Title | Russia's gift to the world |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Hodder and Stoughton |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1915 |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 48 pages; 22 cm. |
Original Item Location | DK32.7.M3 1915 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304497~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 9 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_1315132_008.jpg |
Transcript | I Russia's Gift to the World is half barbarous. It is of a people non-European in the sense in which Europe means freedom, order, the conquest of nature, and the progress of humanity. Russia is fancied as a clog, if not a menace, to the general movement of progress—affording, indeed, a market for our goods and sending us in return its wheat and timber and petroleum, but producing nothing else of human service; doing little or nothing in thought or art, in knowledge, in organisation of the higher life. Those who know something of Russia know that this popular view is entirely wrong. And like all great errors about the facts of life, it is actively mischievous. We shall never be in good and useful relations with any nation, or with any body of our fellow men, until we take some pains to understand them and to know what they really are, what they think, what they create, what they seek to attain. This knowledge is equally essential whether we regard them as our friends or as our enemies. Without understanding based on facts, liking or dislike, friendliness or enmity rest on mere accident or prejudice. The Russians are different from us, but they are like us, and we have a great deal in common. It is equally wrong and equally foolish to misconceive or to ignore or to despise what any nation, be that nation France or Germany or Russia, has done in the world and for the world. Great harm was done in England for generations by our old traditional dislike of France. Our ancient contempt for Germany as a nation of professors and of dreamers, tied down by feudalism and pedantry, has had in modern times a sharp awakening. But though we understand France and Germany now better than we once did, we have not yet lost the spirit of insular ignorance and prejudice in which those old misunderstandings arose. Now this spirit, whether it be directed towards Russians or towards Prussians, |