sian life--any such man
can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his
privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes
away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.

That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the
noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the
Creator's power; for this dimly lighted "soul" has nothing to cheer him
on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink
and the hope of more to come. He is harassed by a ruthless
tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous distances over
impracticable roads. When the famine comes, and come it assuredly will,
the moujik has no alternative but to stay where he is and starve. Since
Alexander II. of philanthropic memory made the Russian serf a free man,
the blessings of freedom have been found to resolve themselves chiefly
into a perfect liberty to die of starvation, of cold, or of dire
disease. When he was a serf this man was of some small value to some
one; now he is of no consequence to any one whatsoever except himself,
and, with considerable intelligence, he sets but small store upon his
own existence. Freedom, in fact, came to him before he was ready for it;
and, hampered as he has been by petty departmental tyranny, governmental
neglect, and a natural stupidity, he has made very small progress toward
a mental independence. All that he has learnt to do is to hate his
tyrants. When famine urges him, he goes blindly, helplessly, dumbly, and
tries to take by force that which is denied by force.

With us in England the poor man raises up his voice and cries aloud when
he wants something. He always wants something--never work, by the
way--and therefore his voice pervades the atmosphere. He has his evening
newspaper, which is dear at the moderate sum of a halfpenny. He has his
professional organizers, and his Trafalgar Square. He even has his
members of Parliament. He does no work, and he does not starve. In his
generation the poor man thinks himself wise. In Russia, however, things
are managed differently. The poor man is under the heel of the rich.
Some day there will be in Russia a Terror, but not yet. Some day the
moujik will erect unto himself a rough sort of a guillotine, but not in
our day. Perhaps some of us who are young men now may dimly read in our
dotage of a great upheaval beside which the Terror of France will be
tame and u