founded in 1725 by Peter the Great. The Transactions of the Academy contain many important historical monographs from his pen.
Roman Dmowski is a Pole and was for some years leader of the Polish party in the Duma. No one represents with more authority and greater ability the view that Poland's hopes for the future are most likely to be realised by coming to terms with the great Slav Empire.
Harold Williams, an Englishman who has resided for fifteen years in Russia, is considered by Russian scholars to have no rival, even among natives, in his special department of knowledge, the ethnography of the Russian Empire. Here he has given in a few pages a summary of his comprehensive knowledge of this vast subject.
These eminent men made the journey, at great inconvenience to themselves, from Russia to England, on purpose to deliver these lectures. The lectures were given in English, and the speakers entrusted their manuscripts to me for publication; and some of them, modestly distrusting their own skill in writing a foreign language, gave me authority to make such changes in the form of expression as I thought necessary. I trust that none of these distinguished scholars and courteous gentlemen will feel that I have abused this authority. Where I have made changes in the wording, it has been with the sole object of making the writer's meaning clearer to the English reader.
Trinity College, Cambridge
January 22, 1917
