to have decided that it was their duty, of course, without any reference to the decree, to explain, if not to justify, the desperation which prompted it. It is a somewhat grave responsibility. But there can be little doubt as to the meaning of the article entitled "The Autocracy at Work." The gist of it is given in one sentence on the last page, "Our people have a saying that the tomb alone can straighten a hunchback." The whole of the preceding pages in the article are devoted to an attempt to demon

strate that the Tsar is such a hunchback. Whatever we may think of the intense bitterness which inspires every sentence, it is impossible to withhold a tribute to the savage skill with which the writers apply themselves to the task of proving that, whether the Emperor makes concessions, or whether he refuses them, whether he effaces himself or whether he asserts himself, or whatever he does or whatever he abstains from doing, he is utterly, hopelessly, and abominably wrong. The article might have been written with the pen of Junius. The picture of Nicholas II. which is here presented to the gaze of the shuddering world recalls the lines in "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," when Mokanna removes the veil from his features

Here-judge if hell, with all its powers to damn,
Can add one curse to the foul thing I am!

But, take him at his worst, Nicholas is still a human being, and not exactly a fiend from Hell. But a truce to these preliminary remarks. Now let us turn to the article.

A PORTRAIT ETCHED WITH VITRIOL. Nicholas II., we are told, is a man who has no sense of public duty, no political instincts, no psychological tact. He is still the man he was ten years ago, a mild, nerve-shattered youth, incapable of clear, hard thinking, or of pitting his will against that of the masses. He walks through life with the smile of the somnambulist, moving serene over dizzy cliffs for a while. He is now trying, almost alone, to force the whole nation to bleed to death for himself and a parasitic brood of human vampires. His despotism is a monster with thousands of hands all-grasping, allthrottling. A grain of humour in the Tsar might have saved the Tsardom, but his character lacks that grain. His last Ukase reads like a cruel and stupid joke. His one idea is that the Autocrat of all the Russias is by God's grace the keeper of the lives, the property and the consciences of his own people, and the arbiter of peace or war in the whole world besides. He satisfies his conscience that his motives are good. It is for him to command and for the nation to obey. He is deaf and blind, and blandly persevering.

HIS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR.

The writers charge him with having brought about the war which he never prepared for, and which he was convinced would never come. He was warned by Alexeieff and Rosen, the Minister at Tokio, that war was inevitable, but he angrily refused to admit the possibility that the Japanese would attack, and, as he had determined never to attack Japan, he was quite confident that the war would never break out. Alexeieff

received from him a telegram assuring him that the rupture of diplomatic relations did not mean the beginning of war; "War will be avoided." That same night the Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. When the war did break out he proved to the hilt his good faith and sincerity by weeping and sobbing like a child. In this, as in everything else, he seemed unable to see the truth either in the abstract or in the concrete. That fundamental defect which gave Japan her opportunity to begin the war when Russia was unprepared, led him to interfere again and again with disastrous consequences in the conduct of the campaign. He is a man whose intellect is warped, and whose will is enfeebled by causes still operative.

THE AUTHOR OF ALL EVIL.

Before the war broke out the Tsar had forbidden the Grand Dukes to have anything to do with Korean Concessions, and then withdrew the prohibition, and himself became a shareholder in the venture. A similar story, it may be remembered, was constantly repeated about our King in relation to the Rhodesian Chartered stock; there is probably as much truth in the one story as there is in the other. As in the Far East, so at home, the Emperor is held. personally responsible for every act of his reign. It is he who robs Finland of her liberties, despoils Armenian schools and churches, suppresses the nationality of the Poles (!) and, I suppose, although this is not stated, causes the drought and failure of the harvest; for it is said he keeps the Russians more miserable than any foreign element in the population. He now stands forth as the author of the present war, the marplot of the military staff, and the main obstacle of peace. It is further asserted that a word from him would stop the war, but so far from uttering that word, he has been consulting General Ignatieff as to the form of government to be given to Manchuria, "which will very soon be ours, and which we may assume is ours already." He is charged with having sacrificed 100,000 of his soldiers' lives in order to gain an advantage for his dynasty. He has made the staff of his army the laughing-stock of the world, and himself the scourge of his people.

THE SOLE RULER.

For a long time he was believed to be misguided by first one Minister and then another, but the bomb which killed Plehve revealed him as the sole ruler. The writers compare him to a stoneleaf man sauntering cheerfully along the railway lines while an express is tearing up behind him, and the onlooker can warn neither the pedestrian nor the engine-driver. The word has gone forth that Nicholas is Tsar, the Grand Dukes his Viziers, and the Ministers but menials to both. And congruously with that dogma Russia's destiny will be henceforth worked out. The Autocracy, as he understands it, is at its last gasp; whatever else may survive the coming

storm, that monstrosity must surely go. Almost the only good thing with which they credit him is his intervention to compel the War Minister to supply Kuropatkin with all the guns and war material which he demanded.

ALWAYS WRONG.

But if he is denounced for refusing concessions, he is held up to ridicule and condemned for making them. Because when Plehve was assassinated he did not stand upon his dignity, and become more unbending than ever, but instead appointed a Liberal Minister of the Interior, and issued a Ukase promising reforms, he is told that he committed the unpardonable sin in an absolute monarch. The Tsar was cowed by the assassin; he hastily disavowed the life-work of. his councillors and of his own, and promised to do better and differently in future. People thirsting for change noted for future use the spring that moves the Sovereign. But even then he bungled his concession, and made matters worse than they were before.

THE GRAND DUKES.

The Grand Ducal drones impregnate the Emperor's mind with mischievous notions. The Grand Dukes are described as a “numerous caste of mere blood-sucking parasites"; some of their lives are made up of unpunished crimes-mean thefts, colossal frauds, and outlandish vices. One has but to rake any money scandal well enough in order to come upon a Grand Duke at the bottom of it. They wallow in luxury with money gained by starving the greycoated heroes in the field. They seem endowed with a special faculty for calling forth what is least estimable in the Emperor's character, they surround him with a moral atmosphere charged with mephitic and stupefying vapours, while he shields. and befriends these unclean monsters, these Grand Ducal harpies; yet they admit that he certainly forsook the Grand Ducal coterie more than once when they were playing for a war with England; “for the Tsar's aim is never war, hence it is not malice when we accuse him of only incompetency." From his mischievous theory of autocracy, as from a poisoned source, spring all our ills. The Russian people, denied justice, cannot endure any longer and live; they have but the choice of perishing in silence, or of striking back in virtue of the law of selfdefence, and the latter alternative commends itself to many.

It is a long article, but that is the gist of it. No one can read these brief extracts without feeling himself driven to the one and only conclusion which is expressed in the ominous sentence about the tomb and the hunchback, quoted above.

But there is one thing upon which the writers give us no information. When the tomb closes over the hunchback, what will happen then? On that subject they leave us completely in the dark.

AN AMERICAN SUGGESTION TOWARDS REFORM.

In the North American Review Mr. Hannis Taylor expresses the opinion that the present communal organisation of the Russian village should be made the nucleus of any scheme of constitutional reform :

While it would be impossible for the Tsar to create by edict an artificial scheme of liberty for Russia, it may be quite possible for him, in that way, to quicken into a new and larger life and to lift into a higher sphere the representative system whose roots run deep into the tenacious, nourishing soil of immemorial habit." A great beginning could be made if the Imperial hand would only cut away the vines with which the bureaucracy has for so long a time been strangling the rich undergrowth of representation embedded in local institutions. Russian people have been having the best of all constitutional training in their village parliaments, the identical training out of which has grown the representative assemblies of England and the United States. There is no reason why a parliamentary system should not be rapidly developed in Russia, because the entire substructure of the State is composed of nurseries in which the principle of election and representation by small democracies is in full bloom.

REVOLUTION IMPOSSIBLE IN RUSSIA.

Mr. A. S. Rappoport, the London correspondent of the Novosti, contributes to the Fortnightly Reviews a paper in which he denies most emphatically that Russia is on the eve of a revolution. The only possible chance for liberty in Russia is for it to be introduced at the sword's point by Western Europe. Mr. Rappoport is very emphatic :

A Russian merchant, asked by a foreigner whether the Russians have already had a revolution, replied, "No, we have not yet had any Ukase from the Tsar to this effect." A constitution may be granted by the Autocrat, but the Moujik will have to accept it "by order of the Tsar." By himself he will never do anything to obtain it. Heine says somewhere: "The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman like his mistress, the German like his grandmother." The Russian Moujik, he ought to have added, is too weak to love at all. A constitution in the dominions of the Tsar will never be obtained by the Russian nation by means of a revolution, let it be stated once for all. The reason is very obvious, because the nation will never revolt against the Tsar. Let the revolutionary agitators in Russia and elsewhere understand it, once for all, that it only depends upon Europe to force the ruler of the European China to grant individual liberty, freedom of speech, and social reforms to his subjects.

Mr. Rappoport can hardly be serious in thus suggesting that Europe should make war upon Russia, to force upon Russians a system of government which he declares is absolutely hateful to nine out of every ten men in the country:

"The Russians," says no less an authority than Danilev-ky, "find no attraction in power, and although some people consider it as a fault, we, for our part, see nothing bad in it."

"For this reason, too, Russia is the only country which has never had (and never will have) any political revolutions."

Non-resistance and Buddhistic self-annihilation were chief traits of the national character long before the Sage of Kyassnaya Polyana preached it from his armchair. But historical facts find their cause in the temperament of nations. The deeply-rooted slavish disposition of a people that bows to authority but looks askance at a ray of liberty, makes a revolution an impossibility. People who, by nature, are inclined to look up to an authority dwelling high above them on some Himalayan height, who are crushed in the dust by a continuous sense of sin and

their own nothingness, feel quite at home in a state of tutelage. They breathe more freely, paradoxical as it may sound, in an atmosphere of oppression. The horror of servitude, the eager desire for self-government which is the result of a highly developed sense of self-reliance, have now been deeply rooted in the national character of the English. In Russia it was quite the reverse. Had the inhabitants of Russia been distinguished by sach traits of character, the princes would not have enslaved them, and autocracy would have long ago crumbled to dust. Unlike the Englishman, the Russian is unhappy if he is left to himself, but as long as he can account for some external superior power that tortures him, he is satisfied.

Mr. John Hare on a National Theatre.

MR. HERBERT VIVIAN, who sets out to record Mr. John Hare's views of the drama to-day for the February Pall Mall Magazine, confesses that he himself is bored by stage performances, but he admires the players for their great versatility. He acknowledges, however, the indisputable attraction and influence of the stage, and says: "For one man who haunts a picture-gallery, for ten who follow politics strenuously, for a hundred who are affected by books, there are a thousand who frequent theatres."

Mr. Hare desires ardently the establishment of a national theatre. He said to Mr. Vivian :

A national theatre is a very important need. That it will soon come is much for us to hope. Half a million would endow it. But you will never get it from the State. The only chance would be to interest a man like Carnegie. It would be a drop in the ocean to him, but, unfortunately, he takes no interest in the stage.

Sir Henry Irving and I are too old, too set if you will, to change our habits. Nor would you attract men who are making a large income at their own theatres. But there are plenty of younger men coming on. Membership would be regarded as an honour, like the title of R.A. It would offer a goal to the young, a welcome to actors and actresses in the prime of their career.

National theatres keep alive tradition. Every other civilised country has a national theatre which keeps old plays alive.

The drama is a high art, an education, an elevating force. A great nation is only performing an elementary duty in standing patron to the arts.

MR. G. BERNARD SHAW, in the first number of the Grand Magazine, dissects the box office, which he maintains is the nervous centre of the modern theatre. His dissection is delicately done in the shape of a short story, telling how, in the year 1910, the present system of deadheads, high prices and ruinous tips reached such a suicidal development that people had to be bribed to come to the play. Out of this Serbonian bog the play is rescued by the founding of a Cash for Admission Theatre, prices half-a-crown to all parts of the theatre, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays one shilling. The article is full of Bernard Shaw's satirical humour, and will be keenly relished by all who are interested in the future of the Theatre and the evolution of the wit and wisdom of Mr. Bernard Shaw.

was deficient, while shops and repairing machinery were inadequate, and sidings wanting for the heavy traffic of the line. It was also certain that with the thaw Lake Baikal would be closed to traffic for three weeks. Prince Khilkoff journeyed to Irkutsk, and at once displayed his remarkable powers as dens ex machina. He hurried forward the completion of the line round the southern end of the lake, and directly the surface was hard set, laid down rails across the ice, and transported to the east bank large numbers of locomotives, trucks, and wagons. A sledge service was improvised from local resources; and throughout the spring a continuous flow of troops, stores, and supplies was maintained. Not content with this, he collected thousands of men and women along the whole length of the railway, and set to work to improve the facilities for troop transport by doubling the line in certain sections, by the construction of sidings, the improvement of stations, and the collection of supplies of fuel and water.

This great national effort proved the salvation of the Russian army of Manchuria. In six months Prince Khilkoff had practically doubled the output of the line; while upon the sections west of Irkutsk it was found possible to raise the number of trains to a maximum of eighteen.

The writer points the moral for us:

In ten months no less than 250,000 men have been transported from Western Russia to Manchuria over a single line of railway, and across a distance of from 5,000 to 6,000 miles. This railway has, moreover, proved capable, hitherto of maintaining the military efficiency of a total Russian force of 400,000 men east of Lake Baikal, as well as of providing for the wants of the civil population throughout the districts traversed by the line, and of carrying construction materials for the extension and improvement of the line itself.

What this may mean for us on the Indian frontier is inferred from the fact that Russia has recently completed two lines of railway leading to an eventual line of concentration-Merv-Bokhara-Khokand.

CURIOUS IF TRUE.

A STORY OF KUROPATKIN.

MR. Low, writing in the Forum, is responsible for a curious story which he fathers upon General Kuropatkin. I confess that I find it very difficult to believe. Kuropatkin may have told the yarn, but that Alexander III., the most peace-loving man in the whole world, could have rushed off into war in this headlong fashion is quite incredible. War was stopped not by Kuropatkin's refusal to take the command, but by the discovery-the tardy discovery made by our own Government-(1) that we were in the wrong (that I have on the personal authority of the late Sir Robert Morier when he was Ambassador at St. Petersburg), and (2) that the Ameer of Afghanistan would have condoned a dozen Penjdehs rather than allow us to cross his country to defend Herat. So much for the credibility of Kuropatkin's story. Mr. Low tells us this legend as follows:

The following historical incident, the absolute accuracy of which I can vouch for and which has never before been published, is interesting at this time.

So

In 1885 the Penjdeh incident-the attempt of Russia to encroach upon the frontier of Afghanistan, which brought the Afghans and the Russians into armed collision-came perilously close to involving Great Britain and Russia in war. imminent, apparently, were hostilities that Parliament granted an emergency credit, the reserves were called out, and the fleet was mobilised. After some weeks of intense anxiety a diplomatic settlement was effected.

Some years later General Kuropatkin said to a high-placed British official :

"You English accuse me of being Anglophobe and advocating war with England. Do you know that I alone prevented war over the Penjdeh incident? Well, it is a fact. The Tsar sent for me and informed me that, in a few days, war would be declared, and that I was to take command of the force which was to invade Afghanistan. I expressed my sense of the honour, but urged him not to undertake the enterprise. He manifested surprise and asked my reasons. I told him that the force available in Central Asia for a forward movement amounted only to 45,000 men, and that we should have to deal with from seven to ten millions of Afghans, a warlike people trained to fighting, and that back of them were 300,000 British and native troops. At first my statement was not believed, but when I brought forward the facts to prove its accuracy the impossibility of the undertaking was realised and the thought of war was abandoned."

The statement is also interesting for another reason. In 1885 Kuropatkin apparently was the only man in Russia who knew the resources of his own country and those of his enemy. Precisely the same conditions appear to have existed twenty years later. The Russian war party looked upon the invasion of Afghanistan as a military promenade, much as the French did in 1870, who thronged the boulevards shouting "A Berlin!" and really imagined that nothing would impede their progress.

Two hundred years have rolled away since John Locke died on October 28th, 1704, and was buried in High Laver churchyard, Essex. In the January Essex Review Mr. Stewart Gowe publishes an interesting essay on Locke, who spent his latter days with Sir Francis and Lady Masham at Otes, their manor-house at High Laver.