"You are, I can see, surprised that I, as a Conservative and a state official, should answer in this way; but I hope you do not consider 'conservative' and 'infamous' synonymous terms. If you do not, you will not expect me to approve the régime of Plehve. That is not a Conservative régime. It is the régime of hell founded by a devil at the head of the most important department." (Here came the speech with which this paper began.) The count then proceeded: "Do not suppose that Russia is of necessity smitten with such serious problems. These questions are nowhere simpler than with us. We have no national problems like those of Prussia, for instance, or of Austria-Hungary, which are complicated by the fact that majorities and minorities are mixed together almost beyond separation. We have even in Poland almost no national aspirations regarding which we could not come to a peaceable understanding. Our nationalities live almost entirely distinct, in compact bodies side by side; even the Finns are politically separate. It would be an easy thing to make them all contented under just maintenance of the supremacy of the Czar. But the priestlike intolerance of Pobydonostzev has spread the idea in the world that all diversities of religion and speech must be ironed out with a hot flat-iron, even at the risk of singeing heads. Since then it is considered patriotic to repress men and convictions. For this business unclean creatures are to be found who make careers for themselves in this way; and their prototype is the tenfold renegade Plehve." "Yet I cannot conceal my astonishment, your excellency, that you, as a Conservative, have this opinion of the system of Pobydonostzev." "Why is that so illogical? Conservative thought is, above all, that of organic development. All violence is revolutionary in its essence, whether it serves reactionary or republican tendencies. The system of Pobydonostzev is revolutionary and reactionary. In his fashion Plehve, however, is simply a monstrous bill of extortion against the Czar as well as against the shackled nation." "Your excellency of course refers to the idea that Plehve intimidates the Czar by threats of revolution?" "That is not an idea simply; it is a fact, of which we have very definite information. But what not every one knows is the fact that we have no one but Plehve to thank for this war, which may be a catastrophe. He had a finger in all the manoeuvres of delay which provoked the Japanese to war, because he believed that he could no longer preserve himself in any other way than by diverting public attention from conditions in the interior, and by ridding himself of those who were dissatisfied with him into the bargain." "How the latter?"