Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/827

Rh  in this easy strain. All that is certain on this subject is, that the great motive powers which make for war — ambition, distrust, dislike, envy of each other's greatness, and clashing interests — are busily astir in both these empires. German officers — a caste more powerful in their land at present than any caste at all has been in any great country for centuries — avow it to be their next duty to the fatherland to chastise the Muscovite pride. On their side, all the better class of Russians, the strictly German party only excepted, never cease to declare, at home and abroad, their strong conviction that the new empire will sooner or later fasten a quarrel on the old. The heir of all the Russias is openly zealous in fostering the national feelings, which include hatred of Prussians and Prussianizing institutions as a cardinal point in their creed. The revolutionary change that has come over war by means of steam and telegraph, has deprived Russia, as wise old Prince Paskievitch pointed out on his death-bed, of that vast strength against the aggressor which her wide territory gave, when each autumn and spring turned her highways into what Napoleon, in despair of using victory by pursuit, termed "her fifth element" of mud. Russia indeed remaining as she is, her standing army little larger numerically than that of her neighbor, and inferiour in every other condition that brings victory, would be an almost certain prey to German attack. But Russia does not intend so to remain. From the peasant to the czar her people all have the conviction that sacrifice and exertion are necessary to give back to their beloved empire the military primacy she claimed under Alexander I. and Nicholas. They are resolved to undergo whatever is necessary for this end. The schemes of reorganization prepared, and now accepted as law, are as vast and far-reaching as the most ambitious Muscovite could possibly desire. They are spurred on, too, by the belief that it is but one old man's uncertain life that preserves the present condition of things, in which personal friendship and certain limited material interests overbear national sentiment and dreams of future supremacy. And it is the full knowledge of these schemes, and of the possible effect of their accomplishment on Germany, which keeps the weary brains at Berlin in a state of tension, and in turn makes Europe, apparently with no just cause, anxious lest her peace should be suddenly and violently broken.

As the military projects of Russia are not only more vast in outline, but more complicated in detail than the organization of any of the powers she would outshine, we shall but sketch them in outline, premising that what we know only in the general, is closely studied and thoroughly understood at Berlin, where knowledge on such heads is drawn from long practice, and quickened in this instance by the instinct of self-preservation. Our particulars, we may here say, come to us mainly through Austrian sources; and in this peculiar part of military science, known as logistics, or the study of the military resources of nations, the war-bureau of Vienna, raised to a high pitch of knowledge under the régime of Baron Kuhn, is secondary only to that over which Count Moltke presides.

The nominal peace strength of the Russian army has been hitherto estimated at about 800,000 men. But it has long been known that for offensive service in Europe large deductions would have to be made from these numbers for such hitherto wholly sedentary troops as the numerous garrison and other local battalions, and of course for the mixed contingents maintained for Asian service, which would be as little available for action on the side of Germany, as is our Punjaub frontier force for an expedition to Spain. An army of 600,000 men with the colours, backed by a dispersed and untrained body of reserve, has been therefore declared by the ablest statisticians of both Berlin and Vienna to be the very utmost that the Muscovite empire could hitherto dispose of for field operations in a European war. For although it was known that each year's contingent drawn, even before the new law of universal service, must yield a large surplus of nominal recruits; yet these were believed to be left undrilled, and mainly registered as generally available for call in war, not being even required to remain in their own districts, but being liable to be summoned to the nearest depot in time of war. Now the essence of the great change lately made in the laws of the empire is not merely to extend military liability to all classes, but to shorten greatly the duration of its length. Instead of the soldier being with the colours from seven to ten years, as before, he is to remain no more than six in any case, the bulk of the line only four, and large portions, under special conditions, for much shorter periods. Recent calculations in a Russian military journal prove that, when the law comes into full 