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PRO PATRIA
209
Church will enable her to be the bedrock cere perennius on
which the Russian State edifice of the " New Age " will be
erected. A thousand times over the Russian people
maybe called anarchic, nihilistic, and destructive, but there still
remains the one unassailable ground of their religious fervour
which is a positive asset and a uniting element of constructive
power.
A brilliant Russian writer, Alexander Nicolaevitch
Briant-chaninoff, holds the same view. He exclaims : " Can it be
that not so long ago our Allies admired the dash of our
officers and soldiers, that they recognised the universality of
our mystic idealism, that they believed in our inexhaustible
resources of power, in the future of our culture, and in our
economic strength ? Can all this be an illusion, a deception,
a dream ? Or is Russia now passing through a
nightmare ? For the mystic the world is facing the problem
of social reconstruction, and the war has fallen upon Europe
to liberate her from ancient fetters. Even before other
nations, the Russian nation, the least stable and the most
sensitive, singed herself in the flame of attempts at social
reform, and suicidally burnt herself out in the flare of
impossible reforms, because she did not follow the lead of
integral men of peaceful progress, but was carried away by
fraudulent instigators of internal conflagration. By the
example of Russia’s crucifixion the world will see how not
to conduct a social revolution, striving to adapt Utopian
ideas to practical social organisation. But at the same
time the fate of Russia will teach the world to realise
the truth of social reform which has become necessary, and
must come about at the end of the war. Russia will
resuscitate or perish’according to whether she returns to the fiery
confession of the Christian faith, the only guiding star of
her people,^or follows political parties who have lost the
faith and are, therefore, barren of creative power, leaving
the path of Christ to tread the road of proud self-conceit,
led by earthly and not heavenly reason. The Sobor (Church
Congress) concluded its message to the churches with the
words : ’ May the new Powers preserve their fidelity to
o
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