Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/53

Rh period of reconstruction, and it is to Europe, most probably, that the American capital will flow. There seems to be no doubt that the foreign trade of the United States will continue on the same high level for some time after the war is over.

Europe will need American capital for its reconstruction, but it is obvious that not all of Europe will need it in the same degree. No matter how impoverished, economically and financially, England, Germany and France will be, they will still remain potentially powerful and developed. In many fields they will be able to rise out of their slough of financial despond by the use of their own means. It will not be to their interest to allow full play to foreign capital. The existence of their own wealth, and of highly organized productive facilities, together with the principle of strictest economy, which will, no doubt, prevail in European affairs after the war, will lead them to avoid new loans.

Not so with Russia. This country, in its economic situation, closely resembles the United States of that period when foreign capital first began to find its way into our economic life. The United States have become the most powerful industrial country of the world, and Russia can become almost as powerful, if American capital will play the same creative part in its economic development, that European capital has played here.

Russia is boundless in extent, and amply supplied with labor recruited from her young, healthy, and willing population of over 180,000,000. The country teems with natural resources, not one-thousandth part of which has as yet been utilized. Russia needs not only American capital, but American business men themselves, with their creative genius, their breadth of vision, their organizing abilities, their power of setting into motion every available force and resource of the country. The businessmen of Russia are slow and often indolent. Among them there are few men of great vision and broad outlook. They are easily satisfied, and seldom go beyond the limits of one, or, in unusual cases, two or three cities. Thus it is that the vast, rich, and interesting country still remains poorly organized commercially, and still awaits the awakening touch of men who are capable of doing business on a large scale.

In some ways, Russia has already caught up with the other countries of Europe. Her capital cities, Petrograd and Moscow, have passed the million mark in population. After the capitals, come, in order, the other large cities, the smaller cities, towns and villages, all striving to "catch up." The War has