[Footnote 1: This, of course, by no means implies that she is _behind_ the West, or that she is of necessity bound to pass through the same process of development. The problem of modern Russia is not to imitate the West but to discover some way of coming to terms with Western ideals without surrendering her own.]
Will she continue to maintain this attitude? "The Russian peasant," says Mr. Maurice Baring, "as long as he tills the ground will never abandon his religion or the observance of it.... Because the religion of the peasant is the working hypothesis taught him by life; and by his observance of it he follows what he conceives to be the dictates of common sense consecrated by immemorial custom." The crucial point of this passage is the conditional clause: "as long as he tills the ground." Of course, Russia, the granary of Europe, must always be predominantly an agricultural country; yet she is at the present moment threatened in many parts with an Industrial Revolution, the ultimate effects of which may prove far more subversive than the attempted revolution of 1905. For beneath her soil lie explosive materials more deadly than any dynamite manufactured by _intelligentsia_. Her mineral wealth, at present almost untouched, is incalculable in quantity and amazing in variety. When her mines are opened up Russia will become, according to the judgment of Dr. Kennard, editor of _The Russian Year-Book,_ "without a doubt the richest Empire the world has ever seen." Attracted by her vast mining possibilities, by her enormous virgin forests, by her practically unlimited capacity for grain-production, the capital of Europe is knocking at the doors of Russia. Factories are rising, mines being started all over the country. Russia is about to be exploited by European business enterprise, just as America and Africa have been. The world has need of her raw materials, and is only interested in her people as potential cheap labour. Thus within the last few years something analogous to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of Europe has come into existence in Russia. We may catch a glimpse of what these new classes are like from a recent book by Mr. Stephen Graham, called _Changing Russia_. He writes: