Simbirsk is an illiterate government. Five sixths of the population cannot read or write. It is hard, indeed, for an English mind to conceive the status of education in a country of pretended standing, as we find it in Simbirsk. The government (Zemstvo) school appropriation averages ten copecks (five cents) per head annually. Only nine tenths of one per cent. of the men, and five tenths of one per cent. of the women receive more than a primary-school education, while only four in a thousand ever finish the “gymnasia” (high school), and four in ten thousand reach the universities. In spite of these tremendous handicaps it is patent to the most careless traveler through these parts, that in a simple, direct way the people know what they want. “We want a Duma that we can trust, and that shall be the highest power over us,” said a middle-aged peasant to me, as he paused in his work in the fields. “Were you satisfied with the Duma you had?” “The Duma was all right, but the ministers were bad and it was wrong of the Emperor to send it away.” The way in which the Constitutional Democrats had dropped out of sight since issuing the Viborg manifesto had told strongly against them. Prince Baratieff, a Constitutional Democrat, a Simbirsk deputy to the Duma, told me frankly: “Formerly the Constitutional Democratic Party enjoyed the confidence of the peasants of this government, but since the dissolution I think they have moved more to the left.” During the course of this journey I searched diligently for conservative peasants--peasants who still believed in God and the Czar, as of old, but the peasants themselves were always the first to say: “Before the Duma we thought differently.” It was a Simbirsk peasant, however, in a village twenty miles inland from the Volga, who said: “We had always believed in the Czar as our Emperor by ‘divine authority,’ but now we see that if we put a crown on a hitching-post and call it ‘Czar by divine authority,’ it is the same.” About this time the government announced that it was prepared to alleviate the agrarian stress by placing certain appanage, or crown, lands at the disposal of the peasants--for a consideration. “How do you feel in regard to the Emperor’s latest step in putting the appanage lands at the disposition of the peasants through the Peasants’ Bank?” I asked of a group of six peasants whom I was questioning in Simbirsk. A chorus of derisive exclamations immediately followed. “We believe no more in anything that comes from the government--or even the Emperor. We have had too many pieces of worthless paper read to us. It may sound good now, but in the end it will not be for our good.”