Russian Life To-day

by Bp. Herbert Bury

Camels at Work—Summer.

Another manager friend of mine told me that he had helped his people to become more sober by selling vodka at his own stores at a lower price than that of the government. It sounds a strange way of doing it, no doubt, but the sale was restricted to Wednesdays and Saturdays. When, therefore, on the other days there came would-be purchasers anxious to have vodka, with the plea that there was a wedding or a christening or some other domestic festivity at which it would be needed just to complete the enjoyment, they were always told that they could not have it except on the stated days. This was not hardship, for the government shop was open, though the higher price was demanded there. This they would not pay and so went without it, and yet the christening or wedding passed off no less happily—perhaps even more happily; and thus, gradually, amongst the Russian staff, and through them the work-people, there grew up the idea that the results of vodka were to be avoided.

Nothing could be more encouraging than the experience of the management of this particular mine in trying, by example and discipline, to lift their foremen and subordinates of the staff out of what used to be thought a perfectly natural and pardonable weakness, but now throughout the empire is being acknowledged as a national sin.

It will surely and easily be seen by any thinking reader that this initiative on the one hand, and responsiveness on the other, promise well for our future relations with each other, and explains, perhaps, how the Russian Entente has passed quite naturally into an Alliance, which some of us hope and believe will be permanent and stable for many generations.

Our Entente with France has been indeed an Entente Cordiale, and it is now more cordial and friendly than ever; but it is not easy to conceive of anything in the future beyond an Entente and Alliance. We can be real and staunch and faithful friends as becomes those who are near neighbours, but little else opens out before us. Is it possible to think of anything between ourselves and Germany, even when the war is over and many years have passed, except the gradual removal of sadly embittered feelings and outraged convictions and beliefs? Our ideas of what can rightly be called world-power and world-forces are so diametrically opposed that it passes the imagination of man to conceive what great world-purpose we and they could undertake together, for some time.

But directly we think of ourselves and Russia as side by side, and with confidence in each other, there is no limit to what we and they may hope to accomplish together for our own peoples, for humanity, and for God. Not only have we constitutional and religious ideals in common, but our own countrymen are already at work all over the richest and most promising part of their vast empire, and upon the only right lines any one can adopt if the object in view is to increase the resources, character, and ability of a people at the same time.

The Englishman of the ordinary and normal type cannot be content to look upon the man he employs as merely a wage-earner. He wants, as he would put it, “to give him a leg-up” besides, and our countrymen in Siberia have sought just to give that “leg-up” to their employs, to better their conditions of life and educate their children; by precept and example to give them wholesome recreations; to help them to see that there is nothing laughable but everything that is disgusting in such a vice as drunkenness; and to help them in every way they can to manly self-respect.

This is tremendously far-reaching in its results. The Christian paradox is fulfilled here also. “To lose is to save, to save is to lose.” To try and get all one can out of work-people and give as little, is to have little enough to show by way of good results. To think not of the work alone which the wages claim, but of the man who is to do it; to try one’s utmost to make him more of a man for his being employed and to lift up his self-respect, is straightway to increase the value of everything he does, and of the work for which his wages are paid.

The explanation of “dividend or no dividend” is far simpler than it seems, and the New Testament contributes to it. If only a little additional value is placed upon the manhood and womanhood of those employed, and a little increase given to self-respect, responsibility, and conscientiousness where hundreds and thousands are employed, then it requires no great powers of insight to see how rapidly what has hitherto been a failure may become a great commercial success. I attach the greatest importance to the fact that our countrymen in Siberia whom it has been my great privilege to know and make my friends are conducting their great enterprises as honourable and chivalrous men, and have, with public-spirited Russians, like-minded with themselves, laid the foundations of a true Anglo-Russian friendship and agreement. In this I think we are extremely fortunate in the opportunity which world events have brought us, and through no effort of our own. Our own people at home, for the most part, are probably not yet convinced that this is our God-given opportunity. I have already freely owned my former prejudices and misconceptions, and explained how quickly they passed away, and I know that others must feel and think as I used to do myself, and that they have had comparatively little as yet to clear their minds, though I trust what is written in these pages may be a help in that direction. But this opportunity which has come to us was possible for Russia’s great neighbour at one time, as she was told by one of the most far-seeing men of Europe, but it was carelessly and even contemptuously refused. Great opportunities for great nations never return.

Just as Bismarck pleaded for friendliness with England and against naval expansion for his own country, so also he was quite alive to the possibilities of Russia and its “wonderful materials for making history if it could take the virility of Germany into its national character.” The Emperor William, however, differed with his great chancellor upon this as upon other policies he advocated, maintaining that the “Sclavonic peoples are not a nation but only soil out of which a nation with an historic mission may be grown.”