Our journey was full of thrills, but fortunately without adventure. We only just escaped, however. We wanted to leave the train and go down the river by boat from Stretensk; but as our passports said nothing about this route, the local Soviet would not allow us to go. We watched the others depart with envy and regret. That boat was held up by brigands, and the passengers robbed of all they possessed. At other times it is a journey I can recommend--especially in May. Once more the hills were purple with rhododendron, and the woods were deep with a profusion of wild flowers, all the prettier for being unknown. At last one evening our train ran down into Vladivostok, and we saw again the sea, and the _Suffolk_ flying the English flag. [SN: RELEASE] I have tried in these papers to avoid as much as possible questions of principle, and without malice or favour to relate what my experiences were. To some I may appear like those Catholic historians, who think that they have demolished the Reformation when they have proved the land-hunger of the great Protestant nobles, or like the Protestants, who imagine that they have demonstrated the absurdity of Catholicism when they have made out a list of the crimes of the Borgias. What I have said has scarcely anything to do with first principles. The Revolution will fail, as all Revolutions fail, in that it will be followed by a violent reaction apparently sweeping away every trace of its existence. The Revolution will succeed, as all Revolutions succeed, in that it has planted an idea in men’s minds, where it is inviolable, and in due time it will ripen and bring forth fruit an hundredfold. I should be sorry if it should be thought that I have done an injustice to Russia. There is no country so difficult for an Englishman to understand. Nothing is certain about it except its surprises. The Russians are as muddle-headed and stupid as the Englishman of a _Daily Mail_ nightmare, and as quick in perception and polished as a Frenchman, as fond of tea and talk as an Oriental, as open-minded, acute, and subtle as an Athenian, as lazy as a Spaniard, as passionate as an Italian, as cold at heart and calculating as an Irishman, honest, simple, and kindly as the German of the good old fairy tales, yet, in their wrath, as brutal as the Tartars from whom they spring, and, in revenge, as cunning and implacable as a Jew, capable in one and the same person of superb devotion and repellent treachery, dreamers and idealists, yet with a terrible gift of clear vision, especially with regard to themselves, in the highest examples of the race the body all fire and the brain all light, the inheritors of a language the most flexible, persuasive, and harmonious ever moulded by the lips of man--how could I do justice to them? There is no need to fear for Russia. When, in the words of Shelley’s famous chorus, the world’s great age begins anew and the golden years return, Russia, made alive