body of Jesus.

We must bear in mind that the Russian Church, like the Greek and Roman Churches, believes in the doctrine of transsubstantiation.

Now, since the relics of the Russian saints examined by the Bolsheviki proved to be a deception, all the corporals of all Russian churches, including even those originally brought from Greece, may be placed in the same category. This is a terrible blow to the Russian Church and religion.

Russia adopted Christianity from Byzantium in 988, when the Greek clergy brought to Russia the first corporals containing particles of relics of Greek saints. Later on there appeared Russian saints whose holy relics were used for the corporals of churches all over Russia.

Historians of the Russian revolution will not fail to record the Bolsheviki's blasphemous mockery of icons, the persecution and even execution of some priests and Bishops, and the destruction of many churches and some cathedrals. The Bolsheviki are trying their best to ignore the church authorities. Hence they declare that no church marriage will be

held valid unless it is preceded by a civil license. All births and deaths must be recorded at local civil offices, whereas previous to the revolution all such records were held by the clergy exclusively. No church holidays are now held obligatory on any laborers. By a single stroke of the pen Lenin has moved the Russian calendar thirteen days ahead, that is, he has ordered the adoption of the Western calendar in Russia.

The religious revolution in Russia is as radical as the political and social one. If it is true, as many believe, that the people get their morals from their religion, then it is a pertinent and grave question: Where and how will the Russian people now learn moral principles? The writer of these lines knows some Russian sectarians, living in this country, who did not and do not recognize the Russian Church, and who profess and practice the highest moral principles. They call themselves Spiritual Christians." When order and peace are established in Russia they will return to their motherland and teach their old friends their new belief.

IT

T is one of the peculiarities of the Eastern Orthodox Church to consider the remains of the bodies of departed holy men as sacred. Our oldest chronicler, when speaking of the baptizing of Russia under Prince Vladimir, speaks of the many sacred remains brought to Kiev by the Greek hierarchs from Constantinople. Later on, when the Christian order developed in Russia, remains of local Russian saints came to be accepted also. These remains were kept hidden in underground vaults, or open in the churches, but the reverence of the believers was the same in both

and strengthened morally by the grace. of God invisibly descending on them.

Veneration of the remains of holy men in the Russian Church, however, is not only a peculiarity of the life of the nation; it is also an important ritualistic feature of the liturgic practices. Particles of the remains are sewn in the cloths covering the altars, over

*Dr. Turkevich, whose article is in part a reply to that of Mr. Popoff, was graduated from the Theological Academy of Kiev and came to the United States about twelve years ago to be rector of the Russian Theological Seminary in Minneapolis. When the seminary was transferred to Bergenfield, N. J., he came East and remained with it some years. When the former dean of St. Nicholas Cathedral recently went to Russia Dr. Turkevich became Archpriest there by virtue of seniority. He is a frequent contributor to the Constructive Quarterly, magazine.-EDITOR.

a religious

which is performed the Holy Eucharist. According to the Canon of the Russian Orthodox Church, such an altar coverng, otherwise the holy antimins, is irregular without the particles mentioned above, so that the liturgic service cannot be performed on it.

Russians in America hear vague rumors of what is going on in the regions of the religious life of their country. To speak in a positive way here of anything that is going on there would be taking too much on ourselves; yet we did have indistinct tidings about the remains of many Russian saints having been inspected by some parties, or even destroyed. It is still too early to draw any definite conclusion on the subject from the very scant information at hand.

The true state of things we can learn only later on, when the regular mail service between the two countries is actually re-established. In the meanwhile, it may be a matter of interest to know the actual attitude of the Russian Church in general and of its ritual in particular toward the question under discussion.

Eugene Golubinsky, the famous historian, wrote with much justice: "There are people among us whose zeal exceeds their understanding, and who claim that the remains of the deceased holy men are always and everywhere undecayed, that is, that they are bodies which had suffered no destruction and no change." But the universal church consciousness from the remotest antiquity never knew of any such claim. In the catacombs and the other churches of the three first centuries divine services were held over the tombs of martyrs, but it was not because the bodies remained undecayed, but simply as a visible sign of the continuity of the faith held by the martyrs, whose death bore witness to that faith.

The custom thus acquired by the Church was not given up when Christianity triumphed over heathendom. When persecutions became few and the places of Christian worship many, divine services were held not only over the graves of martyrs, but also over the particles of their bones and boc es,

piously carried to new altars. In time, divine services began to be performed over the graves and the particles of the remains of prelates, ascetics and holy recluses glorified in life and death by the efficacy of their intercession and service for their living brethren.

In the Eastern Church this custom took root in the eighth century, and in its essence it still remains unchanged; it is a sign of the communion of the living and the dead. The Seventh Ecumenical Council meant this when stating in its decree concerning holy images and holy relics, that all the sacred symbols are merely mediums of the transmission of the miracle working grace of God.

We believe that the saints of the Russian Church are still able to protect its children, though their remains in their coffins be disturbed, burned or polluted in any other way, in case all this is actually happening these days in our country.

The way the hierarchs of the Russian Church understand this question can be seen from what Antonios, Metropolitan of Petrograd, said when, in 1903, St. Seraphim of Sarovo was canonized: "Nothing is left of the elder Seraphim in the coffin except bones, the skeleton of the body. But as the remains of a man who pleased God, a holy man, they are holy remains, and are now taken up from under the earth, on the occasion of his solemn glorification, that they may be piously reverenced by all who travel here to obtain the intercession and prayer of the holy elder Seraphim." To suppose that the chief pastors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the present day understand the question of the remains of saints in a coarse or ignorant way would be to show a complete absence of any clear idea either of them or of the teaching concerning the holy relics which the whole Eastern Orthodox Church has in common.

Here is a noteworthy detail. At the time of the canonization of St. Seraphim quantities of hectographed leaflets were zealously spread all over Russia by a certain League for Fighting Orthodoxy." The leaflets insisted that the

opening of St. Seraphim's grave should not be allowed; but they failed to affect the Russian Nation. St. Seraphim became one of the most popular saints, beloved of all. The work of the secret league was fruitless. We are not by any means prepared to decide whether the "League for Fighting Orthodoxy," which operated in 1903, is in any way connected with the recent efforts to shake the people's faith in the holiness of the saints' remains and the antimins or alter cloths which so intimately depend on them-provided it is true that such efforts are being made. But we can positively maintain that to say any attempts of this kind had succeeded in

OTWITHSTANDING peace conferences and treaties of peace, the world war has still its innings, both peace and war in their strange mixup being inevitably subject to geographical conditions, as again clearly shown by the happenings in the region of the Caucasus. That lofty mountain range, a bridge towering in the clouds between Europe and Asia, more strongly fortified by nature than the watergate of Bosporus and Dardanelles, played its own important part in the struggle of races and civilizations from which the present international situation emerged. As it turned to the south and southwest the tides of devastation in the wake of conquerors of Asiatic blood, who came from the east across the plains and hills of ancient Media, so it proved an obstacle to the Russian Czars when, following their policy of expansion inaugurated by Peter the Great, they sent their hosts from the north, pushing down to the shores of the Caspian and Black Sea.

But the obstacle was surmounted. Swarming on, the yellow-haired warriors crossed the divide and subjugated the peoples of Transcaucasia, the Georgians, Mingrelians, and other dwellers in the valleys and on the plateaus of the land of perpetual battle and romance elo

WAR

quently sung by Lermontov, with due emphasis on their mediaeval virtues: Oh, wild the tribes that dwell in those defiles;

Freedom their God and strife their only law!

It took the Russians more than three centuries to conquer Transcaucasia here. When the rule of the Czars was at last established, with its local centre at Tiflis, there was an end of freedom. Things changed in the once independent principalities, khanates and vassal States of Turkey and Persia that composed the Russian administrative district of Kavkaz, north and south of the Caucasus proper-between the Black Sea and the Caspian, from near the mouth of the Don to below Batum and from the mouth of the Kuma to below Lenkoran and the mouth of the Aras. In this region Genoese traders used to exchange the dried and salted product of their privileged fisheries in the Sea of Marmora for Georgian and Circassian virgins, whom they sold with great profit and strictly commercial impartiality to the unspeakable Turk or Christian customers of proved discretion. Where Skobeleff, as late as 1879, had to ferry his army in flat-bottomed barges, the ports of Poti and especially Batum, not to mention

Baku on the east coast, became the emporia of an immense traffic by steamer and rail. Meanwhile, the Caucasus was transformed into a base for military operations to back the pacific penetration, which expanded the sphere of Russian influence southward and eastward, an oil-stain spreading over the map of Asia.

OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

After the Turkish revolution of 1908, the dissemination of Pan-Turanian and Pan-Islamic sentiments in the Caucasus by agents of the Committee of Union and Progress made the high army command at St. Petersburg adhere more rigidly than ever to the cautious custom of employing its Georgian, Armenian and other Caucasian troops on the northwestern frontier and its mujik conscripts on the southeastern frontier of Russia.

At the outbreak of the world war the Caucasian garrisons-first of all that of Kars-were hastily reinforced with regiments drawn from the interior to parry the blow struck by Enver Pasha at Sarikamich, terminus of the railroad from Tiflis to the border of Turkish Armenia, with three army corps, the 9th (Erzerum), 10th (Erzinjan) and 11th (Van), supported by a division of the 1st (dispatched from Constantinople) and a division of the 13th (Bagdad). First came Enver's successes, followed by his defeat at the hands of General Yudenitch, who was in pursuit of the retreating Turks when the Grand Duke Nicholas was placed at the head of the Russian forces in Transcaucasia; the Grand Duke was further strengthened with seevral divisions transferred from General Ivanov's army, which had broken General Mackensen's offensive on the western front.

The moment war had been declared, Nicolai Nicolaievich, co-author with General Joffre of a plan for Russian participation in the task of foiling German designs, had been appointed Russian Generalissimo by his cousin the Czar. A typical soldier, compared by his admirers to the bogatyr, or hero of Russian legendary lore, it was more his political creed, unpalatable to the Imperial Court, than his reverses in the field which led in September, 1915, to his removal from

the supreme command and his exile to the Caucasus, customary place of banishment for military offenders, officers of ill-regulated habits, or men of rank suspected of too liberal views.

GRAND DUKE'S SUCCESS

True, the pill was sugar-coated by giving the discharged Commander in Chief the title of Viceroy, which, since the days of the Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich, had been in abeyance, save to provide a decent exit from St. Petersburg to Count Vorontzov Dashkov when Nicholas II. came to the throne; but that did not take the bitter taste away. Submitting, the new Viceroy bore up under his disgrace, and, throwing back the Turks, who were delivering a second attack to reach Kars as a stepping stone to Tiflis on the line of communication between Baku and Batum, he gave the enemy no rest. Sweeping on, General Prjevalsky seized Erzerum on Jan. 16, 1916, which made the Russians masters of the military road to Trebizond (taken on April 18) and the roads to Karput and Diarbekr.

While Enver Pasha's attack was developing, some Mohammedan tribes of the Caucasus, among them the Adshars of Georgian nationality, joined the Turks, and Tatar malcontents from Astrakhan and Kirghizistan traveled all the way around the Caspian Sea and through Kurdistan to fight the giaour in the ranks of their Osmanli co-religionists; but the Russian successes west of Lake Van and east of Lake Urmiah, where General Baratov was pushing on toward Hamadan and Kermanshah, prevented the spread of the insurrectionary movement by such bands.

Linking up with the British forces in Mesopotamia, picked sotnias of General Bicharakov's Cossacks took part in the skirmishing along the upper course of the Dyala after Sir Stanley Maude's capture of Bagdad, but, despite such exploits, the junction in greater number, near Kifry, was, doomed to remain without effect. The revolution of March, 1917, put a stop to Russian operations in Iran and the Asiatic pashalics of the Ottoman Empire.

With the Russian troops retiring from

the Turkish and Persian fronts the revolutionary Government at St. Petersburg left the Caucasus to its own devices and foreign intrigue, which became increasingly bold when the central administration broke down, the Grand Duke Nicholas having been succeeded by Yudenitch, and Yudenitch by Prjevarsky, and Prjevarsky by no one in particular. The ensuing confusion and the Brest-Litovsk agreement furnished Germany with an excellent opportunity to carry through in those regions her scheme for an alternative line of communication with the East to countervail the imminent failure of her Berlin-Bagdad railroad enterprise. Germany's efforts in that direction showed such a lack of consideration with respect to her Turkish ally that the Porte entered a vigorous protest against its interests being sacrificed by a compact which, among other bargains, recognized Russia's prescriptive rights to Baku, the centre of the world's oil industry, though on the other hand it stipulated the future independence of Georgia. But, says a Turkish proverb, by dint of playing one is sure to find the proper tune, and so, while the whole of Transcaucasia, Georgia included, proclaimed its independence, Talaat Pasha obtained the satisfaction of seeing Baku returned to Turkey; at least, Baku was returned in principle, though it had to be taken and was lost again and retaken, the powers of the Entente, whose agents were very active in Tiflis and Batum and around Krasnovodsk in the Caspian oil fields, bravely resisting the consummation of this deal.

CHAOS AFTER THE WAR

A Transcaucasian Government did not exist. All was chaos and internal strife. Georgian, Mingrelian, and Armenian bands seized with their habitual gusto for blood revenge and internecine feuds the military stores, guns, rifles, and ammunition abandoned by the regular army in Tiflis, Alexandropol and other towns of strategic consequence. Though less well armed, the Tatar clans of the neighboring territories improved the advantage of their geographical location to control for their own profit the routes of entrance into and exit from

the districts that were reverting to the ferocious barbarism reported sixteen centuries earlier by the missionaries of Constantine the Great.

It should be remembered that Russia in its widest sense counts far more Turkish-speaking inhabitants, most of them Tatars, than Turkey itself. It has been asserted that without them Muscovite civilization could never have attained its comparatively high level and preserved its characteristic originality; at any rate their influence is marked enough to account for the adage: Scratch the Russian and you will find the Tatar.

Those Tatars that remained more or less in the nomadic state were not always amenable to the progressive Muscovite rule introduced through contact with western modes of Government. Their slowly budding ideas of civic liberty, stimulated in the sixties by leaders like Gasprinsky, took oftener than not a violently socialistic form, which necessitated repressive measures, such as in 1906 culminated in the arrest of the instigators of quasi-seditious demonstrations in Kazan. The program of these agitators differed very little from that of the political party represented by the Cadets, with whom the Mohammedan faction in the First and Second Dumas identified itself. The Turkish revolution of 1908 found the Tatars, generally speaking, in full sympathy with the aims of the Committee of Union and Progress; the Russian revolution of 1907 grouped them together more closely than ever before for the realization of PanTuranian ideals. Pan-Islamism, too, entered into the projects for a future policy of self-assertion as developed in Mohammedan congresses held at Baku, Orenburg, Moscow, and Kazan, capital of the tribes whose predominance the Caucasian, Crimean, Kirghiz, and Astrakhan Tatars seem inclined to acknowledge.

DANGEROUS SITUATION

Hindering the communication by rail of the Transcaucasian Christians with Europe, the Tatars became a troublesome factor in an already complicated situation, still further involved by the traditional enmity between the Georgians