As a result of over two years’ temperance, violent crime has practically disappeared from whole countrysides, and when occasionally some brutality has occurred, the police have managed to bring to book not only the direct offender, but also the person who was secretly brewing the liquor. The spirit of peace has come into the industrial or mining village on the Sunday and Saint’s Day, where formerly there were often scenes of outrageous public hooliganism on the part of whole populations. Money has increased in the pockets of the poor. There is a higher standard of living; butter is being spread on the black bread. Peasant families are enjoying the eggs which formerly they would have sold for the money to buy drink. One of the reasons given for the shortage of food supplies in the great towns is that owing to the fact that the peasants find nothing on which to spend their money they will not sell their produce. Formerly they could buy vodka. Infant mortality is already very much on the decrease. On the whole, children seem better cared for, though Russian peasants are always inclined to be rather careless of these gifts of God. There is an outbreak of “fashions” in the village, and if you ask your cook or serving-maid she will tell you how cottons are being cut this year, though the details seem to have little reference to _modes de Paris_. There is a popular joke that the peasant women make a mistake in the word they employ for fine dresses. “Just look at the _snariadi_ (shells) I am wearing,” when they mean to use the word nariadi, a townspeople’s word for Sunday best. There would also be much new reading in the village but for the fact that for the peasant there is as yet a dearth of printed matter. Children are sent to cry out to passing trains for newspapers, and one finds the wisps of old papers in one’s carriage and throws them on to the wind. They are eagerly picked up. It is noticeable that the people are more active, less sluggish, particularly in the towns. There is an unwonted amount of energy in play. The suppression of vodka is good, but it would be absurd to say that the energies unleashed are entirely on the side of good. The old Adam can express itself in many ways. The wrong impulse merely prevented is not excised, it breaks out in another place. There is more gambling, more unrestrained sexual sin. I suppose no Tsar’s _ukase_ could clean up the Nevsky Prospect or Tverskaya, or stop love affairs with other men’s wives. But even if it could the sinful impulse would break out somewhere else with perhaps greater vigour.