discontent and especially of hatred toward their officers. Their sympathy with the demands of the Revolutionists have been repeatedly proclaimed.

But!

No general revolt can be expected under the present circumstances. They are ready to desert the flag of the Tsar, but they must have some other flag around which to rally.

The revolt on the battleship Potyomkin is a case in point. During the summer of 1905, the revolutionists had been agitating among the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and had made such progress that a date had been agreed upon for a general revolt. It was to have been in the end of August. But things came to a crisis on the Potyomkin ahead of time. A special graft of the naval authorities is to feed the sailors cheap food, and one day a consignment of maggot-filled meat came on board. The sailors who handled it told of its condition to their mates. The next day they refused to eat the soup made from the rancid flesh. The Commandant construed this into mutiny. The crew was called to quarters and the officers ordered those who would eat what was offered them to step forward. A few stubbornly hung back and he ordered their immediate execution. This caused a real mutiny. Almost before they knew it, the sailors had control of the ship, the officers who resisted were killed or thrown overboard.

The mutiny was successful. What was to be done? The news reached the Admiral of the Fleet and he sent several ships to capture the Potyomkin, but the new sailors, although they did not join the mutineers, refused to fire on them. The Potyomkin was as safe as if it had been in dry-dock. But what to be done? They did not want to be pirates. They could easily have blown Odessa or other harbor towns off the map, but they had no desire to do so. They cruised about aimlessly for a week and deserted the ship in a Roumanian port. The Government of course "made examples" of all the mutining sailors they could lay their hands. on, and the Black Sea mutiny was crushed.

But the fact remains that the sailors of the Potyomkin easily got control of their ship, and that in all their Fleet not a sailor could be found to fire upon them. If the revolutionary forces could establish an insurrectionary government and so raise a standard to which the revolting soldiers and sailors could transfer their allegiance, a practical army mutiny could be a possibility. The action of the troop during the December Insurrection in Moscow shows the same temper. Although none of them joined the revolutionists, the Infantry, almost without exception, was passively on their side. Their disloyality was so apparent that their officers locked most of them in their barracks without their arms. The cavalry acted against the revolutionists, but in a most listless way, losing their cartridges or firing into the air. It is

almost certain that if the Revolutionists had captured the City Hall, or by any striking victory shown a probability of definite success, the soldiers would have come over in a body.

That discontent and the spirit of revolt are rife in the rank and file of the army and navy is too plain to be denied. The ease with which the Revolutionists have fomented the mutinies which have already taken place shows with what eagerness the soldiers accept their teaching. But the frightful cost and uselessness of sporadic and premature rising has become so evident to the troops, that no great or decisive army revolt can be expected until the Revolutionary Movement has crystallized into some form of government-until a new flag for them to follow hasen raised.

IX.

THE ATTEMPT ON STOLYPINE.

Once more the country was "pacified". By bloody fusilades at Kronstadt and Sveaborg; the Government had crushed the army revolt. The revolutionary workmen were buried beneath the December Barricades or were rotting in the faraway mines of Siberia. The middle class protest of the Duma had been silenced by the Dissolution and the suppression of all liberal papers. There was nothing more to be feared-except The Terror.

All down the history of the ages tyranny when pushed to the extreme has been answered by assasination and acts of individual violence. It has not been different in Russia.

Immediately after the Dissolution, the Ministry had been changed and Stolypine was appointed Premier. He was a man of iron and undoubtedly the ablest official whom Nicholas has found among his servants. He asserted the principle that no concessions could be forced from the Autocrat. The Tsar could, in his good pleasure, grant reforms; in fact, by his October Manifesto had shown his inclination to do so, but they must come as free gifts and not as concessions to a revolt. "There can be no talk of reforms", he said, "until the country is pacified. When the last spark of revolution is crushed out, the Tṣar may, if he wishes, throw you certain crumbs". And he went right vigorously to the work of pacification. He put three quarters of Russia under martial law, so many arrests were made that the prisons could not contain the crowd and in Rostovon-Don, the "pesthouse" every board of it saturated with cholera and the plague -was turned into a prison. It was Stolypine who inaugurated the field court martials, taking, not only the liberty but the life of the citizens out of he hands of the civil authorities and turning it over to irresponsible army officers. These courts were required

to render a verdict within twenty-four hours of the crime and to execute it within forty-eight. The average of their victims varied in different months from éve to fifteen a day. And it was during Stolypine's Premiership, that Hertzenstein, one of the Cadets, was attacked by thugs of the League of Real Russian Men and done to death. The Moscow News-the paper of the Leagueannounced his death three hours before it took place. But no one was punished.

After a few months of this regime of Governmental Terror, four young men went to Stolypine's villa-on his reception day -to kill him. For some reason they were detained in the anteroom and their bomb exploded prematurely. Fortunately or unfortunately, according to your point of view, the Minister escaped. But the four men, dying instantly themselves, took with them twenty odd of the throng of visitors-army officers, officials, police and spies. The foreign correspondent stationed in St. Petersburg moaned over the affair and sent to their papers gruesome accounts of the twenty-three victims. The Russians regretted this bloodshed as any civilized people regret the carnage of war. But they talked more of the supreme heroism of the four young men who had carried the bomb and had gone so willingly to death in their effort to rid the country of its most blood soaked tyrant. A quiet old gentleman a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, said to me: "It is abhorrent -all this slaughter-and yet if the Revolution can continue to produce such heroism, the Autocracy must fall sooner or later”. And the last part of his speech was the uppermost thought in the minds of most Russians. The Government can practice its terrorism to the utmost and yet not stamp out the heroism of revolt. And with such heroism and devotion to Liberty, the success of the Revolution is only a question of time.

Much has been written about Terrorism, but most of the arguments for or against-are weakened by sentimentality. On the one side there is horrified talk of the lawlessness of it and its innocent victims. On the other side harrowing tales of the government's provocation.

Revolutions are in the very essense--lawless. Stolypinethe Premier has himself admitted that a state of war exists in Russia. And war always claims its innocent victims. A person who is shocked with these things has no business with revolutions. On the other hand no serious minded revolutionist has a right to waste himself nor his energies on personal vengeance. Two wrongs do not make a right. And the barbaric atrocities of the Government-while perhaps explaining-do not in the least justify terrorism. A great revolution like this in Russia rises far above personal considerations. And the fact that a comrade or a blood brother has been killed, or a wife or sister

outraged by the janisarries of the Government does not justify a Revolutionist, he belongs to The Cause, and Terrorism can. only be justified as it aids that cause.

At the bottom is the ethical question: is violence ever justified? Has a man a right to resort to violence to defend or to establish an idea? Not the most blood-spattered Terrorist in Russia will praise violence for itself. Violence is abhorrent to every right thinking individual, instead of convincing an opponent, it annihilates him. It is no argument. And yet is it never justified? Leo Tolstoi says "No". A few hundreds, at most thousands of his disciples, feebly echo "No". But all the rest of the world loudly answers "Yes". This is no place for a philosophic discussion of non-resistance. It is enough if everyone, who would judge the Russian Terrorist; will ask himself if he believes in violence. If he believes in the right of the United States to uphold the principles of popular government by force of arms, if he believes in police and prisons, if he believes, even, in compulsory education or sanitary laws, he can not deny that violence the use or threat of force-has its legitimate place in human society. If he glories in the military exploits of our forefathers in our Revolution, or in any of the violent acts which go to make up the history of the past and the life of to-day, he can not condemn violence in the abstract.

And the question becomes "when is violence justified?" In the popular conscience it is not only justified but allowed when it is used in favor of the Rights of Man and against Tyranny. It is really a matter of expediency-of profit and loss. Has all this loss of life and blood in Russia resulted in a compensating increase of human freedom? However, in asking this question it must be borne in mind that the failure of terrorism to overthrow the Tsar is no more an argument against it than the same failure of the proletarian movement and of the Duma is an argument against economic or parlimentary action.

While failing in the ultimate aim of the Revolution-the freeing of Russia from Tyranny-the advocates of Terrorism claim that it has two very distinct and beneficial results: (a) the checking within certain limits the acts of despotism (b) encouraging and heartening the whole revolutionary movement.

Terrorism as an accepted revolutionary tactic was started thirty years ago by a young woman Vera Sassoulitch. A man named Trepov was then the military commandant at St. Petersburg. Some of the students of the University made a demonstration in favor of constitutional government, and to punish this treason, several of them were flogged in one of the public squares of the city. If some of the students of Columbia University had been publically flogged by the New York police,

it would not have caused more indignation in America than did this brutality in Russia.

Vera Sassoulitch lived in one of the small provincial towns. She was not a member of any political organization, she had lived a secluded and quiet life, but on account of these floggings-an insult to all civilized Russia-stirred her to action. Without consulting any one she traveled to St. Petersburg and shot General Trepoy on the street. She was tried by an ordinary courtthe Government had not yet invented its administrative punishment, and its field court-martials-and such was the force of public opinion in her favor that the jury acquitted her. The flogging of students stopped.

The revolutionary tactics of this young woman were adopted by a section of the Socialist conspirators and many instances can be cited of terroristic acts which rank side by side with this deed of Sassoulitch, as eminently just, approved by public opinion and having a direct influence in creating a more liberal regime.

Finland is a private estate of the Russian Tsars, it has no organic connection with the rest of The Empire. Nicholas II. was the first to violate its ancient Constitution and to deprive the Finns of their accustomed liberties. To carry out his policy of Russification and oppression, he appointed Bobrikov to the Governorship. The Finns tried every constitutional and legal way to preserve their national life. And when these failed, a young man-the son of a senator-assassinated Bobrikov. And the oppression of Finland ended. To-day, thanks to this young man, who has become a national hero, his countrymen enjoy one of the most liberal Constitutions in the world.

The assasination of Von Plehve put an end to his oppressive regime, and Russia was ruled liberally until the access of Count Witte to the Premiership again plunged the land into reaction.

The psychological effects of these acts of Terrorism on the minds of the people at large is hard to define or foretell, but it is none the less important. The assasination of the Grand Duke Sergius had no noticeable effect on the policy of the Government, but it was good news to the revolutionists throughout the country. Every one was depressed by the period of governmental reaction and revolutionary inaction, which followed the suppression of the Gapon movement. And suddenly the news flashed all over Russia that Sergius, the most reactionary of the Tsar's advisers, Sergius, the most hardened and cynical of the Court Circle, had been killed. It was the news of a victory and put heart into all the scattered forces of Revolt.

The act of Marie Spiridonova is even a better example. In the Province of Tambov the peasants were suffering under the brutalities of an unusually vicious Vice-Governor. Three months before I had gone through this district and the famine.