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Points of Friction

anything, and they do mean nothing, so that it is safe to go on repeating them. But a Bolshevist official was arrested in Petrograd in March, 1919, charged with embezzling fifteen million rubles. Not content with the excesses of the new régime, he must needs revert to the excesses of the old,—a discouraging study in evolution.

When Lord Hugh Cecil published his analysis of conservatism nine years ago, the British reviewers devoted a great deal of time to its consideration,—not so much because they cared for what the author had to say (though he said it thoughtfully and well), as because they had opinions of their own on the subject, and desired to give them utterance. Cecil's conception of temperamental, as apart from modern British political conservatism (which he dates from Pitt and Burke), affords the most interesting part of the volume; but the line of demarcation is a wavering one. That

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