Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/744

722 runs for a long way on the crest of the Carpathian Mountains. To l)e sure, Galicia, for the moment, owes political allegiance to Austria-Hungary; but the Ruthenians, who constitute the major part of her population, are nowise distinguishable from the Russians, as we shall soon see. This leaves merely the two extremes of the Baltic-Black Sea frontier in question. The indefiniteness of the southern end of this line, from the Carpathians down, is one cause of that Russian itch for the control of the Bosporus which no number of international conventions can assuage. The Danube could never form a real boundary; a great river like that is rather a unifying factor in the life of nations than otherwise. Hence the great problems of the Balkan Peninsula. From the Carpathians north to the Baltic Sea, likewise, no geographical line of demarcation can be traced with surety. No water shed, worthy of the name, between the Dnieper and Vistula exists, although the one runs east and the other west not far from the present boundary of Poland and Russia. The former country is possessed of no sharply defined area of characterization. The State of Texas has as clear a topographical title to independent political life. The partition of Poland was in a measure a direct result of geographical circumstances. These have condemned this unhappy country, despite the devoted patriotism of her people, to a nondescript political existence in the future. By language the Poles are affiliated with Russia, not Germany; but in religion they are Occidental rather than Byzantine. Thus Poland stands to-day, padded with millions of politically inert Jews, as a buffer between Russia and Teutonism. It is a case not unlike that of Alsace-Lorraine. In both instances the absolute inflexibility of physical environment as a factor in political life is exemplified.

From the Carpathian Mountains, where, as we have said, Russia naturally begins, a vast plain stretches away north and east to the Arctic Ocean and to the confines of Asia; an expanse of territory, in Europe, eleven times as large as France. Nor is it limited to Europe alone. Precisely the same formation, save for a slight interruption at the Ural Mountains, extends on across Asia, clear to the Pacific Ocean. European Russia, only one quarter the size of Siberia, is, however, the only part of immediate interest to us here. Nowhere in all its vast expanse is there an elevation worthy the name mountain. Even the most rugged portion, the Valdäi Hills in southern Novgorod, are barely one thousand feet high; they are more like a tableland than a geological uplift.

Whatever its local character, be it great peat swamps or barren steppe, the impression of the country is ever the same. Monotony