ers may be seen as many evidences of culture and fine feeling as will be found in Berlin, Paris, or London. Their newspapers, magazines, and reviews will compare favorably in thought and literary form with ours; their knowledge of science, art, and music is not inferior to that of western Europe; and in literature the class that has given to the world Gogol, Krylof, Pushkin, Lermontof, Goncharof, Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Nekrassof, Dostoyevsky, and a host of others not so well known to us need not fear to stand up and be measured with the élite of Germany. So far as altruistic feeling and sterling qualities of character are concerned, the men of the First Duma, the rank and file of the Constitutional Democratic party, and hundreds of thousands of liberals and revolutionists in all parts of the Empire, are the peers of any living men in any civilized land.

"But," the believer in Russian barbarism may say, we don't question the culture of the upper classes; we are talking about the seventy per cent of illiterate peasants-the great mass of human clods, who have no imagination, no enlightenment, no unselfish feeling, and no appreciation of the things that we call good. They are the semi-barbarians whose possible supremacy at the end of the war may become a menace to western Europe.

To this I should confidently reply: There is in Russia no preponderant mass of such people. There, as in other countries, one may find cruel men, savage men, and brutal men-looters, thieves, highwaymen, and murderers-but they are the exceptions, not the exponents of national character. In the words of the Japanese couplet:

"The continents, in all, two nations bear; The good and bad, and these mixed

everywhere."

Russia contains, it is true, a mass of illiterate peasants; but their ignorance is not their own fault. They are kept ignorant by a despotic oligarchy, which finds it easier to control and govern ignorant men than educated men. But these peasants, illiterate though they be, are not so lacking in imagination, enlightenment, fine feeling, and appreciation of the good as the non-Russian world seems to suppose.

It has always been erroneously thought that the Russian peasants are lacking in imagination, and even their courage in battle has been attributed to this alleged deficiency.

"Of course they are brave," it is said, "because they are stolid and unimaginative and don't realize anything." As a matter of fact, however, the folk-lore of the Russian peasants is as highly imaginative as any literature of the kind in Europe. A notable illustration of this was given to the readers of The Outlook a few years ago in the Russian folk-tale "Napoleonder." I might safely challenge the exponents of German culture to produce from their own folk-lore anything so imaginative, anything so altruistic in spirit, or anything so closely in accord with the attitude that all Christian nations, outside of Germany, are now taking toward war.

That the great mass of the Russian peasants are unenlightened-so far as enlightenment depends upon literacy—is true; but they are not unintelligent. Neither are they lacking in generous feeling or incapable of appreciating what we call good.

But," the believer in Russian barbarism may say, "how about the anti-Jewish pogroms? Has there ever been anything more cruel, savage, and brutal ?"

Not often, I admit; but the fierce hostility of a part of the Russian people—the least intelligent part-toward the Jews was the result of deception and incitement for which the Jew-hating oligarchy was mainly, if not wholly, responsible. The Russian peasant is naturally liberal and tolerant; but if you make him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Jews spit on and trample under foot the sacred ikons (pictures of the Madonna and Child) which he and his Church revere, if you thoroughly convince him that the Jews murder young Russian children in order to get Christian blood to mix with the dough of Passover cakes, you completely transform his natural character and make him capable of anything. That is what a Jewhating Czar and a Jew-hating oligarchy did— or permitted to be done-and on their heads, not on the heads of the Russian people, lies the Jewish blood spilled in countless pogroms.

Why should the Russian peasants be more hostile to the Jews than to the Mohammedan Tartars? The latter are also unbelievers and aliens, and it was they who murdered and oppressed the Russian peasants' forefathers in centuries past. But has anybody

ever heard of an anti-Tartar or anti-Moham

medan pogrom? There are millions of

Mohammedan Tartars in Russia, but the Russian peasants everywhere live side by side with them in peace and concord. I have

attended Mohammedan services in Tartar mosques with Russian peasants many times and in many parts of the Empire, but I have never heard a contemptuous or disrespectful word spoken of the worshipers or their services. If the Czar and his associates had deceived the peasants with regard to the Mohammedan Tartars and the Buddhistic Buriats as they deceived them with regard to the Jews, the former, not the latter, would have been the victims of the popular wrath and the sufferers from pogroms.

As for the alleged incapacity of the common, illiterate Russian peasant to show or appreciate generous, unselfish emotion, it is a popular delusion, fostered and strengthened perhaps by general belief in that aphoristic compendium of misinformation— "Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tartar." Six or eight weeks ago an educated gentleman of Petrograd went into a remote peasant village in the province of Poltava, and was approached by an illiterate peasant woman who wanted him to write a letter for her to her husband, a common soldier of the line, serving in one of the armies of the Grand Duke Nicholas in Poland. The woman seemed to be in grief, and as soon as she began to dictate her letter tears trickled down her cheeks.

"Tell him," she said, "that I am well, and that I send him a poklón" (a profound bow, made by inclining the body from the waist). waist). "Tell him that the grain has been harvested and is safe in the barn. Tell him that the baby has another tooth; that Va、 nushka" (little Ivan) "is going to the parish school; that we have plenty of wood and provisions for the winter; that everything is going well" (blagopoluchno). "That's all. Sign it Katia.'"`

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But, my dear woman," said the amanuensis, "if everything is going so well, why do you cry?"

Oh, bahrin !" (master), she replied, in a voice choking with sobs; "everything is not going well. The grain is not harvested-I couldn't get any help; the baby is sick; we haven't enough food for the winter; there is nobody to look after the place; and everything is going to pieces !"

But, matushka!” (my dear little mother) said the amanuensis. If that is so, why do you lie to your husband ?"

"May God forgive me!" she replied. "I can't tell him the truth. He is fighting for his country in Poland, and he mustn't be

worried or disheartened by bad news from home."

-a

Is this the behavior of a barbarian"cruel, savage, brutal person," who has no unselfish feeling and no appreciation of what we call good? There are millions of such illiterate peasants in Russia-men as well as women-and no Frenchman or Englishman need feel ashamed of association with them in peace or in war. A distinguished Prussian general, who is now a prisoner in Petrograd, is quoted in the New York "Times as saying, "There is no dishonor in being captured by the Russians." Then certainly there can be no dishonor in fighting beside them.

Nothing is more striking in modern Russia than the idealism and altruistic spirit of the liberal and enlightened class. These characteristics are not fostered or encouraged by the Government; on the contrary, they are discountenanced and repressed; but they struggle to the surface in every possible field. The so-called "going to the people" in the early seventies was a manifestation of this spirit, and it continues to be exhibited in the efforts to improve the condition of workers in factories and mines; in the attempts to distribute libraries in the peasant villages; in the organization of lecture courses for the enlight

enment of the ignorant masses; in the promotion of co-operative societies; in the establishment of consumers' leagues; in the opening of tea-rooms for peasants suddenly deprived of vodka; and in countless other ways. One who reads attentively the Russian periodicals can hardly fail to get the impression that a large part of the educated Russian class is constantly engaged in work for the benefit of the uneducated, the exploited, and the oppressed. This altruistic labor is thwarted to a great extent by governmental regulation and repression; but the spirit is there, and it is practically irrepressible. I would undertake to-day to get together in Russia for purely altruistic purposes a greater number of enthusiastic, devoted "social workers" than could be gathered in any other country in Europe. In Germany it is the Government that does most of the training, enlightening, and social uplifting. In Russia the people do it-or try to do it; and, although it is not done so well as in Germany, there is greater promise in it for the future.

If the people of Russia ever get full control of their own destinies, there will be in that country a renaissance, or, to speak more accurately perhaps, a development, that will surprise the world as much as did the transformation of Japan.

UR greatest nature lover and nature writer, the man who has done most in securing for the American people the incalculable benefit of appreciation of wild nature in his own land, is John Burroughs. Second only to John Burroughs, and in some respects ahead even of John Burroughs, was John Muir. Ordinarily, the man who loves the woods and the mountains, the trees, the flowers, and the wild things, has in him some indefinable quality of charm which appeals even to those sons of civilization who care for little outside of paved streets and brick walls. John Muir was a fine illustration of this rule.

He was

by birth a Scotchman-a tall and spare man, with the poise and ease natural to him who has lived much alone under conditions of

1 Elsewhere in this issue will be found an editorial estimate of John Muir; a portrait appears in the picture section.-THE EDITORS.

labor and hazard. His was a dauntless soul, and also one brimming over with friendliness and kindliness.

He was emphatically a good citizen. Not only are his books delightful, not only is he the author to whom all men turn when they think of the Sierras and northern glaciers, and the giant trees of the California slope, but he was also-what few nature lovers are a man able to influence contemporary thought and action on the subjects to which he had devoted his life. He was a great factor in influencing the thought of California and the thought of the entire country so as to secure the preservation of those great natural phenomena-wonderful canyons, giant trees, slopes of flower-spangled hillsides-which make California a veritable Garden of the Lord.

It was my good fortune to know John

Muir. He had written me, even before I met him personally, expressing his regret that when Emerson came to see the Yosemite, his (Emerson's) friends would not allow him to accept John Muir's invitation to spend two or three days camping with him, so as to see the giant grandeur of the place under surroundings more congenial than those of a hotel piazza or a seat on a coach. I had answered him that if ever I got in his neighborhood I should claim from him the treatment that he had wished to accord Emerson. Later, when as President I visited the Yosemite, John Muir fulfilled the promise he had at that time made to me. He met me with a couple of pack-mules, as well as with riding mules for himself and myself, and a first-class packer and cook, and I spent a delightful three days and two nights with him.

The first night we camped in a grove of giant sequoias. It was clear weather, and we lay in the open, the enormous cinnamoncolored trunks rising about us like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than was ever conceived by any human architect.

One incident surprised me not a little. Some thrushes-I think they were Western hermit-thrushes-were singing beautifully in the solemn evening stillness. I asked some question concerning them of John Muir, and to my surprise found that he had not been listening to them and knew nothing about them. Once or twice I had been off with John Burroughs, and had found that, although he was so much older than I was, his ear and his eye were infinitely better as regards the sights and sounds of wild life, or at least of the smaller wild life, and I was accustomed unhesitatingly to refer to him regarding any bird note that puzzled me. But John Muir, I found, was not interested in the small things of nature unless they were unusually conspicuous. Mountains, cliffs, trees, appealed to him tremendously, but birds did not unless they possessed some very peculiar and interesting as well as conspicuous traits, as in the case of the water ouzel.

In the same way,

he knew nothing of the wood mice; but the more conspicuous beasts, such as bear and deer, for example, he could tell much about.

All next day we traveled through the forest. Then a snow-storm came on, and at night we camped on the edge of the Yosemite, under the branches of a magnificent silver fir, and very warm and comfortable we were, and a very good dinner we had before we rolled up in our tarpaulins and blankets for the night.

The following day we went down into the Yosemite and through the valley, camping in the bottom among the timber.

There was a delightful innocence and good will about the man, and an utter inability to imagine that any one could either take or give offense. Of this I had an amusing illustration just before we parted. We were saying good-by, when his expression suddenly changed, and he remarked that he had totally forgotten something. He was intending to go to the Old World with a great tree lover and tree expert from the Eastern States who possessed a somewhat crotchety temper. He informed me that his friend had written him, asking him to get from me personal letters to the Russian Czar and the Chinese Emperor; and when I explained to him that I could not give personal letters to foreign potentates, he said: "Oh, well, read the letter yourself, and that will explain just what I want." Accordingly he thrust the letter on me. It contained not only the request which he had mentioned, but also a delicious preface, which, with the request, ran somewhat as follows:

"I hear Roosevelt is coming out to see you. He takes a sloppy, unintelligent interest in forests, although he is altogether too much under the influence of that creature Pinchot, and you had better get from him letters to the Czar of Russia and the Emperor of China, so that we may have better opportunity to examine the forests and trees of the Old World."

Of course I laughed heartily as I read the letter, and said: "John, do you remember exactly the words in which this letter was couched?" Whereupon a look of startled. surprise came over his face, and he said: "Good gracious! there was something unpleasant about you in it; wasn't there? I had forgotten. Give me the letter back."

So I gave him back the letter, telling him that I appreciated it far more than if it had not contained the phrases he had forgotten, and that while I could not give him and his companion letters to the two rulers in question, I would give him letters to our Ambassadors, which would bring about the same result.

John Muir talked even better than he wrote. His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him. But he wrote well, and while his books have not the peculiar charm that a very, very few other writers on similar subjects have had, they will nevertheless last long. Our generation owes much to John Muir.