Since that time the
parliamentary machinery has worked much more smoothly. The Duma has
learned the truth of the old adage that half a loaf is better than no
bread, and on many important subjects, such as the preparation of the
annual budget, it now co-operates loyally with the Ministers. In this
way it gets its half loaf, and the country benefits by the new-born
spirit of compromise.
Before going further, perhaps I ought to warn my readers that I am often
reproached by my Russian friends with taking too favorable a view of the
Duma and of many other things in Russia. To this I usually reply by
taking those friends to task for their habitual pessimism in criticising
themselves and their institutions. Naturally inclined to idealism, and
not possessing sufficient hereditary experience to correct this
tendency, they compare their institutions with ideals which nowhere
exist in the real world, and consequently they condemn them very
severely. The impartial foreigner who wishes to form a true estimate of
these institutions must always take this into account. In spite of the
impassioned philippics to which I have listened hundreds of times from
my Russian friends, I am strongly of opinion that the Russian people
have made in recent years considerable progress in their political
education, and that they will continue to do so in the future.
But how is genuine national progress possible so long as the great mass
of the population are grossly ignorant, conservative, and superstitious?
Here again we must beware of adopting current exaggerations.
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