There are two other questions, he continued, which up to the present have been scarcely mentioned, nor is there much hope that the Government will have the courage to face them unaided. One is that of the relations among the different nations of which the Russian Empire is composed, the other is the Agrarian question. This last question is not a constitutional or a legislative question. The power of the autocrat, while it existed, could alone have solved it. The autocratic power exists no longer now in fact, although its place has not yet been taken by a definite new _régime_. He said that among the mass of conflicting conjectures and rumours with regard to the future, two important things were clear: (1) that the Government was determined to retain in its hands the power to give a Constitution; (2) that it was determined to grant a Constitution and to proceed to the elections. He said it was impossible to say more at the present; everything depended on the nature of the future Assembly, and whether it would be possible for the Moderate elements to exercise any preponderating influence. Up to now they had been widely divergent and discordant among themselves. If their efforts to gain a solid majority were successful, the greatest danger would be over; if not, the Revolution was in its infancy, for if the Moderates were to fail, the two extreme parties would be left face to face, as different from one another as possible, yet both at one for different reasons in their uncompromising opposition to all temperate and constitutional reform. He said he made no allusion to the various risings and repressions, because these events exercised, in reality, only an indirect influence on the progress of the ideas he had mentioned, sometimes by facilitating their spread, and sometimes by impeding it. It had neither produced nor stopped them. There were two parallel and different currents of events now in progress in Russia. One forced itself on the attention, the other was exceedingly difficult to trace. For that reason it was futile to discuss exclusively the progress of revolutionary feeling and the ultimate success of repressive measures. It is interesting to look back on this conversation now in December, 1906, since it shows the illusions which Russian Liberals cherished a year ago. ST. PETERSBURG, _February 11th_. I have put into the form of a dialogue some of the many conflicting views I have lately heard expressed with regard to Count Witte. “We have no right,” said the Moderate Liberal, “to doubt the good faith of the Government at the present moment as regards the promise of the Constitution and the elections for the Duma. Until the Government proves to us that it does not intend to keep its word we are bound to believe it.” “It has never kept its word in the past,” said the student, “and everything which it is doing at present tends to show that it has no intention of doing so now.”