FOOL'S GOLD

The fate of Russia grows ever more tragic. In the unbelievably pleasant days before the war its nobles shared with the French the title of intellectual aristocrats of the world, and its vodka addicted peasants moved native and impressive through a thousand gripping novels. A voluntary bath of blood unfortunately washed the glamor from this old Russian life and left the rest of the world amazed and horrified by tales of the temperamental Red gone politically and economically wild. To the conservative the last twist to Russia's woeful thread of fate is given by Charles Recht's report that Russia is using the United States as a model and trying to "Americanize its theatres, schools, and laws."

That "everybody wants to be American" in Russia is not as unanticipated as it first appears. Hitherto the desire has resulted in a flood of Russian emigrants to the United States; and since America has at last shut her doors the impulse must of course seek expression in a less direct way. Even that epitome of Russian cultural development--the Moscow Art Theatre--has evinced a recurrent wash "to be American." And rumor has it that the far-famed Dolly Sisters once rejoiced in a typically Slavic name.

But despite these precedents, it would seem more becoming for Americans to regard this latest Russian tendency rather with alarm than with pride. There cannot exist, in these critical days, an American with soul so dead that he has never reflected on the inherent clumsiness of his government; on the inadequacy of his public law in coping with the major problems of economic life; on the futility of most of the legislation ground out by busy state assemblies. Yet in the face of these defects which one might assume to be obvious to foreign observers, the Russians, says Mr. Recht, "are borrowing our system of Government; both Federal and State laws of the United States are being copied." The only hope that the Russians will not be severely disappointed in their faith seems to lie in the fact that inasmuch as it is a physical impossibility to copy all of the multitudinous American laws, they will happen to select a few of the best.

Whatever the results of this curious exportation may be, they promise to be of peculiar interest to Americans. It may prove a most beneficial shock to somewhat provincial citizens to view "theatres, schools, and laws" modelled on their own through the clarifying perspective of the Atlantic.