I have also heard the following argument, which is advanced by the newspaper _Rossia_, a semi-official organ, this morning: “What do we lose by deciding on repressive measures? Even if we fail by giving in now we should be failing; therefore we are exchanging certain failure for problematic failure; it is better to give in after a fight than to surrender without a struggle, and our chances, now that we are certain of at least one part of the Army, are better than they will be a year hence, when we shall be certain of nothing. We are told that we cannot dissolve the Duma without provoking a revolution, but, from our point of view, to give in to the Duma now is equivalent to sanctioning a revolution. Let us try and prove that we can dissolve the Duma, and that they are merely trying to bluff with their threats of revolution.” The logical result of this policy should be civil war.[3] Footnote 3: And it has proved to be civil war; but civil war waged in everyday life and unaccompanied by an armed rising. All the revolutionary elements in the country would be strengthened by a dissolution, and one can safely predict that the general disorder would be increased. For even now the sporadic anarchy is increasing daily. Will the dissolution of the Duma relieve this tension? I think not. The question then suggests itself: Is there no hope of a peaceful issue? A Ministry formed from the majority of the Duma is the only hope; but whether it would manage to calm matters is another question. It is true that there is a moderate element, especially among the peasants, who wish to meet the landlords halfway, who consider the demands of the Extreme Left, and especially their agrarian programme, to be absurd. These men would support a Ministry taken from the Duma, but they continually assert that the Government will not meet them half way, and that, on the other hand, they consider the schemes which the Government have put forward to be fundamentally insufficient. Whether a Ministry composed of members taken from the majority of the Duma would succeed in calming the country depends on the nature and intensity of the opposition they would have to encounter, which it is impossible to gauge at present. One thing is certain, that in the event of such a Ministry being given a free hand sympathy would cease to be extended to the throwers of bombs, whose task is now greatly facilitated by the simple fact that popular opinion is with them.