152 APPENDIX 



benefit was the fact that the peasants could not 

 drink on "tick" pawn their ponies and ploughs and 

 clothes and mortgage their future crops to the dirty 

 traffickers in vodka. That was a great reform. Then 

 when the hour struck the Duma passed that new law 

 which just the other day prohibited the sale of 

 alcoholic liquors over the mighty land of Russia. 



You may not like that sort of thing; you may not 

 like democracy; but you cannot know Russia unless 

 you know that these are the foundations on which 

 she is building her future. 



National Corner-stones 



Compulsory education, compulsory sobriety, and 

 democracy these three. 



There's one other corner-stone of the new Russian 

 edifice. I don't know that it has any place in a news- 

 paper article, though it is the sort of thing that is sup- 

 posed to be quite innocuous even for children. It is 

 this: Russia is a religious country it is more than 

 religious ; it is a God-haunted country. He who would 

 sketch the future of Russia must reckon with that 

 enormous fact. And so you may see the Russians as a 

 grave, wise folk, notably given to song and prayer; 

 friendly, with rare humanity and a sense of world 

 brotherhood quite inconceivable in a Europe of clash- 

 ing trade competitions and craving military ambi- 

 tions a kindly, mystic land. 



You can't judge Russia by the cheap and tawdry 

 melodramas of other days; nor by the ranting of the 



