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THE BALTIC PROBLEM
93
of her political and social structure. The systematic
discarding of generals bearing German names during the war
was a grave mistake, for these men were a most reliable,
loyal, and efficient element in the Russian Army. In
discarding men of their own nationality, but of Teutonic
origin, holding positions in the army, civil administration,
and industrial establishments, Russia did herself indeed a
terrible wrong. These men simply could not be replaced.
Their absence was one of the reasons of the quick degeneracy
of the Revolution into rapine and anarchy.
Baltic particularism—namely, the tendency to preserve
home rule which Russian bureaucracy has tried to stamp out,
and which cannot be considered as unloyal—is shared by
all the three racial elements, and is not based upon German
sympathies, but rather on the belief that the Russian
bureaucratic State-rule was not conducive to the welfare of
the people. Baltic literature of the last fifty years has
shown an astonishing foresight in prophesying that the
rotten state of Russia economically and politically would
bring her to a speedy downfall. No wonder, therefore, that
Baltic particularism tended to avoid Russian administrative
methods, and thought its salvation lay in local
self-government. But this has not impugned Baltic loyalty.
It is, therefore, the more regrettable that during the
present war people of the Baltic stock of Teutonic descent
have been exiled to Siberia and other distant parts of
Russia, robbed of their property, ruined, and treated no
better than enemies. After the disaster of Riga, when the
army retreated through Livonia, the local population were
subjected to maltreatment and murder, while their lands
were devastated. The Russian soldiery, finding in the homes
of the Lettish farmers and freeholders, pianos, pictures on
the walls, and modern comforts of cultural life, denounced
them as " bourgeois," and treated them to the same
persecution that had been meted out to the landed gentry.
But these lamentable events now, happily, belong to the
past, and will not be repeated in the future. Russia and
the Allies propose to remodel the political relations of the
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