27 JANUARY 1906, Page 17

The condition of Russia has changed very little during the

past week. For the time the Government policy of repression seems to have succeeded, and all the advocates of reaction are jubilant. The registration of voters for the Duma goes on, and the time has even been extended at the express desire of the Czar, but nevertheless many powerful persons in Russia still assert that the Dama will never meet. Meantime one of the chief preoccupations of the Government is the famine which is threatened in a great part of European Russia To meet this distress there is talk of public works on a gigantic scale, and the old scheme of a Baltic-Black Sea canal is being revived. An American firm, says the Times corre- spondent in its issue of Friday, undertakes to carry out the task for £40,000,000.