CHAPTER XXII PRINCE URUSSOFF’S SPEECH ST. PETERSBURG, _June 22nd_. The speech made by Prince Urussoff last Friday in reply to the Minister of the Interior is generally considered here to be the most important utterance which has as yet been made within the walls of the Duma. Prince Urussoff occupied for a short period a post in the Ministry of the Interior during the late Ministry. His speech is not only important from the fact of its being authoritative, and because it throws a startlingly interesting light on some of the causes of the Jewish massacres, but also because it reveals the evil which is practically at the root of all the trouble in Russia. “REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE,—I rise to submit to your consideration a few observations regarding the question put to the Ministry by the Duma and the answer to that question which we have just heard. I presume that we are considering the information respecting a printing-press concealed in the recesses of the Police Department, by which proclamations to the people are printed inciting them to civil war, not so much in the light of a fact which belongs to the past and interests us only so far as the responsibility of certain individuals is concerned, but rather in the light of an alarming question as to a possibility of the further participation of Government officials in the preparation of those sanguinary tragedies for which we have been notorious during a dismal epoch, and which, as the events of the last few days have shown, continue to occur, to the indignation of all those to whom human life and the fair fame of the Russian Empire are precious. Let me state at the outset that I do not for a moment doubt of the sincerity of the declaration made by the Minister of the Interior, and that the words which I wish to say to you are not directed against the Ministry. “On the contrary, the whole significance, the whole interest, the whole importance of the question at issue lie precisely in the fact that massacres and civil strife, owing to the circumstances now obtaining, continue and will continue, quite independently of the action taken with regard to them by one Minister of the Interior or another, or by one Ministry or another. With regard to this point the declaration of the Minister of the Interior does not seem to me convincing, and I will now try to explain why, with this end in view, I must deal with the question of the massacres, and try to unravel and explain the part played in them by the printing-press which was the subject of our question.