations he discloses, between Russia, on the one hand, and Austria and Germany on the other, are important in the extreme. Within a fortnight these two latter countries could throw two million men across the Russian frontier, and a war would result much more colossal than that just finished with Japan.