The Revolution in Russia may alter a few things, but it can scarcely effect much change in the character of its people.  This iron mountain is an illustration of the mixture of mediaevalism and modernism to be found in Russia’s industrial development.  The summit of the mountain is capped with an Orthodox Greek church, and desperate efforts have been made to secure its removal to a less exalted and less valuable site.  I was informed that the mere suggestion proved almost fatal to its originators, and by so narrow a margin did they escape that the proposal is not likely to be repeated.  I made the suggestion quite innocently, and produced such a storm that only my foreign ignorance provided me with a satisfactory excuse.  I was asked:  “Would you take God from His place over this work?” One other thing I noticed everywhere.  There was not one important workshop from Irkutsk to Perm without its altar, candles and all complete, and scarcely a business or Government office without its ikon facing you the moment you entered.

I attended the Orthodox Easter celebration at Perm.  The whole edifice was crowded with people of every walk in life.  I was not merely an interested spectator, but one who believes that where man worships he appeals to the same God no matter by what name He is called.

I watched this crowd, each holding a long lighted taper, stand for hours making the sign of the Cross, while the gorgeously-robed priest chanted the service and made sundry waves with his hands and gave certain swings with the incense-burner.  The responses were made by a group of men with beautiful, well-trained voices, but the people looked spiritually starved.  Not one took the slightest part in the service beyond an occasional whispered murmur, nor are they expected to.  They stood outside the pale; there was no place for them.  I must say that I contrasted this isolation of the congregation with the joint act of worship as performed in our churches, both Free and Anglican.  I looked at these “Christian” men and women and thought of the butchery of Petrograd and Moscow, the wells of Kushva and Taighill, and the ruthless disregard of human life by both sides in this brutal internecine strife.  I wondered whether I had stumbled upon at least one of the causes.  At any rate, I did not forget we also had the heroes of the Watkin Works.

Nadegenska is the extreme north-west point of the Ural system of railways, and is famous because of its great privately-owned steelworks.  These works were originated by a poor peasant woman, who developed the whole district until it has become the most northerly Asiatic industrial centre in the Russian Empire.  The contrast in treatment at these privately-owned works compared with those owned by the Government is significant.  The Soviet Commissar knew nothing about the business himself, and appointed Works Commissars, still more ignorant of their duties, to control the establishment.  The result was that production