Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/98

 CHAPTER IX

RUSSIA STANDS FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS

I

ROM the foregoing considerations it is obvious that those who denounce the aggressive policy of the Russian Government are little acquainted either with Russian history or with the Russian character.

The history of Russian expansion has been one mainly of peaceful penetration. Even to-day over a million peasants cross the Ural Mountains every year to settle in Siberia. The providential mission of Russia seems to be the colonization of the semi-barbarous populations of the Asiatic continent. And in that mission the Russian people have been eminently successful. The Russian is the ideal settler. He does not possess the commercial instinct of the Jew or of the Armenians; he does not possess the industrial capacities of the Anglo-Saxon. But as an agriculturist, as a colonist, he is unsurpassed.