Last night the second reading of the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne was passed by the Duma. What will be the attitude of the Government with regard to the demands which have been formulated? As far as I have been able to gauge it, the attitude of the supporters of the Government and of the more Conservative element in the Council of Empire is this: they say the demands of the Duma are impossible; that the Duma is not a representative Duma; that no notice must be paid to its extravagant and foolish talk; that it must be allowed to talk on, and that Russia will then see that its demands are preposterous. This I believe to be the attitude of the Government. In support of its contention that the Duma is not representative, it alleges that Count Witte is to blame in having insisted on suffrage by three degrees. Had there been universal suffrage, they add, the Duma would have been more Conservative. The day before yesterday I attended the sitting of the Council of Empire, and during the interval I had some conversation with some of the members, and these were the kind of things I heard. Then I went to the Duma and I talked to the peasants. I asked one of them if he thought it was true that the Duma was not representative and whether the opinions it expressed were a faithful reflection of the opinion of the country. He said that the opinion in the country was far stronger than anything which had been expressed in the Duma. I believe that he was perfectly right. One can only judge by one’s personal experience, and wherever I have been during the last month I have found the feeling among the people dangerously tense and inexpressibly vehement. I said to this peasant, who came from the Government of Archangel: “Do they expect much of the Duma in your part of the country?” “They expect nothing at all,” he answered, “because the Government will never give the Duma what it wants, and we shall have to disperse.” “And then?” I asked. “Then we shall take what we want,” he said very calmly. “There has always been a wall of bureaucracy between us and the Emperor,” he continued, “and that wall is still there.” Talking to other members I found that they were just as little illusioned with regard to the attitude of the Government as the peasant from Archangel. One of them said to me: “Yes; it means there will be a conflict.” Another said: “There is no connecting link between us and the Emperor. We must have a responsible Ministry, and it is on that point that the struggle will be centred.” Another peasant said to me: “We are not opposed to having two Houses; but we are opposed to the Council of Empire as it now stands, because half of it consists of the same Bureaucrats who have been the cause of all our trouble.”