This tremendous indictment seems to be fully justified by past experience, and it is to be feared that many of the worst charges can be still maintained. Recent writers tell new stories that fall little short of the old. Russia is still absolutely given over to the police. It is the most police-ridden country in the world; not even in France in the worst days of the Monarchy were the people so much in the hands of the police. From first to last the Russian citizen is deemed incapable of looking after himself. Not only is he forbidden to take an active part in the management of public affairs, but in the most private matters he must submit to the interference of the police. "The Russian police has a finger in every pie," wrote the acute observer quoted above.[15] "They meddle not only with criminals, not only with passports, but with hotels, boarding and lodging houses, theatres, balls, _soirees_, shops, boats, births, deaths, and marriages. The police take a Russian from his cradle and never lose sight of him till he is snugly deposited in a parti-coloured coffin in the great cemetery of Wassily Ostrow. Surely to be an orphan must be a less terrible bereavement in Russia than in any other country; for the police are father and mother to everybody--uncles, aunts, and cousins too." [Illustration: TYPES OF RUSSIAN POLICE. OFFICER. MOUNTED SERGEANT. FOOT SERGEANT. ] Nothing can be done in Russia without police permission. A person cannot build a bathroom in his house without leave. A physician cannot practise without it; he must have leave even to refuse to attend to night calls; he cannot prescribe anæsthetics, narcotics, or poisons without special permission; and no chemist would make up a prescription containing any of these drugs unless the doctor's name were on his special list. No new journal can be established without permission, no printing office, no bookshop, no photograph gallery; special police leave is needed to sell newspapers in the streets; a reader at one of the public libraries who wishes to consult standard works on social subjects must be armed with a permit; no concert for charitable purposes can be organised without leave from the police, and the proceeds must be handed over to them to be passed on to the recipients or embezzled on the way. All freedom of movement within the empire is checked by the police. A native Russian must have leave if he wishes to go fifteen miles from home. A foreign traveller is forbidden to enter the country without leave, he must have leave if he wishes to remain more than six months, and must ask for leave to go away again; every change of residence must be notified to the police. The passport system, although at times unevenly and unequally administered, is a potent weapon in the hands of the police, by means of which they can control the movements of everyone within the empire.