t 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,