are that, though there was no discord
among the Allies, yet there was no trick that the enemy would not play
with the treacherous object of wrecking their alliance. "Russia will not
betray her friends," he declared, "and I say she, with contempt, refuses
any consideration of a separate peace."

The speech was greeted with thunderous outbursts of applause, while
Stuermer, who was present, rose and left after its conclusion.

Then, when the applause and cheering of the Ambassadors of the Allies had
died down; Paul Miliukoff, the brilliant leader of the Constitutional
Democrats, rose gravely and began to speak.

That speech, which the camarilla had vainly striven strenuously to
suppress, proved historic, and was mainly the cause of Stuermer's
overthrow. Boldly and relentlessly he showed his hearers the favour with
which the Teutons regarded Stuermer and the consternation caused in the
Allied camp by his activities. Reading extracts from German and Austrian
newspapers, he brought out the fact that the Central Powers regarded
Stuermer as a member "of those circles which look on the war against
Germany without particular enthusiasm"; that Stuermer's appointment to the
Foreign Ministry was greeted in the Teutonic countries as the beginning
of a new era in Russian politics, while the dismissal of Sazonov produced
in the Entente countries an effect "such as would have been produced by a
pogrom."

The crowning sensation, however, was what he revealed concerning
Stuermer's connection with the blackmailing operations of his private
secretary, Manasevitch-Manuiloff, who, a few weeks before, had been
arrested on a charge of bribery. The secretary told the directors of a
Petrograd bank that proceedings were being instituted against them by the
Ministry of the Interior for alleged trading with the enemy, and offered
to suppress the affair "through influential friends" for a large
consideration.

The representatives of the bank had special reasons to get even with the
"dark forces," and especially Protopopoff, since the retired Minister of
the Interior, A. N. Khvostov, was a brother of the bank's president.
Khvostov owed his dismissal to a plot to kill Rasputin, which was
investigated by Manuiloff. The directors of the bank, therefore, accepted
the fellow's offer, handing him over a large sum of money in marked
notes.

Later Manuiloff was arrested by the military authorities with the bribe
in his possession. His release, however,