These visits to Prince Ouktomsky and Professor Vassiliev, and the conversations with their peasants, went to confirm the impressions gathered in Kostroma, and Nijni-Novgorod. The peasantry no longer cherished dreams of autocratic infallibility. The idea of revolution had gained strong headway, especially since the Duma. An idea cannot be held back by Cossacks, by rapid-firing guns, by bayonets, or by the legalized lawlessness which is screened by so-called martial law. The government, through its fatuous policy of oppression and reaction, had now awakened the sympathies of practically all of its people to revolution. Active revolutionists, in any country, are in a seeming minority up to the crisis. When the wave of success attains formidability, the ranks of the then new régime suddenly become filled and solidified. The present government, partly owing to the financial support it receives from the peoples of England, France, Austria, and other countries, still maintains a show of strength. But examination reveals the obvious condition--strength merely to demoralize the ranks of the revolution, while lacking the strength to rule or to administer. The next province I went to was Simbirsk, the next province below Kazan on the Volga. “Mountain of the Winds” was the name given to Simbirsk city by early Volga-side dwellers. “Plain of the Whirlwind” might Simbirsk government well be called at the time I passed through. Conservatism would scarcely be expected among the constituents of Aladin--that daring, outspoken labor-group leader in the Duma. “Revolutionary”--he was called by people who heard his impassioned speeches. But the Honorable Maurice Baring, after listening to him many times, recalled the words spoken by Mirabeau of Robespierre: “That young man will go far. He believes every word he says.” Of Aladin’s beliefs I knew nothing at the time, for this was all before his visit to America, where (together with Tchaykovsky the “Father of the Russian Revolution”) he did more, perhaps, than any Russian has ever done to arouse the American people to Russia’s wrongs. Of the man I knew little; only this:--the peasants trusted him, and in as large degree as the Constitutional Democrats had lost the confidence of the peasants, Aladin and the “toil group” had won it. This was not because of Aladin, however, but because the peasants were now unequivocally and avowedly revolutionary, and they trusted the man who dared shake his fist at ministers, hiss them, and shout loudly for their demission, and who had publicly referred to the peasants as men, not as “children”; whose championship of the men in sheepskin had been neither apologetic nor patronizing.