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182 America’s Opportunity in Russia
IV
But, in the fourth place, the business and political leaders of the
United States are actually conferring and planning to do some of
these very things for Russia, and even more. Our army men are very
likely to be sent to organize her military forces and advise their
leaders concerning strategy. Our experts in coal and oil are likely
to go over to show them how to extract these rich prizes from the
ground. Our financiers are going over to assist in solving Russia’s
financial difficulties, and to conserve her assets for the payment of her
debts to us and the other allied nations. There is some talk of an
industrial commission in the United States "for the purpose of pur-
chasing raw materials in Russia and shipping them to America, so as
to prevent them from going to Germany," and then sending back to
Russia our manufactured articles to pay for them.
Is it possible that politics and statesmanship and commerce and
finance shall put to shame the interest and the effort of the Church
of Jesus Christ to send the Gospel to these multitudes of the unevan-
gelized? Shall we furnish today a fresh illustration of the saying
that "children of this generation are wiser than the children of
light"? Shall the world be prompt and enterprising enough to seize
upon this investment for its benefit, and shall we Christians allow
the opportunity to be lost for God and for His Son? Do we realize
that there are 182,000,000 people in Russia, and that there are not
as many evangelical workers there as in this city alone?
Local conditions in Russia afford an unprecedented opening for the
preaching of the Gospel. We hear a good deal about the Russian soviet,
an organization we are told, that goes down deep into Russian life
and which literally means a village council. To a dweller in New
England, as I have been, it sounds like the old-fashioned New Eng-
land town-meeting. It savors of the democratic idea of popular dis-
cussion and majority rule.
The government of Russia at this time is spoken of merely as a
central clearing-house for the thousands of these Soviets all over the
country. They are atheistic in tendency if not in fact, but that only
emphasizes the need and accentuates the oportunity. Their atheism
is explained by what they suffered at the hands of the Russian
church. "The church belonged to the Czar," they said, "it was the
Czar’s instrument. We do not trust the Czar, and so we do not trust
the Czar’s church." But the propaganda of the Gospel which we
propose is far enough removed from any likeness to the Russian
Church. It is democratic in its very essence, democratic in its every
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