Whatever gets the upper hand in Russia, be it a convention, a board of Socialists, or a committee of peasants, I am convinced of one thing, that the members of this Government will never dress for dinner when they feel disinclined or go to bed before they wish to do so.” “But,” said the philosopher, “if you possess personal liberty why bother about the rest? After all, free political institutions presuppose a certain amount of order and discipline. If you are without this order and discipline, and if you do not wish for the drawbacks of order and discipline, why do you make a fuss to get what can only exist by order and discipline?” “If we had been properly governed,” said the ex-official, “nobody would have thought about it.” “The two things are not incompatible,” said the man who belonged to no Party. “You can have free political institutions sufficiently ordered and disciplined, and you can also have personal liberty. If these two things have never been combined before, we will be the first people to combine them.” ST. PETERSBURG, _June 19th_. On Sunday last I went by train to a place called Terrioki, in Finland, where a meeting was to be held by the Labour Party of the Duma. The train was crowded with people who looked more like holiday-makers than political supporters of the Extreme Left—so crowded that one had to stand up on the platform outside the carriage throughout the journey. It is of no consequence in Russia how many people there are in a train or what they do. In England there is an impressive warning in the railway carriages about being fined a sum not exceeding forty shillings. In Russia there is also a quantity of printed rules. The difference is this—in England, if you infringed the rules, something would be sure to happen. In Russia nobody pays the slightest attention to any rule and nothing happens. You are not fined a sum not exceeding forty shillings; on the other hand, a young man not long ago, owing to the habit he had acquired—a habit universally practised by passengers on the line—of jumping out of the train long before it had reached the station, slipped on the step, and was nearly killed. This is a small instance of what people mean when they allude to the personal liberty prevalent in Russia. It is also an explanation of the existence of the quantity of printed regulations you see in Russia. The authorities print a hundred rules in the hope that one of them may meet with attention. None of them commands attention. I will give another small instance. If a stranger to Europe came to Europe and to England and tried to get into the House of Commons without a ticket and without being acquainted with a member, he would find it, I think, impossible to obtain admittance. If he went to Russia he could, if he said nothing at all, walk into the Duma without the slightest difficulty. The whole secret of avoiding bothers in Russia