our weakness when directed toward external issues.  I could not map out my own general education, even; forced by the traditions of my family I was placed in charge of the Holy Synod and taught by Pobedonostzev to regard myself as the source of SPIRITUAL POWER and instructed to regard an unorthodox opinion as a transportation offense.  Now, while I reverence profoundly the sacred tenets of my holy religion, I regard religious freedom as indispensable to the dignity of spiritual belief.  For that reason I made that reformation in 1905.  As I grew up I rebelled against my intolerable confinement,—­I went out among the PEOPLE and TALKED WITH THEM.  They were friendly in most instances and gave me very good advice.  I did not need a bodyguard to go about.  I was as safe among the people as I would be in the Winter Palace.  Often have I walked to the hotels alone to call on some particular friend without any thought of fear.  Nor was it necessary,—­I liked the people as genuinely as I believe they respected me.  I learned their hunger for land by going around; and it was on that account that I projected and completed our Siberian Railways so as to give our people the coveted opportunity and an outlet to the markets of the world.  Given an opportunity to accumulate and prosper, men will hesitate about going to war unless THEY ARE MISLED. I saw such an opportunity in international trade.  I visited the Orient, extensively investigating the commercial field in that direction.  It was a mighty task, necessitating a reference to others who should have been as much interested in the accomplishment as I was myself.  Their mistakes have made me quite unhappy and there has always been CONTENTION between my Ministers and myself.  If Witte had kept his hands off when Count Solsky got after the plotting school teachers and rebellious students, the propaganda against my reign which has honeycombed the Empire with sedition might have been checked in time to prevent this dissolution,—­for it is more than a “revolution.”  It is idealism run amuck.  France, England, the people of America, have been duped by the intelligentia—­the Kadets—­who never seemed to realize that in order to hold this Empire together not only FORCE but SUPERSTITION was required,—­’si mundus vult decipi decipiatur,’ it is the only principle that will hold unorganized ignorance in disciplinary subjection to orderly and regulated progress; and without this discipline the ARMY, or the power that holds this incongruous Nation together, will dissolve, as you may now see, while the whole Empire will fly to pieces.  My strong Ministers were too physical and myopic to look beyond their noses.  They were afraid to seem afraid of truth,—­and they even accused me of plotting with Kazantsev and Feodorov against the life of my Minister of Finance,—­always excuses for fomenting discontent!  They never seemed to realize that the HAPPINESS of the PEOPLE meant the SECURITY of the CROWN.  As a matter