old ways. Neither the Tsar nor his advisers would again place themselves willingly in their unenviable position of 1905. The days of reaction are past, provided the Liberals play their cards well. The danger seems to me henceforth to lie almost as much in the direction of anarchy as in the direction of reaction. Autocracy would only try a return to the past, if all other issues were closed. But in that case, it would probably be the opposition by their uncompromising, purely negative, and destructive policy that would make the Terreur blanche a necessity and a liberal despotism an impossibility. It seems to me, therefore, that the obvious duty of every Liberal in Russia at the present critical juncture, and the only chance for a Liberal solution, lies in a loyal adhesion to, and co-operation with, the government. If neither the autocracy nor the opposition rose to a sense of the urgency of the danger, and to the immensity of the task to be accomplished, there then would only remain one alternative and one certainty: the infernal circles of anarchy and of red terrorism: facilis descensus Averni! Di hoc omen avertant.
