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148 to remember that fifty years ago 90 per cent, of the world's shipping was still moved by sails, and that already the first railway had been opened across North America.

One of the reasons why we commonly fail to appreciate the significance of the policing of the steppes by the Cossacks is that we think vaguely of Russia as extending, with a gradually diminishing density of settlement, from the German and Austrian frontiers for thousands of miles eastward, over all the area coloured on the map with one tint and labelled as one country, as far as Behring Strait. In truth Russia—the real Russia which supplied more than 80 per cent. of the recruits for the Russian armies during the first three years of the War—is a very much smaller fact than the simplicity of the map would seem to indicate. The Russia which is the homeland of the Russian people, hes wholly in Europe, and occupies only about half of what we commonly call Russia in Europe. The land boundaries of Russia in this sense are in many places almost as definite as are the coasts of France or Spain. Trace a line on the map from Petrograd eastward along the Upper Volga to the great bend of the river at Kazan, and thence southward along the Middle Volga to the second great bend at Czaritzin,