GREAT OPPORTUNITIES IN RUSSIA AFTER WAR ENDS

I spent last summer in Russia as a member of the American Red Cross Mission. Our party consisted of twenty-nine men and included specialists in medicine, bacteriology, hospital management, food, sanitation, and sociology. Colonel Frank Buildings of Chicago was in command of the expedition. We left Boston on June 29, crossed the Pacific in ten days, and then took the long ride of thirteen days across Siberia and Russia to Petrograd, where we arrived August 7. The object of the Mission was to give aid to the Russian people in their prosecution of the war by furnishing needed supplies for the care of the sick and wounded in the army and relief to the needy among the civil population. My own time was devoted largely to a study of the vital statistics of the army and an inspection of the sani- tary conditions and the ambulance and hospital service at the Russian front. This brought me in contact with General Korniloff and other Russian officers and with the officers of the Russian Red Cross, and the Union of Zempsvos. We were amazed at the vast amount of relief work being done by these and other organizations in Russia. We in America scarcely realized that there have been four million sick and wounded soldiers in Russia since the beginning of the war. I learned that 2,700,000 of them have passed through the hospitals in Moscow alone. For the most part these men have received adequate treatment in the hospitals which are maintained by the sanitary department of the army, the Russian Red Cross, and the Zempsvos Union. While in many ways Russia is capable of taking care of her wounded we found a great lack of certain supplies, namely, antitoxines, certain drugs, surgical instruments, microscopes, and laboratory supplies of all kinds. Russia also needs ambulances and an improved system of sanitation.

The trip involved several incidental features which were matters of great personal interest. In particular I was impressed with Siberia. Instead of finding it a barren land inhabited by political exiles, with occasional mastodons embedded in ice, we found it to be a land of great beauty and promise and with immense opportunities for young Americans. This is also true of European Russia. While there are stretches of desert land near Manchuria, there are in the centre of the country enormous areas of fertile land already yielding excellent crops of wheat and rye. The world's food supply could be raised there. We traveled for days through almost unbroken forests of pine, fir, larch and birch, and through mountainous regions where minerals are said to be abundant. There are great streams and large cities, and ultimately there will be a thriving Siberian population.

After the war Russia will need outside help if she is to develop according to her possibilities. America is in a better position to give this help than any other country. First of all Russia will need engineers and business men. It will be for the interest of this country as well as for Russia to increase mutual commercial relations. Already Russia needs machinery, tools, farm implements, manufactured goods of all kinds, boots shoes and clothing. Quite as much as South America, Russia stands forth as a great opportunity for the young men of this country. I hope to see more Harvard men studying the Russian language in order to prepare themselves for this great work in the same way that they are now studying Spanish. The language is difficult but the 100 young men now on their way to Russia to work in the Y.M.C.A. huts under Dr. John R. Mott's direction expect to acquire a speaking knowledge of the language in two months' time. Although the task may be hard the prizes are great. I hope also that the Russian government will send students to this country to study in our universities and technical schools. The Russian universities are desirous of having America help them make their work more practical. Their present courses of study run too much to abstruse theory. They need to introduce the laboratory methods which are now so common in America. I was asked to give this message to the educational institutions of America.

We have long appreciated Russian art and Russian music. We have not recognized the substantial character of the common people of Russia or the economic importance of Russia to this country. I hope that some wealthy benefactor of Harvard will see fit to endow a chair of Russian economics in our School of Business Administration. I feel sure that freer intercourse between the two countries will be of advantage not only to Russia but to America