Durnovo, be expected to adopt any other methods than those which are ingrained in him? It is as if the Liberals persuaded Mr. Chamberlain to speak at a public meeting and then expressed surprise at finding that he was in favour of Tariff Reform. When some of the revolutionaries were summarily executed after the recent troubles in Moscow, a sentence of Tacitus came back to me which is peculiarly applicable to the old Russian bureaucratic methods: “Interfectis Varrone consule designate et Petronio Turpiliano consulari ... inauditi atque indefensi tamquam innocentes perierunt” (Varro and Turpilianus were executed without trial and defence, so that they might just as well have been innocent). The whole system of arresting doctors and professors, prohibiting newspapers and plays, censoring books and songs, is now, whatever may have been its effect in the past, childishly futile. Moreover, even this is blunderingly done. The harmless newspapers are suppressed and more violent ones appear. But the point is the futility of it all; as soon as a serious newspaper is stopped it reappears on the next day under another name. Each repressed satirical newspaper (and these journals are often exceedingly scurrilous) finds a successor. It is not as if the revolutionaries were the result of the newspapers; it is the newspapers which are the reflection of the revolutionaries; and until you can repress every revolutionary the spirit which finds its vent in these organs will exist. To repress the Liberal spirit altogether it will be necessary to suppress nearly all the thinking population of Russia. The only hope is that all this is, after all, only temporary, and that the meeting of the Duma will put an end to this riot of lawlessness and inefficiency. One competent man like Count Witte is not enough to deal with things which are happening all over the country in so large a place as Russia, and he is bound to trust himself to minor authorities—and these in many cases prove themselves unfit for their task. “Why are they chosen?” it may be asked. The answer is: “Who else is there to choose until the whole pack of cards is thoroughly reshuffled or rather destroyed, and a new pack, men chosen by the Duma, is adopted?” “But,” it is objected, “however much you reshuffle the cards, the pack will be the same.” This is true; but one radical change would make all the difference in the world, and that would be the introduction of the system of responsibility. Whenever there has been in a Russian town a governor who had declared his firm intention of holding his subordinates responsible for their acts, and has put such a declaration into practice, things have always gone well. There was for years a chief of the police at Moscow, who was just such a man. The trouble is now, that however good a subordinate official may be, there is no guarantee that he may not be removed at any minute owing to the passing whim of those who are above.