with unlimited powers of search and inquiry, also the power of life or death. It has ramifications all over Europe. A special department is attached for translating every reference in all foreign newspapers or periodicals to Soviet affairs. One instance of the power of the Che-Ka is sufficient. The writer had occasion not long ago to introduce a deputation to a Committee of the House of Commons whose members were interested in Russian affairs. As one of his friends had quite recently returned from Moscow, he naturally invited him to form one of the deputation. The answer he received from his friend was that he could not come, as the Che-Ka would hear of it, and he would never be allowed to return to Russia. In plain language, an Englishman with large interests in Russia could not go to his own House of Commons for fear of the Che-Ka. Such is the present rule in Russia. Any return to normal conditions must come from within, from the mass of the people. Was it Wellington or was it Napoleon who said that the best general was the one who could see what was going on on the other side of the hill'? Would it be presumptuous on my part to make a guess as to the mission of M. Rakovsky to London? This individual arrived in England on September 30 to take up his duties as head of the Trade Delegation. M. Krassin, who preceded him in that post, accompanied him, ostensibly to see his family, but in all probability to introduce M. Rakovsky to the 'best circles,' to those who are in favour of recognising de jure the Soviet Government. No one knows better than M. Krassin that the economical position of the Soviets is perilous; he is reported to have said in Moscow that the only hope for Russia depended on a loan.' With a view to obtaining official recognition and the loan, it is almost certain that M. Rakovsky will endeavour to open negotiations with our Government regarding the acknowledgment of debts and the return of confiscated properties. The only terms on which the Government would ever consent to negotiate are known to all the world. They were clearly stated in the House of Commons by the late Prime Minister on November 30, 1922, and Mr. Bonar Law's statement was confirmed by Mr. Baldwin some months ago.

I do not know if M. Rakovsky has ever been in England, but I am quite certain that he knows nothing about British finance. In order to improve his knowledge it would be well for him to study Mr. E. C. Grenfell's speech made at the Cannon Street Hotel on May 31 last. Mr. Grenfell said (to quote a short extract from his admirable speech):

If the present Government of Russia is to go on, it should see that honesty is the best policy, see that it can get nothing except on credit, because if it has expropriated its loot, if it is at the end of its supply of stolen goods, where is it to go? It can come here, and it can go elsewhere, but you know enough about credit to know this: that there are some

people with a good record and a few hundred pounds of capital, and they can borrow thousands of capital, and you won't lend them anything except against absolutely their capital in your hands; and there are people with a large amount of assets, large capital, who can borrow nothing, and those with very small assets who can borrow a great deal. It is all a matter of tradition; it is a matter of good behaviour; it is a question of long record of probity or of good position.

Now credit is difficult to create.

Credit is slow of growth, and the slightest criticism is apt to blow it away. It is a hard task that Russia has to build herself up again; but I believe, much as many people have lost in the past, they are ready, provided there is evidence of good intention, to let their debts, once recognised, be put off for a period, because thereby alone they may get in the end some large proportion back.

I will finish by saying this: that it is not the foreign Governments that Russia must look to for their help in the future; they must look, as in the past, to the private investor. Once the private investor is assured that it is a good risk, money will flow into Russia.

From this speech and others M. Rakovsky will be able to estimate the chance of obtaining any loans or credit from England. M. Rakovsky will also probably make an attempt to secure support for Soviet recognition from those in this country who know little about Russia by means of some vague offer of an intention to summon a Constituent Assembly to decide on the future form of government.

What sort of free election could take place in that country? It would be conducted under the close supervision of the Che-Ka, supported by the Red Army. No one can possibly believe that these human vultures, who have settled on the prostrate carcase of Great Russia, are at all likely to risk losing both their position and power by submitting their future to a freely elected assembly.

For six years these adventurers, some of whom hail from the slums of New York and London, and others from Roumania and Bulgaria, have been in power, and they intend to remain, if terror can maintain them there.

A Constituent Assembly will probably ultimately decide the future of Russia, as it did in 1613 after a period of fifteen years' upheaval (Smoutnoye vremia-time of troubles), but it will be an assembly of the people, led by a patriot to whom the present rulers of Russia will have to answer for their misdeeds.

The Russian Soviet Government has forfeited all confidence, it has brought the credit of a once great country to a lower level than that of many a Central American republic, and it must learn that confidence on which credit is built will only be extended to those whose word can be depended on and whose promises will be fulfilled.

CHARLES R. HUNTER

MADAME DE SÉGUR

Do French children still read Mme. de Ségur, or has she become as vieux-jeu as L'Ami des Enfants or Adèle et Théodore?

However that may be, she is still read in England, for English parents are conservative, and whatever new books the French governess may import the English mother will have kept some of her old schoolroom favourites in their scarlet and gold coats, and will feel a peculiar pleasure when her children are old enough to love Les Malheurs de Sophie.

Mme. de Ségur was born at St. Petersburg in 1799, so that she was thirteen when her namesake (perhaps relative ?) Rostopchine set fire to Moscow. I do not know-I wish I did-how she came to marry the Comte de Ségur, except that there was a link between Russia and the De Ségur family since the time of Catherine II., neither do I know what relation the Comte was to the various Marquises de Ségur who distinguished themselves as soldiers, diplomats, historians, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Perhaps he was a younger brother of the historian. Larousse is silent on those points, and Lauson disdains to mention Mme. de Ségur at all. But I do feel that I know a good deal about her childhood, for it is easy to guess-and indeed I have been told so on good authority-that Les Malheurs de Sophie is largely autobiographical.

The christian name of a comtesse or a marquise is a mystery not to be disclosed to the vulgar, and Larousse does not disclose Mme. de Ségur's, but it was most probably Sophie,' a popular name in Russia, and one may conjecture that she had a playmate (brother or cousin) named Paul. Elle avait une bonne grosse figure bien fraîche, bien gaie, avec de très beaux yeux gris, un nez en l'air et un peu gros, une bouche grande et toujours prête à rire, des cheveux blonds pas frisés et coupés court comme ceux d'un garçon.' Surely a portrait of the little Russian girl. Elle aimait à être bien mise, et elle était toujours très mal habillée : une simple robe en percale blanche, décolletée et à manches courtes, hiver comme été, des bas un peu gros et des souliers de peau noire, jamais de chapeau ni de gants. Sa maman pensait qu'il était bon de l'habituer au soleil, à la pluie, au vent, au froid.'

Obviously a child of the early eighteen-hundreds, with a strongminded mamma of Rousseau's school, quite out of place among the frilly, braid and tarlatan-decked children of the 'fifties. The forest, too, in which Sophie was nearly devoured by wolves--one feels that it grew in Russia rather than in Normandy, where the Sophie trilogy is set. I wonder whether the grandchildren, for whom the stories were written, knew that Bonne-Maman, who was so good, who could invent characters as saintly as ' Juliette' in Un bon petit Diable, had once upon a time cut her eyebrows off and stood under a rainwater gutter to make her hair curl, and . . . no, we refuse to believe that she really cut the goldfish in pieces.

Though Sophie is probably the only faithful portrait that Mme. de Ségur drew, she called her favourite characters after her grandchildren, much to their delight, no doubt. Camille and Madeleine, 'les petites filles modèles,' really existed (but with their proper share of original sin, we hope); De Malaret was their name. And there were Jacques de Pitray (Traypi in Les Vacances); Pierre and Henri de Ségur, who come off so badly at the shooting party in Les mémoires d'un âne; Elisabeth Fresneau (Chéneau in Sophie) and her brother Armand; Thérèse, whose surname I forget, and who comes into Les mémoires d'un âne. They all appear in Les bons enfants. Are some of the 'good children' alive to-day, I wonder?

What is the charm of Mme. de Ségur? Chiefly, I think, the mixture of unbridled fantasy and realism so like the stories which children make up for their private comfort and amusement, those dear, endless stories which we can never tell ourselves again when we let in the demons of 'probability,' 'elimination,' 'form.' That she was completely unscrupulous in her imaginings does not worry the reader under twelve, unless he be something of a prig. What is important is that there are no unintelligible grown-up fantasies which say one thing and mean another,' no puzzling jokes which Ten-years Old can't understand, no digressions on morals or politics such as disfigure The Water Babies. M. Georgey, the Anglais excentrique,'' les deux Polonais,' General Dourakine, Mme. Mac'miche, M. Old-Nick (presumably created after a nightmare following the reading of Nicholas Nickleby), bear no relation to reality whatever, neither do Juliette and M. de Rosbourg, that flawless' capitaine de vaisseau' who was also, unlike most of his kind, a millionaire. It is nearly always summer in her books, a long, perfect summer, in which wallflowers, roses, dahlias, strawberries, cherries, nuts, flourish together in charming confusion. The unfortunate chicken in Sophie has, when ' né depuis une heure,' 'des plumes noires comme celles d'un corbeau' and 'une jolie huppe sur la tête' . . . a remarkable chicken! Beau

Minon, un chat angora de la plus belle espèce,' has 'de beaux yeux noirs brillants comme des soleils' . . . a still more remarkable cat! What does it matter? The story's the thing, and it may be trusted to flow on, vivid and exciting. Seven-years Old, who is learning French, forgets its difficulties in the thrill of wondering what will happen next. What will naughty Sophie do? What will Charles think of to worry Mme. Mac'miche and escape her beatings? What scrape will Innocent and Simplicie get into? What will that clever donkey Cadichon do?

The emotions are such as Seven-years Old can share : Leur ridicule attitude faisait rire aux larmes Sophie, maintenue par Camille et Madeleine, qui se roulaient à force de rire.' So does Seven-years Old in sympathetic glee. Somebody falls into somebody else's arms' pleurant de joie et de tendresse.' (It happens so often that I need not particularise.) 'What joy! what happiness!' says Seven-years Old rapturously.

Her realism, most endearing to Seven-years Old's heart, comes in when food or clothes are described. What little girl can resist the trousseau of Marguerite's doll, can help reading it again and again, wishing it were hers?

Mlle. de Fleurville habitually appeared in ' de simples robes de percale unie.' Not so the doll: 'I robe en mérinos écossais ; I robe en popeline rose; I robe en taffetas noir; I robe en étoffe bleue; I robe en mousseline blanche; I robe en nankin; 1 robe en velours noir; I robe de chambre en taffetas lilas; I casaque en drap gris; I casaque en velours noir; I talma en soie noire ; I mantelet en velours gros bleu; I mantelet en mousseline blanche brodée'. . . ' undies' innumerable, including stays and nightcaps I capote en taffetas bleu avec des roses pompon; I ombrelle verte à manche d'ivoire; 6 paires de gants. . . . more could the heart desire?

What

Food too-Mme. de Ségur enjoyed writing about it as much as Mrs. Sherwood. (They all sat down, full of joy, to a roast chicken and raspberry tart.') It is all very well to pretend that Sophie succumbed to 'mal au cœur' after eating a few black currants in the garden; the inside works of the whole Fleurville lot must have been of the toughest kind if they digested the déjeuner froid' which they took with them to the Forêt des Moulins: 'L'on entama d'abord un énorme pâté de lièvre, ensuite une daube à la gelée, puis des pommes de terres au sel, du jambon, des écrevisses, de la tourte aux prunes, et enfin du fromage et des fruits. . . .' 'Veux-tu encore un peu de vin pour faire passer ton déjeuner?' says Mme. de Rosbourg to her daughter, aged six, after this light collation. And Mme. de Ségur was the author of a work, which I should like to see, called La Santé des Enfants!

She was a bit of a doctor, too, but I do hope her family and