TO ТHE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—I said I should not further protest, but if you will allow me to exercise my feminine privilege I will add a very few words in reply to the second letter—this time, I notice, sponsored by only one signature—under the same misleading title of “Russian and Siberian” exiles, a title which conveys the idea that Siberia is not Russia. This is, perhaps, not important, but neither is the letter itself important.

Against the testimony of an obscure writer, who to his melodramatic descriptions adds sensational pictures for the purpose of working up his readers to agony point, let me place the evidence of an English clergyman—the Rev. Mr. Lansdell—to his interesting work “Through Siberia.” I prefer the latter, since I know that Mr. Lansdell, at all events, not only saw the prisons, but was allowed to converse with the prisoners and to inspect the official prison registers.

But admitting, as I am prepared to do, that some of our prisons are overcrowded, yet if it can be shown— that the Russian Government fully recognizes the evil, and is using most energetic efforts to remedy it, what more can be asked? How long ago is it that prison reform was undertaken in England?

An intelligent Russian friend said to me a few days ago that we might easily make more room in our prisons by adopting the English practice of hanging all our murderers. To a Russian, however, that method of relief would be abhorrent. Executions in Russia are, thank God, very rare, and are resorted to only in extreme cases.

However, as I said before, if benevolent societies like to write hysterical letters, and can find editors obliging enough to publish them, by all means let them do so. I interfere only because when I see these good people announcing their noble determination to appeal “to Parliamentary and journalistic criticism” and “feminine logic” convinces me that we are threatened with an appalling deluge of superficial and perfectly useless suggestions.

OLGA NOVIKOFF (“О.K.”).

Claridge’s Hotel, Brook-street, Jan. 19.