The Duma worked hard during last session, but only on bureaucratic ien-sures of tenth-rate importance, It did not touch the Agrarian question at all, and the only good it did was in connexion with the Budget. Its prompt refusal of the money for the new battleships until the Navy Department is reorganized, will be fresh in the reader's memory, but that refaral will not mean so much, if there is any trath in the ramour that in this matter it had the secret support of M. Stolypin. M. Gutchkoff's attack on the custom giving the best poste in the army to Grand Dakes, and the Duma's refusal, in its speech to the Throne, to style the Emperor " Autocrat " certainly indicate progress, but, ax I have already remarked, this progress is almost imperceptible outside the Dama.
Press ix a little freer, it is trae, but there is no guarantee that its freedom will last.
Why did the Duma not turn its attention to the all-important question of Reform? There are many causes. The Budget took up mach el its time. The Duma instinctively felt that, before approaching this dangerous question, it should first make certain that ilx own existence would continue, Intimidated by the fate of its predecessors, it was feeling its way, reconnoitring. The great cause, however, is that the majority of the members have no fixed ideas on the subject of reform. As independent country gentlemen they are in a different position from the peasant-members the first two Dumas whom their fellow-villagers sent to the Duma to get land, or not to dare show their face again in the village. The third Duma was also, we are told, afraid of the surprises that would meet them once they touched on the subject of Reform, of the divisions: that would at once take place in their body, divisions which will not at all follow the lines of party cleavage.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.