The visit of the French Parliamentary deputation to Russia has
had a significance quite apart from social ceremonies and official entertainments, cordial though these have been. Baron d'Estournelles de Constant with the other visitors was received on Saturday last at Tsarskoe Selo by the Tsar, who expressed his thanks for the visit of the deputation to the Russian Parliament. At the banquet given by the Duma M. de Constant is reported to have created a deep impression by his reference to the Tsar's services in instituting the Duma and his cordial acknowledgment of the relationship between the representative institutions of the two countries. This acknowledgment, as the Times correspondent at St. Petersburg points out, obviously implies a strengthening of the Dual Alliance and a consolidation of the Triple Entente. Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, who refused to share the prevalent pessimism about the Hague Conference and the Duma, declared that he and his colleagues—including a Radical-Socialist Deputy for Paris—had come as repre- sentatives of all parts and parties of France "confident in the great future of Russia and of the young Duma."
