War has united Russia as never before.  The Czar now moves about unattended, and the country is a unit behind him and the war and unitedly against the Germans.  From Warsaw to Siberia the German agents and merchants have been arrested and impounded.  Nobody in Germany can yet realize how this war has destroyed her commercial relations and commercial organizations throughout the world.  Everywhere German people are subjects of suspicion.  You will even hear in all seriousness that the Kaiser had an army of 150,000 reservists in the United States with a partial equipment of arms ready to attack Canada; and I have been told by supply agencies that these arms are now offered for sale, as the uselessness of any German movement on the American continent is apparent.

How far Germany is unable to measure the spirit of the English-speaking people is shown by the fact that she cannot understand why the United States does not take this opportunity to possess Canada.

I heard of a retired German-American of wealth, residing in Germany, who was actually invited to go to America to stir up a raid on Canada.  Of course he obediently returned to the United States, and then he sat down to wonder how he could effectively report back the foolishness of such an idea without offense to Berlin.

Russia has been perfecting her military organization for ten years.  The expansion was to come in the next two years.  At the opening of the war she had only 2,500,000 available troops.  For two years she has been building factories to manufacture ammunition and arms, and these are now being rushed to completion.  People who have offered her contracts for arms and munitions have been told that Russian factories shortly to be completed will make their weapons more quickly than they can now be ordered and received from other countries.

With arms and equipment Russia can draw 17,000,000 men to her German-Austrian frontier just as readily as Germany can draw 7,000,000 men to both her frontiers.  In both calculations only one in ten of the population is counted upon for service.

The story is told of a Russian who was asked in London why he did not return for military duty.  He replied, “Oh, I belong to the 14th million, and it will be some time before the 18th million is called out.”

Russia has the greatest future of any country in Europe.  She has the largest unturned arable soil of any country in the world.  Russia in Europe is a great agricultural plain.  To the east are her rich oil-fields steadily expanding north in the Ural Mountains, and east lies Siberia, endowed by nature as one of the richest countries in the world, an area in which you could deposit the United States.  From the Siberian railroad other railroads are now projected; mineral wealth is being uncovered; and English and French capital and American engineers will in the future work wonders with the country.

What Russia has long sought is an outlet to the ocean.  This war is likely to give her benefits which she could never have asked and could only have fought for.  Germany, defeated, will lose the control or monopoly of the Kiel Canal, and possibly the country around it which she took from Denmark.  The Kiel Canal under international control will extend the Baltic Sea of the Russians and the Scandinavians most directly to the North Sea and the English Channel.