The policy of the Russian Government, on the other hand, has been marked by that inconsistency, political blindness, and arbitrariness which one expects from an irresponsible bureaucracy.  For ninety years Finland was left alone to work out her own salvation, entirely apart from that of the rest of the Empire; and then suddenly it was discovered that her coasts were of the highest strategical importance, and that she was developing a commercial and industrial system in dangerous competition with the tender plant of commerce and industry in Russia itself.  The Slavophils raised an outcry, and the decree went out that the Russian whale should swallow this active and prosperous little Jonah.  The former policy was really as stupid, though less cruel, than the latter.  Had there been anything like that steady political tradition and wide political experience in Russia which we can draw upon in England, the Imperial Government would have from the first endeavoured to draw Finland closer to the Empire, not by bands of steel and iron but by the more delicate and more permanent ties of considerateness, affection, and self-interest.  It is political stupidity, based upon ignorance and inexperience, and not inhumanity, which is the real explanation of Russia’s unfortunate relations with her subject peoples during the past century.  Moreover, the political machinery which has hitherto served her own internal needs is the worst possible instrument for dealing with provinces which possess a full measure of Western political consciousness together with the traditions of political liberty.  Russia, therefore, requires representative institutions not merely for the political education of her own people and as a check upon bureaucratic tyranny and incompetency, but also in order that she may adopt some fair and consistent policy towards her subject nationalities.

It may be optimistic, but I cannot help feeling that the present war will do much for Russia, much for Finland, much for Poland.  Russia is fighting to defend a small nation against oppression, she is fighting a life-and-death struggle with the military bureaucracy which we call “Germany” for the moment, she is fighting on behalf of “liberty” and of the “scraps of paper” upon which the freedom of States and individuals depends.  All this will leave a profound effect upon the national consciousness, and may even bring home for the first time to the people at large the meaning of political freedom.  Russia is so vast, so loose in structure, so undeveloped in those means of intercommunication such as roads, railways, newspapers, etc., which make England like a small village-community in comparison, that it takes the shock of a great war to draw the whole people together.  That it has done so, no one who has read the papers during the last two months can doubt.  War, as a historical fact, has always been beneficial to Russia; the Crimean War led to the emancipation of the serfs, the Japanese War led