146 APPENDIX 



trade thirst that animates nations which consider 

 themselves more enlightened. 



The Russian, cultured and travelled, speaking 

 several languages, does not bluff himself that he is the 

 equal of Britons, or Germans, or Americans, in the 

 mechanical arts. No people I know are so childishly, 

 lovingly frank in the recognition of their own short- 

 comings. But they possess something which they 

 would not sacrifice for all the mechanical skill in the 

 world a soul, imagination, a deep love of beauty in 

 sound and the written word. They are mystics ; they 

 are dreamers. That is the Russian temperament, 

 provided by Providence. 



A strange, weird, fascinating land of extremes is 

 Russia. The Tartars from the East gave it a system 

 of government; the Greeks from the South gave it 

 Christianity; it gathered modernism in thought from 

 the Germanic races, followed by a flood of affection 

 for Latin elegance, and then back it went to Germanic 

 influence again. The nation with the most autocratic 

 government in the world is yet the most democratic, 

 not as an outcome of politics but because such is a 

 Slav condition of mind. 







The American workman thinks himself as good as 

 his boss and he isn't taking off his hat to "any darned 

 other fellow. ' The Russian boss never thinks himself 

 any better than his employee, and he always takes off 

 his hat to his workmen. The talk between a magnate 

 and a moudjik is with the easy familiarity of equals 

 not due to these democratic times when rank must not 



