Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/149

 policy of the Government. Then there are fierce conflicts of the various nationalities amongst themselves, and the quarrels between the nationalities"are very often much more violent than the conflict between Russia and any of the nationalities. There is conflict, there is movement, there is progress, there is disappointment, there is hope, there is tragedy. In the vast process that is Russia, we find as it were cosmical forces at work, tremendous cosmical forces of good and evil, on a scale that we in our quieter empire are hardly able to realise. And in this cosmical struggle there is tragedy, deep tragedy, and I think the note of tragedy will never be entirely absent from Russian history, because of the greatness of Russia, because of the tremendous task that lies before this group of peoples on the vast plain that stretches between the Baltic, the Black and the White Seas, afar to the Pacific and the frontiers of the Chinese Empire and the borders of Persia. There is tragedy in this. We cannot eliminate the tragedy, but at the same time, in spite of conflict, which comes from movement, in spite of suffering, which is due to participation, in the very great, very complex, historical process, in spite of baffling enigmas and crushing disappointments which we find ourselves unable to explain, in spite of all this there is joy in Russia, the joy of all these peoples of various origins, of various hopes, of various faiths, uniting on that vast expanse to create new types of rich human lives, to produce some new manifestation of the power of the human spirit which shall bring wealth and power and happiness to the world. For the sake of that great joy the pain and the tragedy can be borne.