No doubt Gorky makes an appeal in these words; and if the average Russian were asked what were the foundations of Anglo-Russian friendship apart from the needs of the war, he would answer, Commercial exploitation. Trade, it is true, is put jealously forward as something to be captured after the war; but it seems a pity that Russians should not realise the depth, the sincerity of our interest in their characteristic religion, literature, and life. Whatever political tendency our interest may help, it is nevertheless true that England obtains from Russia spiritual help; and a great deal of that which Gorky condemns in his own nation is coming to our help to redeem us from commercialism and materialism. It is something of a paradox that the bright spirits of Russia should hate the melancholy vistas of Tambof and Kaluga and that the bright spirits of England should hate the gloom of Newcastle and Leeds, that one should look with love from England to the wandering pilgrims of Tambof and the other should sigh for the clamour of wheels where “man at least is master.” But paradox is tolerable where misunderstanding is not. For paradoxes abound in truth, and truth is made up of such paradoxes. Later on in his essay Gorky remarks that stormy and revolutionary eras have produced great men, and his first example is Shakespeare, who flourished “in the stormy time of Queen Elizabeth.” But rather, they were “spacious days”; and great men, great thoughts are almost always born in spacious days, halcyon days, when the dove broods on waters. Strength is with calmness, not with noise and quarrellings and revolutions. The critics are probably right when they say, “Return to Art.” Art is creative, whereas argument is generally destructive. And Maxim Gorky evidently wishes to create. Maxim Gorky may be called the leader of the _porazhentsi_, the people who believe in defeat. He has lately added to “Two Souls” and “A Letter to the Reader”--the “Letters of William Simpleton, a Knowing Stranger.”[5] But it is what we call “half-baked.” Gorky has read an enormous number of books since he tucked his blouse inside and became respectable, but it is difficult to see where he, or the reader, has profited. He does not know where he is. [5] Published in _Lietopis_ anonymously but generally ascribed to Gorky. IX RUSSIA IN 1916 I WAS in Russia at the beginning of the war and during the first months of conflict, and I witnessed the superb enthusiasm with which she rose to fight. Again I was in Russia last year, when, owing to the general shortage of shells west and east, Germany was able to turn her superiority to account by retaking Galicia and ravaging Poland, and I saw the humiliation almost amounting to despair of Russia then. And therefore returning once more to Russia in June, 1916, I could form a fairly just idea of the spirit of Russia to-day.