land are cooped up in a narrow zone beside the frontier; the region is under military control, and they are not allowed to leave it without very strong reasons. There are but few Russians in Helsingfors and Viborg now. There is one tiny Russian newspaper called the Russkia Vesti, edited from the capital. The Russian language is no longer learned by the children. Russian names and notices have, of course, been obliterated. Swedish, however, enjoys equal privileges with Finnish. The nation is officially bi-lingual, but the nationalistic movement which totally excludes Russian is now being turned somewhat upon Swedish also. Those who speak Swedish but not Finnish are not smiled upon.

Valaamo Monastery exhibits some aspects of Finnification. It is governed by a committee of Finns. The new style calendar has been introduced. The monks are required to become Finnish subjects; their lands are national property. Hospitality has been abolished. The clergy are recommended to cut their hair. Alterations in the liturgy are enforced. Recalcitrant monks are banished. The monastery shop and the quicklunch restaurant seem to have become more important than the churches and shrines. Certainly the ageing brotherhood are all agog with petty

grievances which they poured out to me in a flood when they realised I was not a Finn. Being cut off from their motherland of Russia is certainly a terrible ordeal for the holy men, and few of them are able to reconcile their souls to the change.

I found the monks, or at least some of them, ardent partisans of the Grand Duke Nicholas. He is the hero of the old monks, perhaps partly because of his good works there in old days. The imperial family was much associated with the monastery, and the monks remain pathetically attached to those for whom they have not ceased to pray. There are in the museum some sad memorials of the Tsar and Tsarina in Siberia, chiefly photographs and letters-the most remarkable, a photograph of the Empress, the Grand Duchess Olga, and the Grand Duchess Tatiana in prison in Tobolsk : three hopeless, averted faces, the mother's indescribably grim.

The monks, however, refuse to believe them dead, still think they will return to the light. They read no papers; they subsist on rumours and legends. The strongest of these, at the time, is that the Grand Duke Nicholas has predicted a change in Russia beginning on the day of the festival of Our Lady of Kazan. The monks rather moodily awaited it.

The unhappy schism in the monarchists has evidently reached this northern monastery, and several monks evinced a dislike of the Grand Duke Cyril.

66 I'm afraid there's not much chance either for Cyril Alexandrovitch or for Nicholai Nicholaievitch," said I. "The White armies are dispersed. The Bolsheviks have crushed all opposition."

When will it end?" they asked sorrowfully. That has proved to be a common question. O Lord, how long!

They told me of the recent death of one of their long-silent hermits, silent all through the war and through the revolution; told me of their miserable poverty and how in their direst distress money actually came through to them from the ruined Church in Russia.

"But one must not complain; one can live now. We sell keepsakes to the trippers. Our timber is being cut down and sold. We are able to buy bread. The Abbot we have now is very mean but he does a good trade. Life is different -without congregations, without worshippers. We like it better in the winter, when we are left entirely to ourselves, when the lake is frozen. It is a long and peaceful season."

The buglers from a patrol steamer made the

white walls of the great cathedral echo. We heard the popping of lemonade bottles and the merry laughter of sightseers. The blue cross flag of Finland waved in the evening sunlight. The old men seemed like the tail-end of a vanishing procession, a procession which having been in the open now entered the forests and the darkness and oblivion.

"We expect a miracle," said a greybeard to me, waving his long locks. Only by miracle

can our Russia be saved."

II

PROGRESSIVE FINLAND

THE Women of Finland took their political franchise in 1906. They were the first women to win the vote, and their victory gained for the Finns a reputation as a progressive people. Women stand on a level with men in the country. There are exceedingly few idle women, few of the pampered and petted, few of the merely ornamental. Indeed the male visitor does not easily lose his heart to the women of Finland; their minds are on their work, and their faces reflect it.

Plainness of dress, cleanness of house, rigidity of morals, hardness of face, brusqueness of conversation, mark the Finnish woman. But I have no doubt that to her Finland owes the greater part of her advance. Women have won for themselves positions ordinarily filled by men, in the professions, in administrations, in the banks. The foreign visitor cannot but be struck with the