As to the current of opinion outside the Duma. The attitude of the Government, that the Duma is merely a revolutionary meeting from which nothing serious can be expected, is reflected in Conservative circles with this difference: that, while holding this opinion, they blame the Government for its action. Analogies with past history may be misleading, but, however different the revolutionary element here may be from that which made the French Revolution, the Conservative element here is startlingly like the Conservative element in France in 1789. Professor Aulard writes as follows about Louis XVI.: “Ce n’était pas un esprit supérieur. Les royalistes le disaient bête, parce qu’ils le voyaient physiquement épais ... dormeur, mangeur, ... mais il ne manquait pas d’intelligence, et sa proclamation aux Français, qui est bien son œuvre personnelle, offre une critique de la Constitution de 1791 beaucoup plus fine que celle que, de nos jours, Taine en a écrite. Voici en quoi son intelligence fut inférieure à sa tâche: c’est qu’il ne comprit pas qu’avec le système nouveau et le droit populaire, il pouvait être un roi tout aussi puissant, tout aussi glorieux, tout aussi roi, qu’avec le système ancien et le droit divin.” This last sentence explains the whole attitude of the Conservatives here. They do not understand that if you have constitutional institutions you must have a constitutional Government. A man who calls himself a Monarchical Liberal said to me the other day that the Duma did not represent the majority of Russians, who were moderate, and that the elections were to blame because the Government had not taken the necessary steps to influence them in the right direction, as was always done in other countries, including England. This view, which is largely shared here, revealed to me the truth of what some one else said to me not long ago: that Russians of the upper classes here are often more cultivated than the upper classes of other countries; but they have no more idea of the nature of constitutional government than the Turks. On the other hand you have the revolutionaries outside the Duma, who have no real notion of constitutional government either, attacking the Cadets with unbridled violence every day, because they say that they are the only bulwark against revolution. Therefore between these two dismal extremes we have only the Cadets; capable and well organised it is true; the question is, How long can they remain masters of such a situation? _June 2nd._ To-night I had a long talk with M. Aladin, the Radical deputy. He gives me a totally different impression from the usual Russian “Intelligent.” He has been Anglicised. I don’t mean to say this has made him superior to his countrymen, but it has made him different. He complained of the want of practical energy among the Russians. They had not got, he said, enough to satisfy an English child.