Russia is rapidly becoming, as I have explained in a previous chapter, a great industrial and commercial nation, and is anxious to acquire new markets for her manufactured goods.  Though her industries cannot yet supply her own wants, she likes to peg out claims for the future, so as not to be forestalled by more advanced nations.  I am not sure that she ever makes a conquest exclusively for this purpose, but whenever it happens that she has other reasons for widening her borders, the idea of acquiring commercial advantages acts as a subsidiary incentive, and as soon as the territory is annexed she raises round it a line of commercial fortifications in the shape of custom-houses, through which foreign goods have great difficulty in forcing their way.

This policy is quite intelligible from the patriotic point of view, but Russians like to justify it, and condemn English competition, on higher ground.  England, they say, is like a successful manufacturer who has oustripped his rivals and who seeks to prevent any new competitors from coming into the field.  By her mercantile policy she has become the great blood-sucker of other nations.  Having no cause to fear competition, she advocates the insidious principles of Free Trade, and deluges foreign countries with her manufactures to such an extent that unprotected native industries are inevitably ruined.  Thus all nations have long paid tribute to England, but the era of emancipation had dawned.  The fallacies of Free Trade have been detected and exposed, and Russia, like other nations, has found in the beneficent power of protective tariffs a means of escape from British economic thraldom.  Henceforth, not only the muzhiks of European Russia, but also the populations of Central Asia, will be saved from the heartless exploitation of Manchester and Birmingham—­and be handed over, I presume, to the tender mercies of the manufacturers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who sell their goods much dearer than their English rivals.

Having thus analysed the expansive tendency, let us endeavour to determine how the various factors of which it is composed are acting in the present and are likely to act in the future.  In this investigation it will be well to begin with the simpler, and proceed gradually to the more complex parts of the problem.

Towards the north and the west the history of Russian expansion may almost be regarded as closed.  Northwards there is nothing to be annexed but the Arctic Ocean and the Polar regions; and, westwards, annexations at the expense of Germany are not to be thought of.  There remain, therefore, only Sweden and Norway.  They may possibly, at some future time, come within the range of Russia’s territorial appetite, but at present the only part of the Scandinavian Peninsula on which she is supposed to cast longing eyes is a barren district in the extreme north, which is said to contain an excellent warm-water port.

Towards the south-west there are possibilities of future expansion, and already some people talk of Austrian Galicia being geographically and ethnographically a part of Russia; but so long as the Austro-Hungarian Empire holds together such possibilities do not come within the sphere of practical politics.