The Times of Monday published a remarkable letter from M.
Paul Vinogradoff, Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford. Professor Vinogradoff is a strong Russian Liberal who finds much to deplore in the political backwardness of his country. But his indignation against Germany for her cant about " Muscovite barbarism" has inspired him to write a timely and a most refreshing analysis of the soul of the Russian people. The most advanced politicians in Russia are at one with their countrymen in the war. All are united under the Tsar, who is the recognized symbolic head. The war means the regeneration of Russia. Even as Russia is now, why this absurd claim of Germany to a culture of which Russia is
innocent? " A nation represented by Pushkin, Turgeneff, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky in literature, by Kramskoy, Verest- chagin, Repin, Glinka, Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky in art, by Mendeleeff, Metchnikoff, Pavloff in science, by Kluchevsky and Solovieff in history, need not be ashamed to enter the lists in an international competition for the prizes of culture." Russia is an advancing nation ; her universities, her political efforts, prove it. She is a humanitarian nation; pity for the poor and oppressed is " deeply rooted in national psychology." A book like that of General von Bernhardi would be impossible in Russia. " It would earn for its author the reputation of a bloodhound."
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