verdict of the future, with its better historic
perspective, whether justly or unjustly, Count Witte had lost his hold
upon the situation; and the statesman who had been the one heroic
figure in Russia was no longer the man of the hour. At all events, his
resignation of the head of the Ministry during this obnoxious attempt
to nullify the gift of popular representation was significant; and the
name of de Witte is not associated with this grave mistake made by the
master he has tried to serve.

The reforms insistently demanded by the _Duma_ were as follows:--The
responsibility of the Ministry to that body, as the representative of
the people; the distribution to the working peasants of the lands held
by the Crown and the clergy; a General Amnesty, with the release of all
political prisoners; and the abolition of the death penalty.

This was virtually a sweeping demand for the surrender of the
autocratic principle, the very principle the Fundamental Laws had just
been revised to render more inviolable. The issue was now narrowed
down within definite limits. It was a conflict for power, for
administrative control, and it was a life-and-death struggle between
the Tsar and his people.

Printed reports of the debates were sent broadcast, and for the first
time since Russia came into being the peasantry saw things as they
really were. They had always attributed their wrongs to the nobility,
who, they believed, had cheated them out of their land and their rights
under the Emancipation Act. But now it was not the nobility, not the
hated Boyars who were cruelly refusing to give them land and liberty,
but it was the Little Father, he whom they had always trusted and
adored!

It is a critical moment when the last illusion drops from the eyes of a
confiding people. The _Duma_ at this moment was engaged in a task of
supreme difficulty and responsibility. Millions of people hung upon
its words and acts. A group of inexperienced but terribly determined
men were facing an equally determined group of well-seasoned officials,
veterans in the art of governing. Never was there greater need of
calmness and wisdom, and at this very time a wild revolutionary faction
was doing its utmost to inflame the passions of a peasantry already
maddened with a sense of wrong and betrayal, who in gusts of
destructive rage were burning, pillaging, and carrying terror into the
remotest parts of the Empire.

Even while the _Duma_ was demanding