The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian art, music, literature and poetry was to create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the souls of the people. Their ideal was to create life from life. Though profound melancholy seems to be the dominant note in Russian music and art, yet along with the dramatic gloom go also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet. This is explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his artistic expressions. Late Leo Tolstoy said to me on one occasion: "In our folksong and folk art is evidently yearning without end, without hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the fate in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much that in Russian life seems incomprehensible for the foreigners." Thus the Russian art and soul in their very foundations are already democratic, simple, direct and true to the ethnographic traits of the race. In the same way you will find the Russian home life, the peasant communities, the zemstvoe institutions, offsprings of an extremely democratic tendency, perhaps far more than any such institution of the West. Instead of the rich or noblemen absorbing the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune succeeding tot he property of the baron. An average Russian peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of his illiteracy than an average farmer of the New World. He has the culture of the ages in his traditions, religion and national folk-arts. Russia has more than a thousand municipal theaters, more than a hundred grand operas, more than a hundred colleges and universities or musical conservatories. Russia has a well-organized system of cooperative banks and stores and a marvelous artelsystem of the working professional classes which in its democratic principles surpasses by far the labor union systems of the West. Herr von Bruggen, the eminent German historian writes of the Russian tendency as follows: "Wherever the Russian finds a native population in a low state of civilization, he knows how to settle down with it without driving it out or crushing it; he is hailed by the natives as the bringer of order, as a civilizing power." I have always preached and continue to do so in the future, that Russia and the United States should join hands, know and love each other, the sooner the better. Russia needs the active spirit, the practical grasp of the things, which the people of the United States possess. Nothing will help and inspire an average Russian more than the sincere democratic hand of an American. A dose of American optimism and active spirit is the best toxin for free Russia. On the other hand, the American needs just as much Russian emotionalism, aesthetic culture and mystic romanticism, as he can give of his racial qualities.