A small book has lately been published in Russia which perhaps throws more light on the subject of the Russian Administration and the causes of the troubles through which Russia is at present going than any other work which has appeared during the last five years in Russia or elsewhere. This book is a volume of Memoirs by Prince Ourousov. Prince Ourousov took his degree in the Moscow University in 1885, and after being employed in the Zemstvo administration in the government of Kalouga he was appointed Vice-Governor of the province of Tambov in 1902; towards the end of May 1903, he suddenly, and, as far as he was concerned, unexpectedly, received a telegram from the Ministry of Home Affairs appointing him Governor of Bessarabia. The volume which has now appeared from his pen consists of a record of his administrative rule in Bessarabia, which lasted from 1903-4. It is a portion of a larger work covering a period from 1872-1906, the publication of which Prince Ourousov has put off to a later date. [8] Since this was written a translation of Prince Ourousov’s book has been published in English by Messrs. Harper & Bros. Prince Ourousov writes in the preface that he has been led to publish this section of his Memoirs immediately by the rapid development of political life in Russia; he considers that nothing which can throw any light on the conditions of administrative life, the reform and transformation of which are the main object and task of the thinking population of Russia at this moment, should be concealed, and in publishing these recollections it is his object to give an accurate account, derived from first-hand knowledge, of those administrative proceedings with regard to which Prince Ourousov states there prevails a completely wrong impression, side by side with wild exaggerations. The interest and importance of the book are immense, and it is earnestly to be hoped that the book will speedily be translated into English, because it provides the exact kind of knowledge for which Englishmen are continually asking in regard to Russia. There are two questions which Englishmen who are interested in Russian political life are continually asking: first, “What is it all about?” and, secondly, “Why are the Jews killed in Russia?” In connection with the first question I have heard Englishmen, after their first journey to Russia, ask questions such as these: “What do the Liberals want? Do they know themselves?” On the other hand, we have been flooded with books of all kinds by Englishmen, by Russians, and by Germans, who have obscured the Jewish and indeed every other question in their zeal to prove that the Central Government in Russia has for the last five years combined the qualities which a Babu journalist in India once attributed to Lord Cromer: “The oiliness of a Chadband and the malignity of a fiend.”