Like Other Orientals, They Only Believe What They See; And Russia Is Seen And Realized On The Northern Frontier. Besides The Effect Of Contact, The Russians Possess A Gift In Dealing With The Chinese.

The affinities and analogies which the Russians and Chinese exhibit have been depicted by Michie in his book on

The "Siberian Overland Route." "Analogies in the manners, customs and modes of thought of the two races are constantly turning up, and their resemblance to the Chinese has become a proverb among the Russians themselves. The Russians and the Chinese are peculiarly suited to each other in the commercial as well as in the diplomatic departments. They have an equal disregard for truth, for the Russian, in spite of his fair complexion, is, at the bottom, more than half Asiatic. There is nothing original about this observation, but it serves to explain how it is that the Russians have won their way into China by quiet and peaceable means, while we have always been running our heads against a stone wall, and never could get over it without breaking it down. The Russians meet the Chinese as Greek meets Greek; craft is encountered with craft, politeness with politeness, and patience with patience. They understand each other's character thoroughly, because they are so closely alike." Michie went on to say that "when either a Russian or a Chinese meets a European, say an Englishman, he instinctively recoils from the blunt, straightforward, up-and-down manner of coming to business at once, and the Asiatic either declines a contest which he cannot fight with his own weapons, or, seizing the weak point of his antagonist, he angles for him until he wearies him into acquiescence. As a rule, the Asiatic has the advantage. His patient equanimity and heedlessness of the waste of time are too much for the impetuous haste of the European. This characteristic of the Russian trading classes has enabled them to insinuate them selves into the confidence of the Chinese; to fraternize and identify themselves with them, and, as it were, to make common cause with them in their daily life; while the Western European holds himself aloof, and only comes in contact with the Chinese when business requires it; for, in all the rest, a great gulf separates them in thoughts, ideas and the aims of life."

Of interest, also, as showing how history repeats itself, are the observations made nearly forty years ago by Lockhart, a missionary, after a long residence in China. Lockhart wrote: "The Russian government anticipated us, not in the knowledge of the advantages of close commercial and political relations with an empire so enormous in its resources, but in the employment of those arguments that alone could render a vain and effeminate State sensible of their value.... The map of all the Russias, published at St. Petersburg, now includes that vast portion of Central Asia heretofore constituting the outlying provinces of the Chinese empire beyond the Great Wall. Having placed a mission in the Chinese capital and organized an overwhelming army in Chinese Tartary, with magazines of warlike resources, Russia easily secured a permanent footing in region after region, till she had dominated over, and then obtained the cession of, all the intervening space, leaving the conquest of the entire Chinese empire to the time when it should please the reigning Czar to order his Cossacks to take possession.

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Words from 188833 to 189401 of 191255