Roman lawyers were not kind to women. . . . The code of Justinian says: “Women must not be admitted to spheres of political activity”—adding, laconically: “Propter animal levitateur” (they cause levity). It is not unnatural if, after such a compliment, we sometimes lose the inclination to trouble ourselves about public affairs. But . . . God helps the brave! And so I take courage and step straight into the heart of a burning question of the day, “How are we employing our prisoners of war?” It is a fact beyond question that Germany does not hesitate to make use of the working power of her prisoners. They are underfed, and are forced to earn a very scant living by all kinds of labour, even military work directed against their own country. Heaven forbid that we should always imitate Germany; but there is a difference between always and sometimes!

I do not exactly know how the prisoner question is treated in England, but I know that in Russia its importance was, until quite recently, insufficiently realised. A few months ago, when our prisoners, Germans, Slavs and Turks, already numbered 700,000—that is, more than the entire army of, say, Bulgaria, Norway, or Holland—only 40,000 of them had been given Government or private employment. The remaining mass—that is, more than half a million of workers—were twirling their thumbs, languishing in enforced idleness, this hopeless and monotonous inactivity having, here and there, even developed hooliganism in their ranks. The question has now been looked into, but it seems to me that its possibilities are still insufficiently exploited. As everybody knows, labour at this moment is so expensive that great national enterprises are left unaccomplished through the costliness and scarcity of working hands. Is it not possible to apply the labour of war prisoners to some of these enterprises, and so achieve results that might be of vast importance to the Empire?

In by-gone days, our Peter the Great dug the Ladoga Canal with the hands of his Swedish prisoners—an example we should do well to follow. Where is the Peter the Great who will organize something similar for us to-day? Pessimists generally observe that in the good old days there were more great men than now, and that in our time we are surrounded by pigmies. Pigmies, indeed! Can anything be more absurd? There are as great men as ever in the world to-day; but, alas, they are neither understood nor appreciated at their real value, and their wings are clipped by petty jealousies and the cheap criticism of the actual pigmies and mediocrities. Let us try, on the contrary, to bring to light all our able men and women—let us, in the twentieth century, imitate old Diogenes!