THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS EAST AND WEST The movement towards democracy is world-wide to-day, and the political constitutions of the West are desired with fervour in the East. For generations there has been agitation in Russia for representative government, and men and women--in countless numbers--have sacrificed wealth, reputation, liberty, and life itself in the cause of political freedom. On the establishment in 1906 of the Duma, a national chamber of elected members, there was general rejoicing, because it seemed that, at length, autocracy was to give place to representative government. But the hopes of the political reformers were short lived. The Duma still exists, but its powers were closely restricted in 1907, and the franchise has been narrowed, to secure an overwhelming preponderance of the wealthy, so that it is altogether misleading to regard it as a popular assembly. In Egypt and in India the Nationalist movements are directed to self-government, and are led by men who have, in most cases, spent some years at an English University, or have been trained at the English Bar. Residence in England, and a close study of British politics make the educated Indian anxious for political rights in his own country, similar to those that are given to him in Great Britain. In England the Indian has all the political rights of a British subject. He can vote for a member of Parliament, he can even be a member of the House of Commons. On two occasions in recent years, an Indian has been elected to Parliament: Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji sat as Liberal M.P. for Finsbury, 1892-5; Sir M.M. Bhownagree as a Conservative for Bethnal Green, 1895-1906. Back in his native land, the Indian finds that he belongs to a subject race, and that the British garrison will neither admit him to social equality, nor permit him the right of legislation. Hence with eyes directed to Western forms of government, the Indian is discontented with the bureaucracy that rules his land, and disaffected from the Imperial power. But so many are the nations in India, and so poverty-stricken is the great multitude of its peasantry that the Nationalist movement can touch but the fringe of the population, and the millions of India live patiently and contentedly under the British Crown. Nevertheless, the national movement grows steadily in numbers and in influence, for it is difficult for those who, politically minded, have once known political freedom, to resign themselves to political subjection. In Egypt the Nationalist movement is naturally smaller and more concentrated than in India and the racial divisions hinder its unity. Egypt is nominally under the suzerainty of Turkey, though occupied by Great Britain, and now that Turkey has set up a Constitution and a Parliament, patriotic Egyptian politicians are impatient at the blocking out by the British authorities of every proposal for self-government.