bayonet. The intellectual and professional elements were free to make common cause with the proletariat. The revolution followed, and then the apparent surrender of the autocracy, the imperial rescripts and decrees proclaiming reforms, the Witte ministry, the grant of a so-called constitution, the creation of a national Duma and the assembling thereof. For a short time Russia enjoyed free speech and free discussion. The government was weak and the bureaucracy disorganized and dismayed.

But, alas, the peace treaty with Japan came too soon-too soon for the cause of Russian progress and the peace and welfare of the nation. The army returned and the autocracy recovered its audacity and its Bourbon stubbornness. The counter-revolution was not long in making its appearance. The concessions extorted from the autocracy were one by one withdrawn or nullified. The so-called "Fundamental Laws," or constitution, received the same cavalier and contemptuous treatment. The local satraps ignored the paper restraints on arbitrary power. The country was placed under martial law in order to get rid of inconvenient legal limitations. The first Duma was dissolved with little ceremony, not because, as the government pretended, it was "inefficient and incapable of service," but because it was fearless and honest, because it protested vehemently against the reactionary and nullification policies of the court. The electoral system was changed in violation of the laws the czar had signed and proclaimed. The object of this illegal change was to convert the Duma into an instrument of the aristocratic and privileged classes, and to reduce the representation of the liberals, the organized workmen and the peasants.

Other and similar measures followed in rapid succession. The freedom of speech and the press guaranteed by the Constitution became a snare and a mockery. Even the parliamentary debates could not be reported outside of the capital. Provincial editors were fined and imprisoned for republishing articles and reports which had appeared, with the censor's approval, in the newspapers of St. Petersburg or Moscow. The Duma itself was in serious. danger. The leaders of the Black Hundreds urged the czar to abolish it and with it every vestige of the brief reform period. These fanatics had the support of the influential ministers and bureaucrats, and the liberals were fully prepared for a perfidious decree wiping out the Duma and the constitution. It is believed that nothing but shame, fear of European opinion, and the need of foreign money saved the Duma as an institution.

But although the Duma was saved, it was reduced to impotence.

The cabinet regarded it as a subordinate agency that might do routine work and meekly carry out the orders of the government. It was useful as a blind or mask; it passed budgets and authorized bond issues. It was deprived of all real power; its bills had no chance whatever in the upper chamber or Council of State. All its reform measures were foredoomed to failure. It found every way blocked. It could not help the Finns, or the Jews, or the Poles. It could do little for popular education or for simple justice and personal liberty. Meantime the ruling cliques, intrenched once more, were diverting national attention, to the the extent of their ability, to sham issues, to alleged external dangers. Attacks on Germany began to appear in the inspired press. Anti-Semitic and anti-Polish campaigns were instigated. The government demanded extraordinary appropriations for defense and preparedness. A "National" party was formed to back the government. The true liberals and nonrevolutionary radicals opposed all this and exposed the stratagems and tricks of the government so far as the censors and the prosecutors permitted criticism. But this opposition was of little avail. Jingoism and intolerant nationalism steadily made headway. Yet the abuses in the army and navy-the things that had caused the defeat of Russia in the war with Japan-were hardly touched. It was "unpatriotic" to tell the truth about the cabals and the corruptionists that controlled these services. Even moderate suggestions of army and navy reform were frowned upon and denounced.

This was the general situation in Russia on the eve of the present war. The liberal elements were profoundly pessimistic and disheartened. Many predicted the revival of the terrorist movement and revolutionary outbreaks all over the empire. The students and youth of the country appeared to be ready for another great wave of intense and tragic political activity. The best informed Russians, as well as sober-minded European observers, entertained but little doubt that the reaction or counter-revolution was heaping up explosive material and that another sanguinary upheaval against the Russian autocracy and bureaucracy was imminent. Some did not hesitate to say that a popular war alone would save the government and avert revolution. But was a popular war possible? The war with Japan had been extremely unpopular, and another such conflict might be absolutely fatal to the old regime. The course of the two Balkan wars afforded no opportunity to the Russian court. Its diplomacy had made enemies rather than friends in the Balkan peninsula. It was necessary to wait. Delay was dangerous, but there was no alternative. For, to repeat, the return to reform and

liberalism did not for a moment present itself to the ruling cliques in the light of a possible alternative.

The Austrian ultimatum to Servia, one of "the little Slav brothers," gave the czar and his intimate advisers and agents their opportunity. They knew that a war over the question of Serb independence or sovereignty, and over Russia's moral claim to a sort of Slav protectorate, would be popular.

The rest is familiar history. Into the actual responsibility for the awful conflict the writer will not go in this article. He merely wishes to record the facts and to direct attention once more to the spirit and attitude of the Russian government with reference to reform, culture and civilization. So far, certainly, the war has not been a war of "emancipation" for the Russian people, or for any race or nationality subject to Russia. Further developments-good or bad-it would be unprofitable to speculate upon; comment may well await accomplished results.

However, in dealing with Russia's role and function in the present war, it is necessary to bear in mind one important fact— namely, that the Slavophil professions of the government and some of its literary spokesmen are essentially hollow and insincere. Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism as literary and historical factors in Russia are one thing; official and autocratic patronage of the smaller Slav states and principalities is a very different thing. The autocracy and its diplomatic tools have used the Pan-Slav idea, have exploited it, but have never shown any real belief in it except as another and less objectionable slogan for expansion and increased power and prestige. The idealistic Pan-Slav group, never very large or potent, was at one time intellectually and morally respectable. It had curious, semi-mystical and irrational notions, but it was honest. It believed that Russia had a sacred mission in the world; that she was working out a new civilization; that the west was effete and degenerate; that democracy, freedom, modern industrialism, individual rights and all the rest were false and destructive of true spiritual grace; that a benevolent, religious, divine autocracy was to be Russia's unique contribution to progress; that Europe and America would ultimately, after many troubles and anarchical disorders, adopt the Russian form of government. This was foolish and absurd, but it was historically explicable and it was honest. It hardly needs explaining why the autocracy and bureaucracy always welcomed this Slavophil doctrine and gospel. It was a good cloak for tyranny, for reaction, for Bourbon opposition to "western"

ideas. The fervent Slavophils played into the hands of the blind, selfish, corrupt and cruel autocracy, but few of them perceived this.

The Russian liberals, the radicals, the social democrats and the other progressive parties and schools, have never shared a single. one of the notions of the genuine Slavophils, and they have, of course, always perceived and pointed out how the government perverted Slavophil ideas and converted them, so to speak, to its own pernicious use. But the Slavophil poets and essayists had little interest in territorial ambitions and in schemes of annexation; they really had the welfare of the peasant and laborer at heart, and they hoped to render the government benevolent and pure. To-day the old Slavophil school can hardly be said to have a following worthy of mention. The doctrine that Holy Russia has a great message for the world, is going to teach us how to make the autocratic church truly religious and the autocratic state truly benevolent-how to reconcile things the West deemed irreconcilable-is dead. No one takes it seriously.

The educated and progressive classes are patriotic in the rational sense of the term, but they have no illusions concerning Holy Russia. They know that Russia must continue to follow the West, to grapple with her political, social and moral problems as the West has grappled with these problems, and to curb and shackle her autocracy and her bureaucracy. Russia has many schools of thought, as the West has, but the alignment is the same there as with us. Russsia has positivists, monists, Kantists, Hegelians, neorealists, Bergsonians and what not. She has socialists and individualists and opportunists. Russia has been profoundly influenced by German thought-her greatest critic was a Hegelian, and some of her leading authors and economists are Marxians. But all these schools have this in common-they regard Russia as a backward power whose development must follow the western course of evolution. They wish to be national and to cultivate whatever worthy traits the Russian character may possess, but they have nothing but contempt for the notion that Russia can dispense with free institutions, with free criticism, with western culture. They have no sympathy with aggression and bigoted nationalism, with any policy that spells reaction within or greed and conquest without.

These elements will judge the war and its political or territorial consequences by one criterion-the political, social and moral progress of Russia. They will not long be deceived. There can be no change in their point of view, their philosophy of life.

REPIN, THE RUSSIAN ARTIST.

BY THE EDITOR.

ILJA

LJA REPIN, the great master of Russian painters, last year celebrated his seventieth birthday, and looks back upon an eventful and highly successful career. He is typically Russian,

THE COUNT AND COUNTESS TOLSTOY.

and has gathered about him a number of younger painters. Having been a great personal friend of Tolstoy he has painted his fellow countryman many times and in many different attitudes,