that of Germany, the Russian
people have been infinitely more democratic than the Germans. In the
same way, while the institutions of America are much further developed
in the direction of general democracy than those of Russia, the very
reverse is the case with public opinion. The educated classes of
Russia have the courage and intelligence to call a spade a spade.
They realise that they are partly responsible for the sins committed
by the Russian nation, even though they have been powerless heretofore
to remedy these conditions in the face of an armed and organised
autocracy, backed by the moral, intellectual and military force of
Germany and by the money of France and England. Andreyev, for example,
regards the Jewish problem as primarily a Russian problem. It is one
of the chief burdens, if not the chief burden, which has been crushing
the Russian nation. In this book he says:

"When did the 'Jewish question' leap on my back?--I do not know. I was
born with it and under it. From the very moment I assumed a conscious
attitude towards life until this very day I have lived in its noisome
atmosphere, breathed in the poisoned air which surrounds all these
'problems,' all these dark, harrowing alogisms, unbearable to the
intellect.

"And yet I, a Russian intellectual, a happy representative of the
sovereign race, although fully conscious and convinced that the
'Jewish question' is no question at all,--I felt powerless and doomed
to the most sterile tribulation of spirit. For, all the clear-cut
arguments of my intellect, the most fervent tirades and speeches, the
sincerest tears of compassion and outcries of indignation unfailingly
broke against a dull, unresponsive wall. But all powerlessness, if it
is unable to prevent a crime, becomes complicity; and this was the
result: personally guiltless of any offence against my brother, I have
become in the eyes of all those unconcerned and those of my brother
himself, a Cain."

The new Russia is being born while I write these lines, and
intelligent Americans are discussing nothing else except this great
world event--comparable in importance even to the colossal war itself.
If we wish to understand educated Russia--which has brought about the
change--many-sided, large-hearted and intellectually more brilliant
perhaps than the educated class of any other nation, we cannot do
better than to read and think over what that galaxy of Russian genius
that has composed the present volu