Tell me how people amuse themselves and I will tell you what they are; tell me that they seek only amusement when their country is in ruins, and they cannot tell me that the patriotism they prate about is genuine patriotism. It struck me that the Siberians were more concerned with what went down their gullets than with a decent government and a decent future for themselves and their children. People get the government they deserve. People are responsible for their governments. If they assert that their rulers led them into war, it is not the fault of their rulers, but their own, for their rulers know them well enough to know what they could be led into. If people whine that they are oppressed by an autocracy, they confess that there is something lacking in themselves. If they howl against capitalism, when all the things they have could only be produced for them by a system of capital invested to good purpose, they lack brains; and if they cannot devise a government which protects them from exploitation they deserve to be exploited. I do not believe that all capitalists combine power with justice, any more than I believe that all working men understand the laws of economics and would create a régime of justice if they had all power in their hands. They mistake the machine which has been created to produce jobs for them, as the machine by which they themselves create, when as a matter of fact they themselves are only a part of the machine. That they happen to be part of that machine is not the fault of the inventor of the machine or its owner, but their own. Of course, the necessity for labor, on their part may be due to a lack of opportunity due to bad government, lack of education, misfortune or the thousand and one elements of which an individual’s history may be composed. A man running a loom might have been a scientist if he had been educated, but he cannot turn himself into a scientist by burning the factory in which he works. This relation to work and play in connection with Siberia I believe to be vital both in Siberia and in other parts of the world. And I feel it necessary to become personal in order to make clear what I mean in a chapter dealing primarily with Siberian love of amusement. As a boy I worked in a woolen mill as a weaver. In order to study while my loom was running, I fastened books to the top of the frame and in moments when the loom did not need my attention, I would read a page or two out of a book. By this method I often got through a book a day in addition to producing the regular quantity of cloth. The odd moments I gave to my books were spent by my fellow-weavers in friendly conversation or in skylarking.