PREFACE 9 



favourable position of conversing with ffiore than a 

 hundred Russian, GerEBan, and Danish merchants 

 residing in Siberia, besides having Blade short stays 

 with English families in different centres of the 

 country— most of ffiy informants have lived in Siberia 

 several years — I have compared their views with the 

 results of my own observations. 



Whatever shortcomings this book may have there- 

 fore, it contains at least the conscientious opinions 

 of an unprejudiced Englishman, who has had the 

 advantage of good sources of information. Nations, 

 like individuals, should be judged with some refer- 

 ence to their own ideals and m:odes of thinkings 

 and not by our pet personal standards of right and 

 wrong. Instead, for instance, of looking to Siberia 

 for a perennial crop of exaggerated exile horrors, we 

 should, I venture to believe, be better employed in 

 studying its vast commercial possibilities. We should 

 then be led to admire a nation which, instead of 

 imprisoning its convicts, has sent them to Siberia, to 

 help in the development of a country which is already 

 producing enormous supplies of food for the ever- 

 growing populations of Western Europe, and the 

 potentialities of which it is at present almost 

 impossible to gauge. 



I should like to mention that some of the statistics 

 have been taken from the Siberian Railway Guide 

 and the most recent Government Blue Books on 

 Japan and China. Finally, I wish to express my 

 indebtedness to Baron Heyking for the brief outline 

 of Siberian history which forms Appendix II. p. 315, 



S. T. 



