damaging our fruit! It seems there is a poor crop of nuts and berries in the mountains, and so they have been coming down to our farms for food. They have stripped bare our nut-trees, and we had such an excellent crop! And now they have begun to attack our apple-trees. And they are such unreasonable creatures! If they 'd eat the apples, we should n't mind so much, but they nip off the stems, thinking they can carry the fruit to their holes as they do nuts, and they have not strength enough for that, and the apples fall to the ground. I have tried to drive them off, but it does no good. They come right back. The other day I caught one and I was so angry, may God forgive me, that I picked up a rod and spanked her. And when I let her go I said to her, 'You wicked thing, next time I catch you, even if I am a Doukhobor, I'll cut off your ears.' It would be best, I suppose, if we'd catch them, put them in bags, carry them way up the mountains, and let them out there. That's what I'll do if they keep coming again."

"And what do you do with bears? Do they ever bother you?" I had heard that there were a good many grizzlies roaming about in the neighborhood.

"They never touch us. Men only think that wild animals are dangerous. But we lived in the Caucasus, and there were Tatars and wolves and bears, and yet we burned our arms, and no one ever molested us. I 'll tell you, druzhok, of an experience we had recently with a bear. A party of us went up the mountains to help put out a forest fire. We came to a place where a wind swept the flames all around us, and we had to flee for

He could not The Anghlick He wanted

safety to a near-by big flat rock. We sat down and watched the flames, and of a sudden a bear came out and sat down at the end of the rock opposite us, with his fore feet lifted in the air as though to show us his burns. There was an Anghlick among us. He picked up a rock and threw it at the bear. But the bear did n't stir. Think of it! Where could he go? jump into the flames. picked up another rock. to kill the bear. But we grabbed him by the hand and said: 'Don't, brother! The bear is our comrade now. He has come here to save himself, even as we all have. Look at his feet. They are burned, and he is suffering.' The Anghlick sort of felt ashamed and dropped the rock. The bear sat beside us like a brother, and when the fire swept by, he rose and walked quietly away."

To a Doukhobor all governments are evil, because they rest upon force. "The Anghlicks," they say, "want us to swear allegiance to their king. But how can we? Their king has armies and navies and fights wars. We owe allegiance to only one king-Christ."

They are as suspicious of the Canadian Government as a bride is of a domineering mother-in-law. For years they have refused to register births, deaths, and marriages. They argue that such registration is merely a scheme of governments to collect additional taxes from the people and to keep count of the number of available soldiers. There were times when Canadian officials had to exhume their dead from the graves in order to ascertain the cause of death. In retaliation, the Doukhobors interred their dead in

the fields and leveled off the ground to keep the police from locating the place of burial. They resort to all manner of stratagems-to lies most of all-to evade the Canadian school laws. They regard them as an enemy of their faith and their practices. They are afraid of modern civilizationafraid it will wrench the young away from their fold and break up their society.

I broached the question of Canadianization to one of the oldest and most cultivated Doukhobors, and he summed up their attitude in words which it is neither easy to refute nor to forget.

"The Anghlicks," he said, "want us to give up our mode of living and our ideas. They want us to go to their schools and adopt their ways and be like them. What would we gain? A knowledge of English? Good. More luxurious homes? Good. Better food? Good. Finer clothes? Good. Automobiles of our own? Good. Property; more and more? Good. And would we do more useful work? Would we love our fellow-men more? Yes, we'd become worldly and educated. We'd want to go to the cities. We 'd seek a life of ease. We'd reach out for more and more of this world's material things. We 'd scheme and cheat. We'd drink liquor and smoke. We'd eat meat and carry guns. We'd go to war and take human life. Our women would leave the garden and the orchards. They'd want to be baruini-ladies. They'd be thinking of pretty clothes and jewelry and paint and powder and dances and men. Yea, they might even begin to smoke and drink and go to the bad. Once a person starts to go down, there is no telling where he 'll stop. What would

become of us then? Here, look at me. I am an old man. I have not many more years of life. I have been in jail in Russia and in Siberia, where I nearly froze to death because I would not give up the Doukhobor principles. Merciful Lord! they beat many of us to death in Russia because we were Doukhobors. Nu, must we break up now because the Canadians want us And, pray, who would profit from Each of us would be for himself and against his brother. We 'd lose our peace of mind and our contentment and our simple ways and our love of Christ, and then where and what would we be?"

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$6

I visited Kylemore, Saskatchewan, one of the largest grain-growing colonies of the Doukhobors. Harvest was in full swing. An army of reapers were hastily reducing the shoulderhigh wheat-field to huge sheaves. About thirty boys and girls were setting up the bundles. The girls wore knickerbockers and caps, and were hilariously proud of their harvesting costume. Every hour or so when the water-boy drove round with barrels of freshly pumped spring water, they came together, slaked their thirst, then sat down to rest, to play, to sing. An older man was with them to see that they did not make the rest-periods too long. Toward noon he told them that he would release them from further work until after lunch if they would lay aside "their childishness" and entertain with songs this "Russian man who has come from a far place to see how we simple people Doukhobors are living."

With joyous exclamations they dashed after sheaves of wheat, sat down upon

them, close together, with their backs toward the blazing sun, and burst into a wailing melody, their vigorous, untrained voices blending into a solemn harmony, and resounding loud and sad over the rolling prairies. The old man leaned over to me and whispered:

"This is an old Russian song. It is about a Cossack, you see, who had a sweetheart. Now she had a lover and she wanted to rid herself of the Cossack. So she invited him to go rowing, and she took him to a place at the seashore where the waves were high and violent, and he asked her why she brought him to such a wild place, and she only laughed. And then he understood that she wanted to drown him, and so he jerked out his bayonet and stabbed her in the bosom."

It seemed an ideal scene, those endless prairies, the roaring reapers, the miles and miles of billowy wheat, and this group of boys and girls stopping in the midst of their labors to regale themselves with old folk-songs that have been transmitted by word of mouth for countless generations.

The whole Doukhobor scheme seems to an outsider as ideal as this scene. Here is a society without private property, without riches, without want, apparently without greed, hate, lust, crime. The speech of the people, especially the older folk, drips with a tenderness and a beauty that stirs the emotions. One wonders how people who forswear education and who are woefully ignorant of the world have learned to express themselves so nobly.

They all seem happy. A Doukhobor boy of nineteen or twenty, if he is ready for marriage, is not harassed by the problem of a home and a livelihood for wife and family. The commune provides both. They all work,

each at his allotted task, and no one hurries or is hurried. They have time to pause, look round, chat, sing. Usually they rest for two hours after the noon meal, and on Saturdays quit their labor at midday. And what superb workers they are! Their farms are among the most productive in Canada. In dry areas, while other farmers sit with folded arms and wait for a benevolent Government to bring water upon their land, meanwhile suffering their crops to burn year after year, the Doukhobors search the country-side for a flow of water, and when they find it, they do not rest until they have directed it to their fields.

And yet, peering below the surface, one must regretfully admit that the Doukhobor society is deteriorating. At least one third of the members have already left the commune. Contact with modern civilization through the machine, the railroad, visits to the town, however rare, have stirred their individualism and a wish for independence. Some of the boys of the commune have discovered the pleasures of the cigarette, the bottle of whisky, and the steak. Of course, when they are caught in the act of indulging in these illicit joys, they are spanked in the good old-fashioned way with rods or are expelled from the commune. But that only intensifies their fear and their dissatisfaction with the existing order. The older men who have been in Siberia, who know what it is to suffer for a principle, cling firmly, desperately, and nobly to their faith. There is a charm, a majesty, a warmth about their manner and their speech that rouses one's unbounded affection for them. But when they are gone, their "doukhoborie" will tumble into ruins.