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who has any real knowledge of the peasants will pretend to foretell."

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The

Knowing that a peasant meeting would be held in a certain canton, nominally to elect a cantonal elder for three years, the writer determined to be present. The peasants were in a district in which there is much passing backward and forward to Moscow and St. Petersburg, in which towns some 40 per cent. of the adult males had at one time or other worked. meeting took place in front of the cantonal court-house; and some one hundred and fifty village representatives attended it with the cantonal clerk. The Land Captain," a country gentleman and petty tyrant, usually highly reactionary, was not present. A young peasant, careful to avoid disloyal utterances, mounts on the table and puts to the meeting nine resolutions. Briefly, these are as follows:

(1) Better education-a moderately worded, sensible demand, at once agreed to; (2) abolition of class distinctions, establishment of a common criminal and civil code for all, and abolition of land captains; (3) reform of taxation, which required explanation, but was agreed to; (4) reform of land laws, which, with point 2, excited the keenest interest; (5) freedom of speech, the very idea of which the peasants seem hardly to have grasped, but to which they agreed when they understood it; (6) an eight-hour working day and freedom of strikes, which required explanation, and even then the economic results of an eight-hour factory day were little apprehended; (7) popular representation, including woman suffrage, even for peasant women, "the extreme daring of which" did not excite a comment, but, after satisfactory explanation of what "secret" voting meant, this resolution was carried; (8) cessation of the war, which was objected to on the ground that peasants must not meddle with imperial policy; this proposal had to be materially modified before it could obtain the necessary two-thirds majority: and (9), adopted without dissent, pardon of all exiles and prisoners "who have suffered for the rightful cause of the people."

The Resurrection of Finland.

Mr. W. T. Stead contributes to the Contemporary an account of the informal negotiations between the governor-general of Finland and the leading representatives of the Finlanders on the very eve of the revolution which finally disposed of Bobrikovism and the Bobrikovski. Mr. Stead says:

It is Easter morn in Helsingfors. But the resurrection which they have been celebrating these last days is not religious, but national. Finland has risen again, and every one thereat doth exceedingly rejoice, not even excepting the Russians, without whose good-will this peaceful festival of the re-birth of a nation would have been stained with blood. There has been a marvelous completeness, a dramatic effect, about the resurrection of Finland which sets it apart from all similar

NICHOLAS AND HIS PEOPLE.

The Russian situation as seen by the Wahre Jakob (Stuttgart).

Then follows a précis of the heads of the argument on each side, from which the following is a typical extract:

Prince Obolenski stated the Russian point of view pretty much as follows:

Finland had been the favored bride of her Russian bridegroom for nearly a hundred years. So long had lasted the honeymoon that when the time came for Finland to accept the ordinary obligations and perform the ordinary duties of a Russian housewife she resented it as a cruel oppression, and had gone sulking ever since. To which the Finlanders reply:

The Finnish bride, although married by force, had been guaranteed that the so-called honeymoon should last forever. Her guarantee was the oath of her grand duke to observe the Finnish constitution, which was the legal charter of her so-called honeymoon condition. The attempt to reduce her to the position of one among the many housewives of her polygamous Russian husband was a violation of the marriage contract to which she would never consent.

Prince Obolenski:

That the Russian husband was in a very difficult position owing to the envy of the other wives, who at first did not realize Finland's exceptionally favored condition. But when they found it out they were filled with jealousy, and insisted that Finland should be reduced to their common level. This was especially the case with Old Muscovy, the first and oldest wife of Russia, who complained that her hard-won earnings were squandered upon this petted young wife in the north, who contributed nothing to the household in

fense of the home. The Russian husband, finding himself compelled either to treat all his wives on the Finnish honeymoon basis or to reduce Finland to the level of the others, chose what seemed the easier alternative. He could not level up without destroying the ancient autocratic constitution of his whole establishment, so he tried to level down Finland to the general level. The Finlanders:

That this is true and a confirmation of what we have always stated. But we object to be sacrificed to the jealousy and envy of the first wife, who had insisted upon the marriage with Finland, and who had accepted the terms of the marriage contract. Nor did they believe that many of the Russian people really desired to reduce Finland to their level.

Prince Obolenski:

That this discussion is academic and explanatory rather than political. For as a matter of fact the attempt begun in 1899 to abolish the honeymoon has now been practically abandoned. His appointment was practically the signal of reconciliation, and of reconciliation on a basis which was most favorable to the Finnish wife. Due allowance ought to be made for the prestige of the husband and for the mortified jealousy of the first wife, but his main object was to restore the status quo ante Bobrikov as completely as possible and as speedily as possible considering the difficulties created by the period of conflict, considering also the intensely strong national sentiment of the great Russian party who considered Finland unduly favored by the government, and considering the somewhat churlish reluctance shown by the Finns to reciprocate the friendly treatment of the Russians.

The Part Played by the Peace of Portsmouth.

The Anglo-Japanese treaty, says a recent issue of the Vyestnik Yevropy (St. Petersburg) editorially, appears to be a direct logical outcome of Japanese success in the war just ended, for this success facilitated the acceptance by Russia of the terms offered by Japan. It was likewise England's policy to urge a speedy conclusion of peace, as demanded by her commercial interests. Hence, when the psychological moment for a final decision at the Portsmouth conference arrived the government at Tokio could not but agree to the terms acceptable to Russia." After citing several paragraphs of the Anglo-Japanese treaty, the writer attempts to show that the terms proposed by Russia were made acceptable to Japan thanks to the Anglo-Japanese treaty. Indeed, Japan had more than realized her antebellum dreams. She became, in fact, not only the arbiter of the whole of eastern Asia, but also a participant in the regulation of the political affairs of the entire Asiatic continent. Essentially, England and Japan have divided Asia between them. From now on no other power may undertake anything there without their consent. The dominant power of the English fleet, backed by the land forces of Japan, excludes now the possibility of any effective outright competition

Germany and France will retain their colonial possessions in Asia only so long as they maintain friendly relations with the Japanese and the English. Russia must give up all active political enterprise in central Asia or on the Pacific Ocean, either entirely or at least for a long period. This puts an end to the ag gressive ambitious plans of our warriors. In spite of the declaration of State Councilor Witte in his last official dispatch from Portsmouth, Russia has for the time being ceased to be a great power in the far East.

"We have lost our reputation as a great military power on the fields of Manchuria and in the Straits of Korea," continues the 'yestnik, "and official Russia appears now in the eyes of Europe in an entirely new character from that in which it did before the war."

Our fatherland has become transformed from a powerful ally and friend capable of serving as a support for others in times of adversity into an object of condescending pity and patronage. No one seeks our political friendship, and there is no demand for it, and nevertheless we are importuned by friends who are anxious to give us useful advice, or even to undertake the management of our disorganized affairs. All feel an unusual sympathy for us since we were overcome by the Japanese. The Americans became filled suddenly with sympathy toward Russia, and announced it loudly to our chief plenipotentiary at Portsmouth. The English have suggested an Anglo-Russian understanding with the Anglo-Japanese treaty as a basis, a treaty which, in the main, is directed against us. The French and the Germans actually quarrel over their concern for the Russian finances, and our patriots think that western Europe and America have at last understood and appreciated the great qualities of official Russia. Many are apparently forgetting the true situation, and our political rôle after the peace of Portsmouth seems to them quite flattering to us.

Without deprecating at all the personal services, the good qualities, and the abilities of our former minister of finance, Witte, continues the Russian review, "we may yet be led to believe that he was honored in the West not so much for his past and present achievements as for his probable future rôle, for his being the only acceptable candidate for the position of the leading minister of the Russian Empire."

According to the opinion prevailing abroad, Russia is passing now through a period of internal weakness and of a difficult national crisis, and her present position may be taken advantage of by the more ambitious foreign powers. Hence the friendly care for our interests as displayed by Germany during our unfortunate war, and which appears to Witte so touching and so unselfish, even though this unselfishness was amply rewarded by our concessions in the arrangement of the Russo-German commercial treaty. If Russia is now in a state of decline and cannot alone manage her disorganized colossal estate, the foreign powers, and foremost among them Germany, will readily come to her rescue, just as they are helping Turkey, and as they had

The Net Result So Far.

In his article "Das Neue Russland," in the Sunday edition of the New York Staats-Zeitung, Mr. Herman Rosenthal passes in review the principal political events of this year in Russia, and shows how, by its favorite method of gov ernment à la Plehve, Czarism slid down the slope leading to the precipice into which sooner or later it must fall. The various manifestoes, issued on the spur of the moment, not only failed to check the revolutionary movement, but, by their ambiguity and lack of sincerity, caused the Liberals to link their fortunes with those of the Social Revolutionists. Thus, one saw the representatives of the zemstvos, the students, the jurists, the professors, and the workmen's organizations holding everywhere meetings in spite of the existing prohibitions and showing themselves more and more exacting in their wellplanned demands. They required not more and not less than a government based on democratic principles; and being conscious of their aim, they will reach it at the end.

The still little-appreciated German thinker and satirist, Lichtenberg, said:

One can get a clearer insight into states when one considers them as human individuals. They are then also children, and so long as they remain such monarchy is the best form of government for them. But as soon as these children grow up they are unwilling to be subjected to the same treatment, for, as is often the case, they are then really wiser than their father.

This simple sentence accurately explains the latest events in the vast empire of the Czar. The Russian people,-the word "people" taken in a more restricted sense,-are past the spoon; they have become wiser than the 66 Little Father."

A meaner government than that of Nicholas II. cannot be imagined. An absolutistic police state, with the Neronian cruelty of a minister like Plehve, who considered the setting of one class of the population against another to be a just policy, seemed an anachronism at the beginning of the twentieth century. The excesses of the perverse grand-ducal tyrant Sergius Alexandrovich discredited the whole royal family in the eyes of society. The incredible demoralization of the army and navy; the colossal corruption of the higher and lower officials; the utter ruin of the already muchneglected husbandry; in short, the whole rickety structure of the autocratic and bureaucratic system based upon hierarchic principles was rotten to the core, and its collapse was unavoidable. Beneath its ruins are buried thousands of innocent human victims. Such, however, is the eternal march of the world's history! Each deliverance must be bought by the nations with their blood.

Now the deliverance is at hand. The conclusion of peace between Japan and Russia and

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lic opinion among the intelligent class and in the Liberal press agrees that this forced renunciation of the great projects and enterprises in Asia is by no means to be counted among the unfortunate results of the inglorious war.

During the whole period extending from the death of Plehve to the publication of the latest manifesto of the Czar, the most prominent part in Russian politics was played by the former minister of finance and the present prime minister, Sergius Yurevich Witte. To his lot fell the elaboration of a modus operandi for the regulation of the relations between the helpless, obstinate autocracy and the energetic, progressive popular forces, a very heavy task, for which he does not seem to be particularly fit. owing to the love of peace of the interested powers, and to the collaboration of the haut finance and the peace-loving powers, he succeeded in concluding an honorable peace and in win ning the sympathy of the American public.

Indeed,

But he neither enjoys the love of the Russian court circles nor the respect and confidence of the Russian Liberals. The Witte manifesto is regarded, both by Russian Liberals and by the European press, as an awkward document utterly devoid of political wisdom, logical correctness, and manly resoluteness. It bears the unmistakable traces of the nervousness of the ambitious secretary of state who is impatient to extort the signature from the vacillating master, in order that he may reach the summit of power. Thus, the representatives of the zemstvos of Moscow refused to assist the new prime minister, and formulated new demands. And, indeed, the latest political events seem to justify their distrust of the government of the Czar, for it is responsible for the excesses committed by the police and the Cossacks; for the Jewish massacres, which, according to the documentary evidence published by the Jewish organ Vos Rhod, had been instigated by Trepov; for the slaughtering of students and intellectuals by the Black Hundred, and for other similar crimes which have lately been committed in Russia.

But is, then, the deliverance really at hand? The numerous pessimists, who are not well acquainted with the actual situation in new Russia, express their doubts. Others go even so far as to affirm that the one hundred millions of peasants are foreign to the revolutionary movement and were only incited by all kinds of agitators to rebel against the Czar.

This, indeed, is a very weak argument, for history teaches that in all great revolutions the work of deliverance was executed by the few chosen ones who by their indomitable courage and their perseverance in the execution of their well-laid plans win the confidence of the masses. Such honest, courageous, disinterested, and capable leaders abound in Russia, and, in spite of the Tatar instincts of the reactionary officials,

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THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, IN 1815, AT WHICH THE FATE OF POLAND WAS DECIDED.

(At this congress all the principal European nations were represented, and the illustration, which is from a rare steel print, shows some of the most famous delegates, including Wellington, Nesselrode, Metternich, Humboldt, and Talleyrand.)

RUSSIAN POLAND'S FIGHT FOR AUTONOMY.

RESTATING the historical relations of the Polish people to the "overstates," Russia, Austria, and Prussia, J. L. Poplawski, writing in the Przegland Wszechpolski (Pan-Polish Review), of Cracow, reminds us that the legal and historical basis of the relation of the kingdom of Poland to the Russian state are the provisions of the Congress of Vienna contained in the act closing that congress (June 9, 1815), which was to constitute the guarantee of the treaties concluded, on May 3, 1815, between Russia and Prussia, and between Russia and Austria. participants in the congress did not agree to the pretensions of Russia to regard the grand duchy of Warsaw, which had been created by Napoleon, as a conquered province; they consented only to the uniting of the duchy to Russia as a separate state, which Article I. of the act clearly states:

The

The duchy of Warsaw, with the exception of the provinces and districts [the parts of the duchy re-ceded to Prussia and to Austria, and the (then) republic of Cracow] which are otherwise disposed of by the following articles, is united to the Russian Empire, to which it shall be irrevocably attached by its constitution, to be possessed by his Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias, his heirs and successors, in perpetuity. His imperial majesty reserves to himself the right to give

an interior [territorial] extension as he will regard as fit. He shall assume, with his other titles, the title of King of Poland, agreeably to the form used and sanctioned for the titles attached to his other possessions.

The Poles that are subjects, respectively, of Russia, Austria, and Prussia shall obtain a representation and national institutions regulated by the mode of political existence that each of the governments to which they will belong will regard as useful and proper to grant them.

THE LEGAL BASIS OF POLAND'S FIGHT.

The second paragraph of the first article of the treaty of Vienna is the source, observes Mr. Poplawski, of all the erroneous or intentionally perverted opinions of the politico-legal relation of the kingdom of Poland to Russia of some Russian diplomatists and jurists, who, like Martens and Korkunov, argue that the Russian Emperor, conferring on the kingdom a representation and national institutions, "such as he regarded as proper," could revoke that conditional promise, could abrogate the constitution, and could change the politico-legal system of the country.

Korkunov even indicates a seeming contradiction between the second paragraph and the first, in which it

Empire... by its constitution, to be possessed by his Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias, his heirs and successors," from which it would follow that a constitution is the sine qua non of the dominion of the Russian Emperor in Poland. Meanwhile, the second paragraph,-upon which the Poles in Posen, Prussian Poland, base their right to separate national institutions, so far as it pertains to the Russo-Polish relation, refers not to the kingdom of Poland, but to the other parts of the old republic of Poland, which belong to Russia,-Lithuania and the Ruthenian provinces (Volhynia and the Ukraine),—and which the Congress of Vienna did not include in the kingdom of Poland created by it.

HOW RUSSIA HAS VIOLATED HER COMPACT.

After it had rejected the "pretensions" of Russia, the Congress of Vienna declared the union to Russia of a part of the duchy of Warsaw as a separate state (état),—the kingdom of Poland. The condition of the Russian Emperor's governing this country is the granting to it of a constitution and the preservation of a separate administration. The expression, both in the treaty of Vienna and in Article I. of the constitution promulgated by Emperor Alexander I. (December 24, 1815), that the kingdom is to be united to Russia forever, testifies explicitly that it is a question here of a union of two states endowed with equal rights. This is testified also by Article III. of the constitution, declaring the hereditability of the Polish crown in the Russian dynasty; this is testified also by the provision for a separate regency, by the fact that the kingdom did not take part in the wars carried on by Russia, etc. In a word, this is the relation of a real union, even less close than that which until recently joined Sweden and Norway; hence, some writers speak of it as of a personal union, depending solely on the fact of having the same monarch.

This is not the relation of a grant, which is made by one party and which may be taken back, or of a contract, which is made between two parties and which one party may break off. The kingdom of Poland was united to Russia by virtue of the enactments of the Congress of Vienna, the competency of which Russia recognized, and on conditions which she accepted. The relation of the kingdom of Poland to Russia has the sanction of international law, and not of a Russian state law. We, Poles, may not recognize that relation, because our assent to it was not asked; but the breach of that relation by us in 1830 did not at all absolve Russia from her formal engagements. So did those states understand this question which protested against the stripping of the congressional kingdom of Poland of its constitution and against the changes in the administration of the country.

To the question whether appealing by the Poles to the provisions of the Congress of Vienna and

of 1815 is possible, not so much from political as from moral and sentimental considerations, since it might be observed that the Congress of Vienna, properly speaking, sanctioned, in the name of Europe, a fourth partition of Poland, while the constitution of 1815 declares the perpetual union of the kingdom with Russia, the writer in the Przegland Wszechpolski makes reply:

As regards the Congress of Vienna, it acknowledged only the accomplished fact of the partition of Poland, but it did not, by any means, sanction that fact. The creation of the kingdom of Poland and of the republic of Cracow; the provision that the Poles that are subjects of Russia, Prussia, and Austria shall obtain a representation and national institutions; the right given to the Poles [by Article XIV. of the treaty of Vienna] of availing themselves of the means of communication ["the free navigation of the rivers and canals throughout the whole extent of old Poland"], and of the free exchange of the products of agriculture and of industry on the whole extent of the old republic of Poland [“the circulation of the products of the soil and of industry between the different Polish provinces "],—all this testifies that the majority of the powers participating in the congress understood the monstrosity of the partition of one nation and of the stripping of it of political self-activity, and that those powers wanted to amend that enormity, even though in part..

Our right to

Its basis, and

But it is really not a question of that. self-active existence needs no sanction. sanction as well, is our will. But if in the name of national interest we reckon with the conditions of the moment, if we must limit our will by the range of feasibility, then we should exploit all that can facilitate for us the attainment of the desired object. In the defense of our own persons, in private affairs, we all appeal to laws, the injustice of which we recognize,— if they protect us. Russian jurisdiction in Poland is certainly summa injuria; and yet, we have recourse to that jurisdiction and to the Russian laws in the defense of our life, honor, or property. If that is proper and moral in personal affairs, then it is still more so in the defense of national rights and interests. Every means ought here to be exploited; it is not allowed to disregard any.

But we must know, not only what we claim, but also on what we base our claims. We cannot base our claims, in presence of the opposite party, on our interest. For, in order to obtrude one's own interest upon some one else, one must have great power, and if we had that, we plainly would retake with our own force what was taken from us by foreigners by violence. But we likewise cannot base our claims on the interest of the Russian state or of the Russian nation. That would be insincere, and, therefore, ineffectual, and derogatory to us. Hence, it remains to us to base our aspirations on the law, such as it is, of which we can avail ourselves.

Hungarians, Swedes, and Finns, this writer points out, have already won their national fight or are sure to by appealing to the legal basis of their relation to the governing state, demonstrating how the "overstate" had not kept its promise. Poland, he believes, must fol

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