Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-05-14

must ltpolL immediately the ARRIVAL OF
any person. No man may sleep single
night in any Russian house without
being the subject of police record, and
every person who calls upon him must
be reported as well.
This concierge system, similar to that
of France, is the most powerful aid to
the police that ever has been devised
1t gives the most perfect supervision
over every person who has money enough
to buy bed at night Outside of these
lie the vagabonds. There are twenty
thousand of these vagabonds, or Rats,
in St. Petersburg tramps'' we should
call them, always a fruitful breeding
ground for crime. The Countess Tolstoi
no relation of the eminent writer-told
me that she once was amazed and horri-
fed to find that her own concierge was
sheltering some sixty of these vagabonds
in the basement of her palace, the base
ment being a portion of the building
which, as in Italy, the family never enter.
The concierge was exacting ten cents
apiece from his dodgers, and feeding them
with scraps from the family table; and
but for smallpox patient among them
the fact never would have been known
But even these vagabonds are looked
after by the police with the utmost care.
Perhaps one in every ten of them is a
police spy, drawing small stipend from
the Government. They are as ragged, as
disreputable, as their fellows, but so vigi-
liant and active that nothing happens
underground that is not known. 1t is
perfectly true that in Russia even the
walls have ears.
That the peasantry has revolted in GER
tain places is the natural result not of
progressive or of revolutionary ideas, but
of the withdrawal of troops, of privations
and pressures incidental to their lowly
condition. When the cat is away the
mice will play. But these mice are the
most superstitious people in Europe, and
can be controlled and held in check only
by two forces their own ignorance and
incapacity to better their condition, and
the Church. The Gar is the head of
the Church, and shooting hundred
times at hundred mobs in St. Peters
burg would not affect the superstitious
awe in which he is held by a nation of
peasants. But the Church is the great
governmental factor in dealing with the
peasantry; this is why it is relied upon
by the Government, and this is why it
is hated by the radicals. Were the Gar
less devout than he is personally, were
he infldel at heart and statesman to the
core, he would lean no less heavily upon
Pobiedonostseff the Procurator of the
Holy Synod, and incline no less to the
policy which the latter has pronounced.
1t is the only possible policy.
The education of the peasantry of
course means the end of monarchy.
The divine right of kings is a principle
of government which has done its part
in social evolution, but has had its dav.
But the development of an intelligent
peasantry in Russia is the work of at
least century. And were any form of
representative government which truly
represented the people possible in Russia
to-day, it would be a parliament entirely
under the control of the Church, popu-
lar election which would as little repre-
sent the people as does that of Spain
The unthinking class is too great; the
thinkers are too few, too impractical and