His Excellency has handled the Persian question with a great deal of diplomatic skill and keeps the British government in a perpetual fidget, but the policy of Russia can never be mistaken. The czar proposes to control Asia, regardless of the opposition of Great Britian and all whom it may concern. Because of the stupendous folly of her own agents Russia lost her hold on China and all that she had gained during the last thirty years in her advance toward the East. All this will have to done over again, but the preparations have begun and the work is under way.
The condition of affairs here may be judged by the manner in which the mail is carried through the streets between the railway station and the post-office. There is a military guard on every train, always occupying the car next to the locomotive, and at every station when the train stops the soldiers are the first to alight and assume defensive positions. This is in addition to the local police, who are also in evidence in every direction. When a train comes into Tiflis the guard alights and takes a position around the mail and express car, where it remains until all the passengers have disembarked and gone their way. Then when the mail car is opened, the bags and express packages of value are placed in steel safes, which are lifted upon light wagons drawn by three horses. When the transfer is made the horses start on a dead run for the post-office, led by a drosky containing two heavily armed men and entirely surrounded by a squad of Cossacks, the famous Rough Riders, every one of them with a cocked rifle across the pommel of his saddle. These precautions are said to be necessary because on several occasions mail has been held up and destroyed and valuable express packages have been stolen by gangs of men representing the social revolutionary party.
The most satisfactory section of Tiflis is called by everybody "the Colony." It is a settlement of between four and five thousand Germans from Wurtemberg, who came to southern Russia early in the nineteenth century by invitation of Catherine the Great. She gave them lands, guaranteed them the free exercise of their religious beliefs, and exemption from military service forever. The latter pledge was violated during the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877, and since that time the Germans have been compelled to serve their five years in the army with all other
Russian subjects, although they take no part in politics and have no social relations with the Russians, but are very exclusive and tenacious in their adherence to the customs and habits of the fatherland.
There are fifty thousand Wurtembergers in the Caucasus and they are pretty well scattered, but always in colonies, this one at Tiflis being the largest. They left their native country because the government attempted to compel them to sing from a new hymn book which they did not consider orthodox, and rather than submit they abandoned the homes of their fathers and sought new ones in a far country where they could worship God in their own way.
Catherine II was a great colonizer, and they have been valuable colonists. They are the best mechanics and the best farmers in the country. They have minded their own business, maintained their own schools, built Lutheran churches, accumulated property, sung the dear old hymns, increased in numbers, and flourished in a phlegmatic sort of way.
The members of "the Colony," as it is always called, have never attempted to proselyte the Russians or other neighbours, but are fanatical in their Protestantism, which prevents them from marrying or even mixing with believers in other faiths. They have a wholesome Protestant contempt for Mohammedans and also for the Armenians. They regard the former as worse than heathens and the latter as treacherous, deceitful, and insincere in their professions of the Christian creed. They speak nothing but German among themselves, although they are compelled to use Russian in their business transactions. " The Colony " was originally a distinct town, but when the railway was built into Tiflis the station was located on the farther edge of the settlement, and since that time the gap has been filled and the Germans have become surrounded with Russians, Persians, Armenians, Tartars, and representatives of the numerous other races which form the population here. But they have maintained their exclusiveness just the same. They have their own beer gardens and places of entertainment, as well as their own church and schools, and they confine their trade to their own race so far as possible.