jected to dramatic censorship in Great Britain. And British censorship is in many cases more severe than Russian. "Monna Vanna," of Maeterlinck, was widely circulated in Russia. It was prohibited in Great Britain. It is also true that any personal attack on members of the Government or the bureaucracy might lead to unpleasant encounters with the police, but any personal attack in Great Britain might lead to even more unpleasant prosecutions under the libel law.
I hold no brief for the Russian censorship, which is a survival of a régime which is rapidly passing away, and which is a disused organ of a vanishing autocracy. But the Russian censorship, even in its palmiest days, was utterly futile, and for the last generation it has interfered with the liberty of the Press just as little as French censorship interfered with the freedom of French literature in the days of Voltaire and Rousseau, in the days when "Emile" was burned by the hangman. Russian censorship does not even prevent an amount of intellectual licence which would stagger the British public. It is the impulsive and irresponsible violence of a section of the opposition Press which largely explains the retention of
