The defeat of Russia by Germany will much more injure our people than the defeat of France injured the French people. The war now exacts incredibly large expenditures. It is more difficult for Russia, a country economically backward, to bear that expenditure than for the wealthy states of western Europe. Russia's back, even before the war, was burdened with a heavy state loan. Now this debt is growing by the hour, and vast regions of Russia are subject to wholesale devastation.
If the Germans will win the final victory, they will demand from us an enormous contribution, in comparison with which the streams of gold that poured into victorious Germany from vanquished France, after the war of 1871, will seem a mere trifle.
But that will not be all. The most consequent and outspoken heralds of German imperialism are even now saying that it is necessary to exact from Russia the cession of important territory, which should be cleared from the present population for the greater convenience of German settlers. Never before have plunderers, dreaming of despoiling a conquered people, displayed such cynical heartlessness!
But for our vanquishers it will not be enough to exact an unheard-of enormous contribution and to tear up our western borderlands. Already, in 1904, Russia, being in a difficult situation, was obliged to conclude a commercial treaty with Germany, very disadvantageous to herself. The treaty hindered, at the same time, the development of our agriculture and the progress of our industries. It affected, with equal disadvantage, the interests of the farmers as well as of those engaged in industry. It is easy to imagine what kind of a treaty victorious German imperialism would impose upon us. In economic matters, Russia would become a German colony. Russia's further economic development would be greatly hindered if not altogether stopped. Degeneration and deprivation would be the result of German victory for an important part of the Russian working-people.
What will German victory bring to western Europe? After all we have already said, it is needless to expatiate on how many of the unmerited economic calamities it will bring to the people of the western countries allied to Russia. We wish to draw your attention to the following: England, France, even Belgium and Italy, are, in a political sense, far ahead of the German Empire, which has not as yet grown up to a parliamentary régime. German victory over these countries would be the victory of the old over the new, and if the democratic ideal is dear to you, you must wish success to our Western Allies.