Madame Kollontai is the only woman who has ever been a member of the Russian Cabinet. She puts forth the argument that women have more conscience than men and therefore do not attempt to obtain offices which they are not fitted for by previous training, and that this is the reason woman’s influence is so slight in Russia to-day. But her history refutes her theory. She herself was particularly fitted for the position of Minister of Welfare. Her record was splendid. She lost her post because she was a woman and allowed her love for her husband to interfere with her political judgment. Early in 1918, Madame Kollontai, who was the widow of a Tsarist officer, married Fedore Dubenko, the picturesque leader of the turbulent Kronstadt sailors. Dubenko is a handsome, daring young man, some years her junior. Shortly after the wedding Dubenko was arrested. He had entrusted certain ships under his command to officers of the old régime who had pretended loyalty to the Soviets, but who had turned the ships over to the Germans without a struggle. Certainly Dubenko had no intention of betraying the revolution, he was merely trying to make use of skilled officers, of whom there was a pressing dearth. Nevertheless, he was held responsible. While he was in prison awaiting trial, Kollontai made rather violent and conspicuous protests both publicly and privately. As a result she was removed from office. Revolutionists have no tolerance for romance among their leaders during critical moments; they place the revolution far above personal relationship. From the beginning they looked with disapproving eyes upon Kollontai’s infatuation for Dubenko. When Dubenko was released, Kollontai went abroad and spent some months in Sweden. On her return she threw herself into a new work--that of educating her own sex to take an active part in politics. Rightly speaking, there never was a woman’s movement in Russia until after the revolution. Equal suffrage came first and political education afterwards. This condition appears particularly curious when one recalls that, during some years before the revolution, even more women than men were sent to Siberia for plots against the Tsar’s government. Yet when the revolution came women sank mysteriously into the background. Russians explain this by various theories. One was that Russian women possess the fervor necessary to martyrs, but little of the balance needed for practical reconstructive work. Personally, I think it is entirely a matter of experience and education, for it is evident that women enter politics everywhere with great hesitancy. Even in America where equal suffrage has been a fact in some states for many years, we have only one or two women to point to as having attained political prominence.