Before going further, perhaps I ought to warn my readers that I am often reproached by my Russian friends with taking too favorable a view of the Duma and of many other things in Russia. To this I usually reply by taking those friends to task for their habitual pessimism in criticising themselves and their institutions. Naturally inclined to idealism, and not possessing sufficient hereditary experience to correct this tendency, they compare their institutions with ideals which nowhere exist in the real world, and consequently they condemn them very severely. The impartial foreigner who wishes to form a true estimate of these institutions must always take this into account. In spite of the impassioned philippics to which I have listened hundreds of times from my Russian friends, I am strongly of opinion that the Russian people have made in recent years considerable progress in their political education, and that they will continue to do so in the future. But how is genuine national progress possible so long as the great mass of the population are grossly ignorant, conservative, and superstitious? Here again we must beware of adopting current exaggerations. To begin with the peasantry, who are by far the most numerous class, we must admit that they are very far from being well educated, but they are keen to learn and they gladly send their children to the village schools, which have been greatly increased and improved in recent years. Another source of education is the army. Since the introduction of universal military service every unlettered recruit must learn to read and write. A third educational agency is the peculiar village organization. As every head of a family has a house of his own and a share of the communal land, he is a miniature farmer; and, unlike agricultural laborers, who need not look much ahead beyond the weekly pay day, he must make his agricultural and domestic arrangements for an entire year, under pain of incurring starvation or falling into the clutches of the usurer. This is in itself a sort of practical education. Then he has to attend regularly the meetings of the village assembly, at which all communal affairs are discussed and decided. To this I must add that he is by no means obstinately conservative. Habitually cautious, he may be slow to change his traditional habits and methods of cultivation, but he does change them when he sees, by the experience of his neighbors, that new methods are more profitable than old ones. Ask any dealer in improved implements and machines how many he has sold to peasants in a single year. Or ask any director of a peasant land bank how many thousand peasants within the area of his activity are purchasing land outside the communal limits and farming on their own account. If you desire any further information on this subject, ask any liberal-minded landed proprietor who takes an interest in the prosperity of his humble neighbors to describe to you the small credit societies and similar