ls and companies habitually act according to their
private interests, and the State interferes as little as possible;
private initiative acts as it pleases, unless the authorities can prove
that important bad consequences will necessarily result. In Russia, the
_onus probandi_ lies on the other side; private initiative is allowed to
do nothing until it gives guarantees against all possible bad
consequences. When any great enterprise is projected, the first question
is--"How will this new scheme affect the interests of the State?" Thus,
when the course of a new railway has to be determined, the military
authorities are always consulted, and their opinion has a great influence
on the ultimate decision. The consequence of this is that the railway
map of Russia presents to the eye of the tactician much that is quite
unintelligible to the ordinary observer--a fact that will become apparent
to the uninitiated as soon as a war breaks out in Eastern Europe. Russia
is no longer what she was in the days of the Crimean war, when troops and
stores had to be conveyed hundreds of miles by the most primitive means
of transport. At that time she had only about 750 miles of railway; now
she has more than 11,000 miles, and every year new lines are constructed.

_Russia_, by D. M. Wallace, M.A.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.

As giving an idea of the old way of signalling and precautions employed
to ensure safety on the Hudson River Railroad nearly forty years ago, we
append the following from the _Albany Journal_. It should be premised
that this road extends from New York to East Albany, a distance of only
144 miles:--

"AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.--As you are whirled along over the Hudson River
Railroad at the rate of 40 miles an hour, you catch a glimpse, every
minute or two, of a man waving something like a white pocket handkerchief
on the end of a stick, with a satisfactory sort of expression of
countenance. If you take the trouble to count, you will find that it
happens some two hundred times between East Albany and Thirty-first
street. It looks like rather a useless ceremony, at first glance, but is
a pretty important one, nevertheless.

"There are 225 of these 'flagmen' stationed at intervals along the whole
length of the line. Just before a train is to pass, each one walks over
his "beat," and looks to see that every track and tie, every tunnel,
switch, rail, clamp, and rivet, is