ividuals:

"We are living in a state of anarchy unprecedented in our history. In
comparison with it the period of 1613 seems like child's play. Chaos has
enveloped not only the political, but the economic life of the nation as
well. It destroys the very foundations of the nation's social economic
structure.

"Things have come to such a pass that recently one of the Ministries,
shipping coal from Petrograd to a neighboring city, had armed the train
with a special guard so that other authorities should not confiscate the
coal on the way! We have arrived already at the primitive stage when each
person defends with all the resources at his command the material in his
possession, ready to enter into mortal combat for it with his neighbor. We
are witnessing the same scenes which France went through at the time of the
Revolution. Then also the products shipped to Paris were accompanied by
special detachments of troops to prevent their being seized by the
provincial authorities....

"Behold the Cabinet of Rittich-Protopopov-Golitizin dragging into the court
the Labor Group of the War Industries Committee, charged with aiming at the
creation of a Russian Social-Democratic republic! They did not even know
that nobody aims at a 'Social-Democratic' republic. One aiming at a
republic labors for popular government. But has the court anything to say
about all these distinctions? We know beforehand what sentences are to be
imposed upon the prisoners....

"I have no desire to criticize the individual members of the Cabinet. The
greatest mistake of all is to seek traitors, German agents, separate
Sturmers. _We have a still greater enemy than the German influence, than
the treachery and treason of individuals. And that enemy is the system--the
system of a medieval form of government_."

How far the conspiracy of the government of Russia against the war of
Russia and her Allies extended is shown by the revelations made in the Duma
on March 3d by one of the members, A. Konovalov. He reported that two days
previously, March 1st, the only two members of the Labor Group of the War
Industries Committee who were not in prison issued an appeal to the workers
not to strike. These two members of the Labor Group of the War Industries
Committee, Anosovsky and Ostapenko, took their exhortation to the bureau of
the War Industries Committee for its approval. But, although approved by
this great and important organization, the appeal was not passed b