When Balmascheff, who shot and killed M. Sipiaguine, Russia's Minister of the Interior, was asked if he had accomplices he replied: "So many that it is impossible to name them." He also said that he nor they expected grace or mercy; that he and they worked for those who came after. Some will call this the raving of an anarchist. But these know nothing of the conditions against which Balmascheff and his kind are warring. The Balmascheffs would prefer to gain their ends by peaceful means, but know from experience that life is too short for success. They do not kill for love of killing, or the notoriety that attaches to it, but that the lot of those whose cause they champion may be made merely endurable. Whenever the law is wilfully and successfully disregarded that a minority may be favored there will be found a means by which this dereliction is brought to the attention not only of the lawbreakers, but of the world, and as the latter, in all its divisions, contains lawbreakers who consider themselves above or beyond the law the punishment of one is usually followed by the punishment of others, for lawbreakers of a colossal type--like their executioners--think in common and recognize no cleavage of nationality. Balmascheff may not have killed the system which was represented by M. Sipiaguine, but he chopped away a limb. Unless the trunk is replaced by one that better befits the age it, too, will be chopped away. If this be an age of reason, as is claimed for it, men who are furnished with a capacity to think cannot be prevented from putting their thoughts into execution. Though Balmascheff was executed on Friday according to biblical and Russian law, there are many Balmascheffs in the world, and it is well for the world that this is so. Mistake in Vocation A woman writer who considers herself a Realist says in a story published recently: "I found a letter in my mail and read it as I prepared my morning coffee." This is an impossible feat. She may have prepared the coffee and then read the letter, or read the letter and then prepared the coffee, but she did not do both simultaneously unless she were, not a realist, but an acrobat. * * * * * Foreign Devils Again