A Yiddish-speaking man may be a Russian subject, but he is no more a real Russian on that account than a Hottentot, being a British subject, is a real Englishman. Although we Russians may be as bad as some people describe us, we have at least one virtue which is not always recognised: we do our utmost to prevent murderers, thieves, and burglars, and other criminals crossing the frontier. No Russian subject is allowed to leave Russia without a passport, which is never granted to any known criminal. If any such criminals evade our vigilance, our police are only too anxious to inform your police and solicit their co-operation in the arrest of the fugitive. But such offenders have only to allege that they are political refugees, to be welcomed in England and protected by the authorities. In England murder used to be regarded as no murder when the victim was a Russian policeman. But when the same criminals kill an English policeman, as they did in the Sydney Street affair, the matter is not seen in quite the same light. Try to put yourself in our place. What would you {118} think if "Peter the Painter" had been welcomed in Petrograd, and if our Government had refused to give him up because he had only killed an English policeman, and was therefore entitled to the right of asylum as a political refugee? Of course, such a crime against civilisation is unthinkable on the part of the Russian Government, but it would represent only too faithfully the position which England has been proud to maintain before the world. At the time of the Sydney Street outrage I asked: "What I want to know is whether, now that you are suffering a very, very small part of the misery which these murderers have inflicted on us, you are willing to co-operate with the police of the world in extirpating this gang of ruthless murderers? If you are, you will find ready co-operation on our side; if you are not, then, I fear, the world will say that you care nothing for murder so long as it is only Russian police, generals, or ministers who are murdered, and you will remain in the future, as in the past, the refuge and the shelter of the assassins of the world." Truth compels me to admit that there are blindfolded people in Russia as well as abroad, and it is not only amongst the foreigners that the real nature of the Russian nation has been sometimes misunderstood. Unfortunately there are prejudiced people amongst ourselves who insist upon being blind and unable to see obvious facts, and the meaning of the war of 1876 has been entirely misunderstood. Let us, for instance, quote Count Leon Tolstoy, who had very peculiar ideas about war. Can anybody, not only in Russia but even abroad, doubt his {119} talent? But nevertheless he proved how easy it is to err in politics even in spite of literary gifts.