very bad, not on account
of any real scarcity of foodstuffs, but because of the inefficient
handling of the inadequate transportation facilities. In some
localities provisions rotted in the warehouses while in the large
cities the people were starving, on the verge of famine. Instead of
handling the food situation as the other belligerent countries were
doing, Sturmer encouraged a group of dishonest financiers to acquire
control of the food supplies, thereby making big financial profits
himself. This greediness on his part was, however, to cause his own
downfall before that of his associates. A traitor to his country, he
was also a thief.

CHAPTER LXXVII

THE WORK OF TRAITORS

Such were the tactics the dark forces had fully adopted in the fall of
1916, only a few months before the revolution. They deliberately set
about disorganizing the machinery of the nation to facilitate a
Russian defeat. As has been proved, they did not stop short of actual
treachery in the military field. The failure of the Rumanian defense
was the result of actual betrayal by those higher even than the
generals in the field. The Germans and Austrians had known every
detail of the campaign plans of the Rumanians and the Russian army
supporting them, and this information they had obtained directly from
Petrograd.

Had it not been for the fact that the whole nation was awaiting the
opening of the Duma to take place on November 14, 1916, it is more
than probable that the revolution would have taken place in the fall
of 1916 instead of four months later. It would then, however, have
been a far bloodier event, for then the disintegration of the
autocracy had not yet reached such a complete stage as it did in the
following spring, and it might have offered a far more serious,
perhaps a successful, resistance. But the last hope of the people was
in the Duma, and they awaited its session in that spirit.

The Duma convened on the date set, and then was witnessed the
remarkable spectacle of the conservative members denouncing the
Government with the fiery oratory of Socialist agitators. The
president himself, Michael Rodzianko, who hitherto had always been a
stanch supporter of the autocracy, being a prosperous landowner and
the father of two officers in a crack regiment, arraigned Sturmer as
once he had arraigned the revolutionary agitators. But it was left to
Professor Paul Milukov, the leader of the Constitutional Democrats, to
create the