Russia is in some respects one of the foremost nations of Europe. It is the greatest example in history of a mass of civilizations and barbarisms welded together into a compact political whole. Fifty years ago Japan was referred to as a heathen country, and yet there are certain contrasts which show a higher condition of what we call civilization in Japan than we find in Russia. The Empire of the Mikado is the only Asiatic country enjoying a constitutional form of government.
Russia has a population of 130,000,000; Japan a population of 47,000,000; yet Japan has 4,302,623 children in elementary schools, while Russia has only 4,193,594. That is to say, in Japan 91 children in every 1,000, and in Russia only 32 children in every 1,000, are in the elementary schools.
In the secondary schools and universities also, the proportion is in favor of the Japanese.
Again, Japan has 4,832 postoffices, or one to every 9,700 people, while Russia has only 6,029, or one to every 21,500 people.
Japan’s purchases from the United States amount to about $21,000,000 annually; Russia’s to only $17,000,000. It seems rather strange that in education, in such an important branch of government as the postal service, and in merchandise, Russia, a nation that has been in direct contact with the civilization of the world for 200 years, should be so far behind Japan, whose intercourse with civilized nations dates no farther back than 1854. Japan has made three times the progress that Russia has in the last fifty years.