parts of Russia. On the other hand you cannot compel little Russian children to tramp in the depth of winter for ten miles to the nearest school centre. In other words the diffusion of popular education is not mainly a question of political development, but of economic development. Again it is largely a question of climate, of good roads and of density of population.
Let us then constantly keep in mind those physical conditions which are amongst the fundamental factors of the political problem. It would be as idle to ignore those geographical factors as it would be to ignore the intellectual and spiritual factors. Without an accurate and minute investigation of the environment, it is as futile to speculate on the relative strength of the forces of liberty and reaction as it would be to speculate on the resistance of the Forth Bridge or the Tay Bridge, without examining the strength of the foundations, without studying the special properties of iron and steel as well as the general laws of dynamics.
IV
The first feature and the essential fact in the physical geography of Russia is the infinite
