4] 
over sixty American, but not one English. In one of the back 
rooms of a Consul’s house were English catalogues, beautifully 
printed and illustrated, but in the English language—an 
unknown tongue to the Siberian ; with weights and measures by 
an unknown method; and prices in the old barbarons pounds, 
shillings and pence—an unknown system. No wonder America 
and Germany are monopolizing between them the industrial 
development of one of the very largest tracts of land now to be 
civilized by leaps and bounds. The Germans are pushing their 
way everywhere. In Moscow, where the railway starts, the 
whole British colony—men, women, and children —does not 
exceed 500, whereas the German colony is 30,000, and if we 
include the Germans who have become naturalised for the 
purpose of commerce, 50,000 to 60,000; and so the propor- 
tion goes on throughout Siberia. Why is it that we have no 
part or lot in the development of this great country? Partly 
because our commercial methods are wanting, and more 
possibly, because we are conservative in our ideas. We 
command the great bulk of the first-class markets of the 
world, because we produce absolutely a first-class article. 
But in Siberia they don’t want an absolutely first-class 
article, but a second-class article, for which they are _pre- 
pared to pay a second-class price. Germans are ready and 
willing to make such an article, and this is one of the chief 
reasons why they get the business and we do not. We hear a 
great deal about technical education, and the way we are being 
out-stripped, but it seems—in North and South America and 
throughout the whole of Asia—we want a new type of commercial 
traveller, a more educated man to whom we can give a freer scope 
and greater power, and whose discretion and judgment can be 
trusted. Of course you have got to pay for them. And we 
should send these emissaries into the country, not to pass 
through on a flying tour, but to live there. We should release 
them from red tape, and enable them to adapt themselves to the 
people. 
The Emperor turned the first sod of this Railway at 
Vladivostock, in 1891, and has ever since taken great interest in 
it. He is the most powerful autocrat in the world : no man has 
greater responsibilities, and no one could find better excuses for 
escaping from any duties. But he was, before he ascended the 
throne, President of the Siberian Railway Committee, which 
meets weekly. When he became Emperor he continued to 
occupy that position, and whenever possible, to attend the weekly 
meetings and sit in the chair like a director of an ordinary public 
company, a fair testimony to his personal character, as well as a 
guarantee that this railway is going to be watched over and 
made to do all it possibly can for that great Empire, 
