I am told that some years ago a judge offered a Nihilist the alternative of being left to Lynch Law, upon which the prisoner fell on his knees and implored to be punished by the existing Russian laws. All the Russians who deserve that name, who are devoted to their Church and their country, are particularly devoted to the present Emperor. They trust, they love him; they appreciate his noble and generous qualities, his extreme kindness, and his self-sacrifice. Anything done to injure him injures the whole of Russia. It needs, in truth, no effort on the part of the Panslavists to be devoted to Nicholas II. I have seen it stated that the peasants, disappointed with not receiving a new distribution of land at the last coronation, form a fertile ground for Nihilism. This is not the case. The Nihilists have long ago given up the hope of spreading their diabolical doctrines among the rural classes. If they got hold of a few peasants--thank God! very few indeed--those "Converts" of theirs have abandoned their plough and have been perverted in some public school only by a semblance of science. It is a fatal tendency, which is to be deplored and deprecated in all the public establishments in Russia as well as in foreign countries, that very young people, even children, are allowed to discuss and twaddle on politics, instead of studying their grammars and their geography! With that tendency {203} mistakes and false doctrines are unavoidable; any mischievous teacher may easily take hold of them and turn them into flexible tools. People are misinformed about the hardships of compulsory military service, which gives every year, even in time of peace, a contingent of about 830,000, which is much below the number required by the Army. Russia has never shown herself anxious to fight. In fact she has had fewer wars than her neighbours. From the Crimean War in 1855 till the year 1877 she fought only one serious war with a European Power. In the course of this time France had two--in 1859 with Austria, in 1870 with Germany; Prussia two--in 1866 with Austria, in 1870 with France; Austria two--in 1859 with France, in 1866 with Germany. So there is no actual ground for pitying the Russian soldiers more than any other. Of course, every soldier risks being killed. That is not, however, the speciality of my countrymen alone. All the great European countries, even Great Britain herself has been forced to sacrifice her ideals victim to emergency.