This Assembly had met on the 27th of February, 1917, as had already been settled before the resignation of Mr. Sturmer, and the appointment of Prince Galitzyne as Prime Minister in his place. It became evident from the very first day the Session was opened that most violent discussions were about to take place, and that the government would never be able to command a majority, because even the ultra Conservatives who had backed it up before had forsaken it. One more reason for discontent with it had arisen: the almost total lack of food in Petrograd, where, thanks to the mismanagement of the railways and the lack of tracks, no provisions of any kind could arrive. Riots of a more or less serious character took place in different quarters of the town; the population clamoured for bread, and broke the windows in the bakers’ and butchers’ shops, wherever it could do so. This was one more complication added to all those already existing. The Duma thought it indispensable to make an energetic manifestation of its want of confidence in the government’s power to grapple with the difficulties of the situation. The parties composing the moderate left, together with the Cadets that had recently united themselves into one group denominated the “Bloc,” declared by the mouth of their leader, Mr. Chidlovsky, that it was indispensable to call together a Cabinet comprising really national elements, in possession of the confidence of the country as well as that of the Sovereign, because the one in existence was entirely discredited, even among its former supporters. During the debates which followed upon this motion, the socialist deputies, among others Mr. Tcheidze, expressed themselves in most violent terms, and said, among other things, that the government then in power would never understand the wishes or the needs of the nation, or become reconciled with it, and that between it and the country there existed an abyss which nothing in the world could ever fill. It had against it the whole of Russia, and it had done nothing and was doing nothing to smooth over the difficulties which it had itself created, and for which it was alone responsible. And Mr. Tcheidze concluded his speech by expressing his conviction that a compromise was no longer possible, and that only a great national movement of revolt could overturn the Cabinet and replace it by another one better able to understand the needs of the country and of the army.