Here I would state that I did not experience the slightest annoyance throughout my entire journey. I was not subjected to police surveillance, nor did I notice in my meagre correspondence the least trace of police interference--the latter being probably due to the extreme precautions taken by me in sending my mail in inconspicuous envelopes. And yet what a condition of things for a great country--that every traveller who wishes to enter its territory must arm himself with precautionary measures, as if he were preparing to visit a robber's den! Is it compatible with the usages of modern Europe, forsooth, that no step may be taken in this country without one's being provided with documents of identification; that one may not cross the boundary either into or out of the country without the special permission of the consulate or of the police? Is Russia a state or a prison? Is it a modern Tauris full of terrors to the stranger? I am not now speaking of the passport difficulties peculiar to Jews, who, generally speaking, can hardly obtain entrance to holy Russia, and who, when they succeed in gaining admission, must be in constant dread of unpleasantness in every town and in every hotel. I merely ask whether it is compatible with the good name of a state that still wishes to exchange courtesies with neighboring states to appear in the popular imagination as a ferocious monster ignoring right and without decency? How can trade and intercourse develop; how can the unimpeded flow of the sap of culture, the circulation of the national blood, take place in a land where terror guards the boundaries and where the reputation of arbitrariness impedes all progress? And what modern state or system of national economy may, without the unimpeded circulation of the sap of culture, maintain itself at a level corresponding to the modern requirements of its internal and external productive capacity? Are the advantages of an all-controlling police system in any degree proportionate to its innumerable economic disadvantages? Is the occasional annoyance of a really objectionable intruder sufficient compensation for the evil reputation which this system attaches to the whole country? It is a sheer impossibility to watch daily and hourly a hundred million people. Why are such enormous sacrifices made at all for the sake of an undertaking injurious in itself and, moreover, impossible of execution?