ilway officials do really take bribes, "and even of considerable
amounts." But, that ascertained, the representative of the Ministry
decided to delve deeper to the root of the matter. And he reached the
conclusion that railway servants belong to the class of the tempted.
The evil, he reported, resides not in the circumstance that they take
bribes, but that bribes are offered whereby these weak little souls
are seduced. The representative of the Ministry discovered an entire
category of bribes which do not bear the signs of extortion, but only
of "gratitude." To us this conclusion sounds somewhat naive. The most
widely circulated journal of Petrograd prefaces an article on the
subject as follows.[125]

[125] _The Bourse Gazette_, February 21.

"The misdeeds of the officials and bribery on the railway system cry
out to heaven," writes the organ of the Constitutional Democrats.
"Compared with the reverses on the Carpathians and in Poland, the
defeats we are sustaining in our own house and behind the enemy's back
are much greater...." On the important line Petrograd-Moscow-Perm
scandalous cases of corruption took place in which, according to
Russian journals, officials of a class who might reasonably be
regarded as unbribable were implicated. They are alleged to have let
out to firms of speculators for large sums of money, goods waggons
which were already destined to carry consignments to the front.[126]
Russia's purchases abroad have made a profound impression on the
peoples in whose midst they were effected. The principles on which
these transactions were carried on provoked lively comments. It is not
that they revealed a superlative degree of disorganization. That touch
would have merely marked the kinship of the men concerned with their
allies. By the discovery that the Russian Government's purchasing
Commissioners, the representatives of one of its embassies, the agents
of the British Government and the equally zealous agents of the French
Government were all secretly bidding against each other for the same
rifles to be delivered to the Tsar's Ministers, only a smile of
recognition was elicited. It may have seemed at once amusing and
consolatory to find that all were tarred with the same brush. But when
it was discovered that the offer of certain army necessaries was put
off for weeks and weeks, although they were to be had under cost
price, and was then accepted at a much higher price, profound sympathy
was felt