The danger to Europe or to Germany and Austria-Hungary does not arise from the panslavist movement, but from the fact that European and Asiatic Russia contain 170,000,000 inhabitants, who may, should circumstances favour this development, become a gigantic military and economic force. During the last half century the population of Russia, which in 1859 was 74,000,000, has more than doubled. What will the numerical relationships be in 1950, and what will they be at the close of the twentieth century?
According to one estimate, the populations of A.D. 2000 will number as follows, in millions: Hungary, 30; Austria, 54; Italy, 58; France, 64; British Isles, 145; Germany, 165; European Russia, 400; Russia including Russia in Asia, 500; the United States, 1,195.
Will the triple alliance still exist at that date? However this may be, the relationships of population between the countries of the triple alliance on the one hand and the countries of the triple entente on the other will be far less favourable to the former group than those which now obtain. Persons who regard physical force as decisive in national life may, as their standpoint varies, console themselves or alarm themselves with the contemplation of these calculations: they will do well not to forget the growth of Japan, China, India, etc.;
the year of its foundation, and 1884, the Gustavus Adolphus Association disbursed 19,686,532 marks.) During recent years the Slav Welfare Association has ceased to have any practical importance. Suggestions in the European press that the spoutings oi its orators possess political significance are utterly erroneous. Apart from the fact that the membership of the association is numerically insignificant, pensioned generals like Kirěev are without influence in Russia. There is no lack in Russia of pensioned generals and officers of lesser rank, and these sometimes beguile the weary hours with excursions into what they dignify by the name of Slav politics. The aforesaid Kirěev, in a speech delivered in 1893, declared that slavophilism would prove the salvation of the world, would deliver Europe from anarchism, parliamentarism, unbelief, and dynamite. But it is necessary to distinguish between slavophilism of this type and the slavophilism of Kirěevskii. The first slavophils associated their doctrine with the country and the folk, whereas Kirěev and other slavophils of late date look towards the autocracy. After Pogodin's death Ivan Aksakov became chairman of the Moscow branch of the association, and Aksakov was doubtless a publicist of note. The choice fell upon him in preference to the prince of Bulgaria, but he was not strictly speaking a panslavist. At the present date General Čerep-Spiridovič is chairman of the Moscow branch, and as far as I can learn no one but the Paris Cri d'Alarme takes his political views seriously. A few years ago certain so-called neoslavist associations were founded as a counterblast to the reactionary associations. Their aims were distinctively nonpolitical, their interest being in Slav culture. Little, however, is heard of them to-day.
