TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—You are often requested to accept articles in the name of fairplay. No better appeal can be made when questions have to be discussed calmly, objectively; and no country is more anxious than Russia to be judged only according to real facts. To learn such facts is not easy, for which Russians may themselves be partly to blame. They forget that their language is not easily learnt, and that their country is enormously large. The kind foreigner devoting five or six weeks to the thorough study of Russia, with all her peculiarities, traditions, and aims, shows, of course, commendable zeal, but with the inevitable result of committing great blunders in such, desperate profusion as to render hopeless any attempt of correction or protest.

Great national pride enters into the nature of every Russian who is not utterly denationalized, who is not a traitor to his country. It is impossible for him to condescend to notice the reproofs of dilettanti teachers, whose ignorance is so obvious.

Will you allow me to point out an instance of the extraordinary flippancy with which such severe admonitions are liberally bestowed upon Russia in the long letter signed by two leading members of the Howard Association in your issue of yesterday? Doubting, quite properly, their own faculties, they base their urgent appeals upon information from others.

I will not dilate upon the awful conditions of our prisons, almost as horrible as “that of the notorious Black Hole of Calcutta.” I will not even shed a tear over “the poor prisoners exposed to rain and severe frosts.”

Having thus made public confession of my heartlessness, I beg to make a few remarks upon the only authority whom your combined correspondents quote and designate. I will first, however, admit that some Russians, especially those whose ideas have been brought into a state of absolute chaos, like our Nihilists, do go mad. Happy is the country which possesses neither madmen nor idiots! If England be that country, let me heartily congratulate her. Russia, I am sorry to say, has both.

Now let me return to the infallible Mr. Kennan. He announced to the easily misguided and credulous world that the Russian Government would never consent to establish a University at Tomsk. Russia, in his mind, is a deadly foe to civilization and light. This is, indeed, a big assertion.

My husband is the head of the St. Petersburg University, from which professors are sometimes appointed to the provinces. How often have I myself heard in official circles the urgency of a Siberian University discussed! The Government, on the first opportunity, provided the funds and the staff, and the Tomsk University, whose opening was hailed with joy by the whole population, not only exists but flourishes. Well, when we find one such glaring inaccuracy in Mr. Kennan’s statements, we are naturally unfitted for patiently listening to his melodramatic descriptions of “poor prisoners exposed to rain,” &c.

Everybody knows that we have several prisons which ought to be rebuilt and improved. The work going on in that direction, fortunately, is very active, and upon it lavish sums are being spent. The Chief Director of all our prisons, Mr. Galkin Vratsky, a most excellent, energetic man, after having studied the penitentiary systems of all civilized countries, spares no effort to introduce the latest reforms, and our prisons of to-day bear no resemblance to those described by Dostoievsky some twenty years ago.

Russia, however, having emancipated her 40 millions of serfs, and having thus formed a large body of free men and free landholders, cannot at once spare all the money she would like to bestow upon her prisons—schools, railways, and other matters not less important demand attention.

“Outside journalistic and Parliamentary interference” becomes, therefore, superfluous. “C’est enfoncer une porte ouverte,” as the French say. It becomes, in plain English, a bit of twaddle—nothing more; and this is no benefit to Russia, whatever it may be elsewhere.

But, if people like to repeat that two and two make four, and three and three make six, by all means let them do so. I shall not further protest.

OLGA NOVIKOFF (“O.K.”).

Claridge’s Hotel, Brook-street, Jan. 9.