The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 | Page 9

on Russia at once dispersed all doubts and hesitations in the many millions of the population of the Russian Empire. Some may put in the forefront of this war the struggle with the uncivilizing militarism of Prussia. Others may see in it, above all things, a struggle for the national principle and for the inured rights of nationalities--Serbians, Poles, and Belgians. Others, again, see in the war the only means of securing the peaceful future of Russia and her allies from the extravagant pretensions of Germany. But all alike feel that this war is a great, popular, liberating work, which starts a new epoch in the history of the world. Thus the war against united Germany and Austria-Hungary has become in Russia a truly national war. That is the enormous difference between it and the war with Japan, whose political grounds and objects, apart from self-defense against a hostile attack, were alien to the public conscience.
There is one other consideration which cannot be passed over in silence. In Russia many are convinced, and others instinctively feel, that a victorious war will contribute to the internal recovery and regeneration of the State. Many barriers have already fallen, national and political feuds have been softened, new conditions are being created for the mutual relations of the people and the Government. There is every reason to think that some members of the Government--unfortunately, it is true, not all--have understood that at the present time of complete national union many of the old methods of administration and all the old Government psychology are not only out of place, but simply impossible. In one question, the Polish, this conviction has received the supreme sanction of the sovereign and of the Commander in Chief, and a striking expression in the latter's manifesto to the Poles. Further than this, the actual attitude of Russian Liberals and Radicals toward a whole series of problems and relations cannot fail to be changed. Thus the war will help to reconcile and soften many internal contradictions in Russia.
How far we are, with this state of public opinion and these perspectives of the internal development of Russia, from those fantastic pictures of civil disunion and revolutionary conflagration which were anticipated before the war and have sometimes been, even since the war, portrayed in the German and Austro-Hungarian press! Our enemies counted on these domestic divisions, and they have made a bitter mistake. Constitutional Russia, precisely because of the radical internal transformation which it has experienced in the period that began with the Japanese war, has proved to be fully equal to the immense universal and national task that has devolved upon it. The national and political consciousness of Russia not only has not weakened, but has wonderfully strengthened and taken shape. As one who has had a close and constant share in the struggle for the Russian Constitution, I can only note with the greatest satisfaction the striking result of Russia's entry into the number of constitutional States, a result which has so plainly showed itself in the tremendous part that Russia is playing in the great world-crisis of 1914.

Prince Trubetskoi's Appeal to Russians to Help the Polish Victims of War
[Russkia Vedomosti, No. 231, Oct. 8, (21,) 1914, P. 2.]
A new era of Russian-Polish relations has begun, and the noble initiative of A.J. Konovalov, who has donated 10,000 rubles for the needs of the war victims of Poland, offers a shining testimony.
Up to the present the Polish people have had relations with official Russia only. The war has brought them for the first time into immediate touch with the Russian people. Thousands of Polish exiles have gone forth to our central provinces. In Moscow alone there are not less than 1,000 former inhabitants of Kalisz, to say nothing of fleeing people from other provinces. Moscow, of course, attracts the largest number of these unfortunates. Some particular instinctive faith draws the Poles to Moscow, to the centre of popular Russia. To my query why she had chosen Moscow among all Russian cities, a poor Polish woman, the wife of a reservist, said:
"I was sent here by the military chief. 'Go to Moscow,' said he. 'You won't perish there.'"
And indeed in Moscow the Polish exiles have not perished. They have found here brotherly love, shelter, and food. The municipality of Moscow, numerous philanthropists, both Polish and Russian, are rendering them assistance.
It is needless to describe the impression made upon the Poles by this attitude of the people of Russia. A prominent municipal worker of the City of Kalisz, with tears in his eyes, told me: "Up to the present moment Poland has been segregated from Russia by a wall of officialdom erected by the Germans; now for the first time this wall has been broken down, two peoples are seeing each other and feeling