efficiency was really far the stronger of the two. Had Peter the Great been
eternal, he might possibly have continued to exercise an effective control
over the administrative system which he created; for he was a man of
superhuman energy and will-power. But most Tsars, who are men of ordinary
capacity, found it impossible to do so. The consequence was that
the bureaucracy acquired what amounted in practice to absolute
irresponsibility. Now irresponsibility is demoralising to any
administration, however democratic be the principles upon which its
officials are selected. A bureaucracy, ruling without proper external
control, becomes a prey to the demons of red tape, routine, officialdom and
place-hunting; it tends to stifle individual initiative and the sense
of moral responsibility, since it forgets the real object of its
existence--the good government of the country--in its passion for
self-preservation and its desire to secure the smooth-working of the
machine; it becomes inhuman, intensely conservative and corrupt. Above all
it develops a hyper-sensitiveness to lay criticism, which compels it to do
all in its power--and in Russia that power is unlimited--to crush freedom
of speech and freedom of the press. The problem, however, of devising some
popular check upon its action was an extremely difficult one for the simple
reason that the mass of the Russian people never have taken, and even
to-day do not take, any interest in political questions. Nevertheless the
Tsar, Alexander II., who was one of the most enlightened monarchs that
ever sat upon the Russian throne, determined to attempt a solution.
Unfortunately on March 1, 1881, the very day when Alexander had given his
approval to a scheme of constitutional reform, involving the establishment
of representative institutions, he was assassinated by revolutionaries.
This fatal act put back the clock for twenty-five years, the court and the
nation were thrown into the arms of the bureaucracy as their only protector
against terrorism, and reaction reigned supreme. Meanwhile the bureaucracy
grew more corrupt, more tyrannical, more inefficient every day, while on
the other hand the party of reform, thrust as it were underground and
hunted like rats, became more and more bitter in spirit and more and more
extreme in theory.

It is important to bear in mind that the struggle has never from beginning
to end been one which divided the nation as a whole into two hostile camps.
Pu