coal-mines; but the demand suddenly stops at coal-mines, and does not proceed to include, as logically bound, all other natural resources, including land; for, if the demand had gone so far, the farmer would have taken alarm! And again, the unimproved land-values tax, borrowed from Henry George by muddle-headed demagogues, tends towards the confiscation of all rent, actual and potential; but not a word is said about landnationalisation, which is its only logical and just consummation. For, again, the farmer would have taken alarm! For a good many years past, there has been a kind of tacit alliance between some of the earlier farmers' leaders and the Socialist Labour wing. Partridge, the first editor of the Grain Growers' Guide,' was a Radical Socialist; and the 'Grain Growers' Guide' has carried on the tradition to this day, in spite of the fact that the United Grain Growers' Company has come to be one of the most powerful aggregations of capital in the country. But the truth is that there is no natural connexion, there can be no abiding connexion, between the Canadian farmer and Labour, for he is both capitalist and labourer, and occupies for the moment an intermediate position between two warring forces. And, considering that all his efforts are directed towards lifting him out of the inferior into the superior position, it is not difficult to guess on which side his sympathies and his interests will ultimately lie. It would, therefore, be premature for English readers to take it for granted that, because the taxation of unimproved land-values occupies an important place in the Farmers' Platform to-day, it would necessarily become Federal law if the Farmers' Party triumphed at the polls. Two obvious and grave instances of the contagion of American ideas are the demand for the establishment of measures of direct legislation through the initiative, referendum, and recall,' and the demand for a bone-dry Canada.' In both these we can trace the insidious methods of American penetration. Prohibition, indeed, which has swept like a plague all over North America (with the exception of Quebec) is prima facie repugnant to the spirit of British institutions. It is an outrage on the freedom of the subject; it is the denial of the private rights of the individual. Accept Prohibition as anything more than a temporary war measure, and the first breach has been made in that liberty of conscience which it has required so many centuries of struggle to win. The American view appears to be that a bare majority is to have the right of dictating to the private individual in the matter of his tastes and habits. Such a view is utterly at variance with British traditions. If it spreads in Canada, if it gains a permanent foothold, it can only be because Americans there outnumber the British-born. From the regulation of habits and tastes, it is only a step to the regulation of speech and thought. The tyranny that would ensue from the Pussy-footing of Canada is too horrible to contemplate.* Direct legislation is equally out of harmony with British institutions. Indeed, it must in the end result in their complete overthrow. Responsible government would be destroyed; for the real leaders would no longer be the prominent men in Parliament, but the agitators and nameless conspirators who engineer referendums. Here, again, the people of Canada must make a definite choice. They cannot mould themselves at one and the same time on the pattern of British Democracy and on the pattern of American Democracy. To complete the picture of the conflict and confusion of political ideas in Canada to-day, it is enough to add that the very Platform advocating the Referendum and Prohibition, which taken together strike at the roots of personal freedom and secure the tyranny of the bare majority, nevertheless advocates the removal of the press censorship and the restoration of the right of speech, and includes proportional representation among its items. Here, again, a choice must be made. The object of proportional representation is the adequate representation of minorities, the safeguarding of minority rights. The object of the Referendum is to ride roughshod over minorities of any kind, and to reduce them to impotence and silence. How can the two be reconciled? A critical study of the Farmers' National Political * Since this was written British Columbia has set an example to the rest of the Continent by rejecting Prohibition with a majority of two to one. Platform thus reveals many divergent influences at work, many hands bringing from all directions pieces of lumber that may or may not fit into a lasting edifice. At first sight, the political struggle might appear as a plain case of West against East, a solid West battling for freedom from the economic strangle-hold of the East, and a solid East grimly resolved to preserve its vested. interests. Closer examination shows that the West, while united on the negative side of the Fiscal question (namely, the destruction of the Tariff), is by no means united on the constructive side of the Fiscal question (new taxation) and still less on other matters of vital importance. Reciprocity with the United States appeals with special force to former citizens of that country. To conciliate the British element, the sop of Free Trade with Great Britain is thrown to it. But lest the American should take offence, the preamble of the whole document includes a strongly anti-imperialist pronouncement. The Labour-Socialist element has its finger in the pie, preparing the way for the full triumph of its own special tenets, but careful not to intrude itself too obviously upon the notice of the wary farmer; and the organisation of labour is almost purely American. As Mr Peterson says: 'Canadian labour organisations are international, which merely means that United States bodies dominate the situation. Whether Canadian labour may or may not strike is determined south of the line.' The farmers' movement, which, in the sphere of economic co-operation, was purely agrarian in management and inspiration, appears to have lost much of its agrarian character in the political sphere. It has been skilfully diverted by hands working in the dark for purposes which have little in common with agrarianism, and cannot be called truly national. For to such an eclectic hodge-podge as the programme of the Council of Agriculture the epithet of national can scarcely be applied. Canada grew during the war to the full stature of a nation. She has nothing to learn from her neighbours south of the line. She must emancipate herself from the tutelage of American ideas; but can only do so with the help of a large influx of British-born population. Art. 6. THE MEANING OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. 1. Profils et types de la littérature russe. By E. Combes. Paris Fischbacher, 1896. 2. The Collected Works of V. G. Byelinsky [In Russian]. Second edition. Four vols. St Petersburg, 1900. 3. Collected Works of A. Essays, etc. [In Russian]. St Petersburg, 1903. M. Skabichevsky: Critical 4. History of Modern Russian Literature, 1848-1908. By A. M. Skabichevsky. [In Russian.] Seventh edition. St Petersburg, 1909. 5. History of Russian Literature. By A. N. Pypin. [In Russian.] Third edition. Four vols. St Petersburg, 1907. 6. Sketches for the History of Modern Russian Literature. By P. Kogan. [In Russian]. Moscow, 1910-12. 7. Russian Literature. By Prince P. A. Kropotkin. Duckworth, 1916. THE English student of Russian life and character finds himself confronted by what appears at the outset a baffling enigma to which Russian history in itself does not supply a satisfactory clue. The science, the art, the music of Russia yield each something to his search, but it is only in the literature of the Russian people that he finds the master-key to the mind and heart of the nation. It is hardly too much to say that in no other language is the literature so expressive, so intimate and searching in its psychology, so true an index to the mentality whence it proceeds. In the words of Byelinsky, 'Our social life finds its chief expression in our literature. Art with us is still a weak and tender shoot which has not had time to spread its roots, much less to develop into a fine and goodly-smelling flower. That does not mean that there is no art, but only that art in Russia is something of the nature of the Eleusinian mysteries, the exclusive possession of a small, select class.' Of Russian literature, on the contrary, it may be said that at birth it sprang direct from the peasantry of the land, and after centuries of suppression and diversion from its original channel, it has returned in modern times to the source of its earliest inspiration, there to be strengthened, enriched, and revived beyond all measure. To explain how Russia, with millions of her population steeped in ignorance, has come to possess a literature such as this, it is not enough to give a list of men of letters, or to describe their personalities and works. We must trace the growth of national thought and aspiration from the earliest dawn of Slavonic civilisation, before the fatal supremacy of the Mongol Khans, when nomadic tribes were in process of becoming communal settlers, when along the banks of the great watercourses prosperous cities spread themselves, and the boats or sledges of traders plied to and fro laden with merchandise. To those far-off times, the eighth and ninth centuries of the Christian era, belong the epic songs of Russia, the bylinys, or metrical tales of "What was." They tell of the golden age of Kiev, under the rule of Prince Vladimir, whose conversion to Christianity was consummated by his marriage with a Byzantine princess. In the Kievan epic cycle, heroes endowed with superhuman strength perform doughty deeds in the cause of Christianity, but their attributes are those of the Pagan demi-gods. The Greek Church gradually introduced changes of nomenclature, and saints in place of the ancient heroes; it could not so easily estrange the people from polytheism. The bylinys are full of rich and fanciful imagery, and picture the semi-barbaric splendour of the Kievan Court in language that often rises to a high level of poetic beauty. The knights vie with one another and deem it not unseemly to boast of their deeds and their possessions. Vladimir and his spouse, the fair princess Apraxin, bear a certain resemblance to King Arthur and Guinevere; but Vladimir is outshone by the heroes who surrounded him, by Mikula, by the protean Volga, and the mighty Ilya of Muroum. A large number of the bylinys, after descending for hundreds of years from father to son by oral tradition, have been collected in latter days by Slavophils, and are now recognised as a priceless national inheritance. Several have been rendered into English prose, and deserve to be read by every student of Russian literature. In speaking of what is usually regarded as the earliest written epic of mediæval Russia it should be said that there is a wide divergence of opinion among |