ng with a freedom which would once
have sent them to Siberia, and with a power to which the bewildered
Nicholas cannot be indifferent, and to which, perhaps, he would gladly
yield were it not for the dominating sentiment about him. Many a man
who could face a rain of bullets without a tremor, would quail and turn
coward if subjected to the same test before such a cumulative force of
opinion.

But this is not a crisis to be settled in the Council-Chamber, nor to
be decided by convincing arguments, but by the march of events. And
events were not slow in coming.

The assassination of the Grand Duke Sergius, uncle of the Tsar, and the
most extreme of the reactionaries at Moscow, of which he was governor,
was the most powerful argument yet presented for a change of direction
in the Government; and others were near at hand.

The derangement of industrial conditions induced by the war pressed
heavily upon the wage-earners; and the agitation upon the surface, the
threatened explosions here and there, were only an indication of the
misery existing in the deeps below. At all industrial centres there
were strikes accompanied by the violence which invariably attends them.

On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 22d, an orderly concourse of workmen, in
conformity with a plan already announced, were on their way to the
Winter-Palace bearing a petition to the "Little Father," who, if he
only knew their wrongs, would see that justice was done them. So they
were going to tell him in person of their grievances. The letter of
the preceding day ran thus:

"Sovereign. We fear the ministers have not told you the whole truth.
Your children, trusting in you, have resolved to come to the Winter
Palace tomorrow at 2 P. M. to tell you of their needs. Appear before
us and receive our address of devotion."

Had these 8,000 or 10,000 men been marching to the Winter-Palace with
rifles in their hands, or with weapons of any sort indicating a violent
purpose, there might have been cause for alarm. But absolutely
unarmed, even for their own defence, led by an orthodox priest carrying
an icon, these humble petitioners were met by a volley of rapid fire
from repeating rifles, were cut down by sabres and trampled by cavalry,
until "policing" had become an indiscriminate massacre of innocent
people upon the streets, regardless of age or sex. Before midnight the
Tsar was miles away at his Palace Tsarskoe-Selo; and there was a new
cry heard in St. Pet