136 SIBERIA 



slaughter of Russian students that has appeared in 

 the columns of our Press. One of toy merchant 

 friends, who has been visiting Russia and Siberia 

 for the last twenty years, inforiHed me that he was 

 in St. Petersburg at the time when a serious riot 

 was said to have taken place. On inquiry it proved 

 to have been nothing more than an act of in- 

 subordination against the university authorities, and, 

 ahhoughthe police were called in, there was no serious 

 trouble. The headlines of the English papers read : 

 " Military called out ; serious student troubles." 



The tolerance shown in the case I have men- 

 tioned proves that the GovernrHent will not banish 

 the students if they can deal with them" otherwise, 

 even although to send them' to prison at ToMsk 

 is impracticable, owing to their outnumbering the 

 police. The Em~p«ror has since pardoned many of 

 the students banished to the province of Yakutsk, 

 but, by the irony of fate, as one train brought back 

 a. number of students another train was proceeding 

 in the opposite direction with a fresh batch to take 

 their place. A Governmfent is obviously in a difficult 

 position when it has to deal with men who use bomb- 

 shells and pistols as a;rguments. It is a great pity 

 that the energy so harmfully expended cannot be 

 diverted into some practical channel, say mining 

 or agriculture. Let us hope that this will some 

 day be done, and, in the meantime, let us refrain from 

 judging the Russian Government by the standard 

 of the civilisations of England or Am'erica'. The 

 telegraph, m'oreover, plays a;trocious pranks with mes- 

 sages from Russia, as I know only too well from my 

 own experience. This, of course, is due to ignorance 

 of the language on the part of the operators, and 

 sometimes even of those draiwing up the messages. 



Driving past the theatre at Tomsk we met three 

 sledges containing exiles. I left my own sledge 



