e hearts of the people,
but it permitted a shortage of flour which had been noticeable for
several weeks to become really serious just at this moment. There were
large districts of working people practically without bread from the
time the Duma reconvened up to the moment of the revolution.

[Sidenote: Situation needed a great ruler.]

In the palace at Tsarskoe-Selo the seriousness of the situation was not
ignored, but the preventive measures were lamentable. The Emperor, also,
went to the front. If he had been a big enough man to be an emperor he
would certainly never have done so. That left the neurasthenic Empress
and the crafty, small-minded Protopopoff to handle a problem that needed
a real man as great as Emperor Peter or Alexander III.

[Sidenote: The author on the point of leaving Russia.]

[Sidenote: The appearance of Cossacks.]

When the Duma reconvened without disorders it never occurred to me that
the Government would be foolish enough to let the flour situation get
worse. I was so used by this time to see the Duma keep a calm front in
the face of imperial rebuffs that I thought Russia was going to continue
to muddle on to the end of the war and, though I thought I was rather
well-posted, I confess I was on the point of leaving Russia to return to
the western front, where the spring campaign was about to begin with
vigor. As late as the Wednesday before the revolution I was preparing to
leave. That day I learned that several small strikes which had occurred
in scattered factories could not be settled and that several other
factories were forced to close because workmen, having no bread, refused
to report. Still I remember I was not too preoccupied by these reports
to discuss the possibility of a German offensive against Italy with our
military attache, Lieutenant Francis B. Riggs, as we strolled down the
Nevsky in the middle of the afternoon. We had reached the Fontanka Canal
when we passed three Cossacks riding abreast at a walk up the street.
They were the first Cossacks to make a public appearance, and they
brought to the mind of every Petrograd citizen the recollection of the
barbarities of the revolution of 1905. Their appearance was a challenge
to the people of Petrograd. They seemed to say, "Yes, we are here." If
any one had said to me that afternoon, "These Cossacks are going to
start a revolution which will set Russia free within a week," I should
have regarded him as a lunatic with an original