The war now
exacts incredibly large expenditures. It is more difficult for
Russia, a country economically backward, to bear that expenditure
than for the wealthy states of western Europe. Russia's back, even
before the war, was burdened with a heavy state loan. Now this
debt is growing by the hour, and vast regions of Russia are
subject to wholesale devastation.
If the Germans will win the final victory, they will demand from
us an enormous contribution, in comparison with which the streams
of gold that poured into victorious Germany from vanquished
France, after the war of 1871, will seem a mere trifle.
But that will not be all. The most consequent and outspoken
heralds of German imperialism are even now saying that it is
necessary to exact from Russia the cession of important territory,
which should be cleared from the present population for the
greater convenience of German settlers. Never before have
plunderers, dreaming of despoiling a conquered people, displayed
such cynical heartlessness!
But for our vanquishers it will not be enough to exact an
unheard-of enormous contribution and to tear up our western
borderlands.
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