tend the cattle, has no value. Therefore the old
nomadic peasants were robbed of one privilege after the other, until
finally, during the first year of the sixteenth century, they were
formally made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian
peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves and they
remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate had become so
terrible that they were beginning to die out.

In the seventeenth century, this new state with its growing territory
which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had become a force with which
the rest of Europe was obliged to reckon. In 1618, after the death of
Boris Godunow, the Russian nobles had elected one of their own number
to be Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow family of
Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the Kremlin.

In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another Feodor,
was born. When the child was ten years old, his step-sister Sophia took
possession of the Russian throne. The little boy was allowed to spend
his days in the suburbs of the national capital, where the foreigners
lived. Surrounded by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss
apothecaries, Italian barbers, French dancing teachers and German
school-masters, the young prince obtained a first but rather
extraordinary impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where
things were done differently.

When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed Sister Sophia
from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler of Russia. He was not
contented with being the Tsar of a semi-barbarous and half-Asiatic
people. He must be the sovereign head of a civilised nation. To change
Russia overnight from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire
was no small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable head.
Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great operation of grafting
Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was performed. The patient did not
die. But he never got over the shock, as the events of the last five
years have shown very plainly.

RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN

RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING
POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE

IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first voyage to western
Europe. He travelled by way of Berlin and went to Holland and to
England. As a child he had almost been drowned sailing a homemade boat
in the duck pond of his father's country h