“I don’t think the land question can be settled by any one project,” he answered, “because the conditions are so different in various parts of Russia. The Cadets talk of local committees and of the necessity of expropriation in principle. I think what the peasants want is capital, not land. When the agitation began my peasants came to me and asked for five thousand dessiatines. I offered them one thousand, and then they found that five hundred was all they could manage to cultivate. I think, of course, that all the land which is rented should be expropriated, and I think the folly of the Government in ignoring the question of the land rented to the peasants was supreme. The Government thinks it can remedy the present evils by drastic means, but they leave the cause of the evils untouched, which is this: there is a mass of discontented people in Russia, and as long as they remain discontented the disorder will continue. There are some things which could be done at once to render the peasants less discontented. They can be given rights if they cannot be given land. They are now at the mercy of the local magistrate.” The net result of this man’s opinion was that it is a choice of evils, and the Cadets are the lesser evil. Yesterday I had a talk with a man who bitterly attacked the Cadets and all their ways. He was a member of the Duma and belongs to the Left. He spoke in this strain: “The Cadets insist on acting legally. It is sheer cowardice. In times of revolution the only effective action is illegal action. The Cadets have no right to call themselves the Party of the freedom of the people. They are nothing but Moderate Liberals.” “But what do you think they ought to have done?” I asked. “When the Government refuses to consider our Bills,” he answered, “except according to a process and after a space of time which they determine, we ought to pass them in defiance of the Ministry and let them dissolve us.”