various ports, but while the foreigners at every port where Russian supremacy still held were sitting up nights waiting to be murdered, and praying for the protection of the blue jackets, six inch rifles and machine gun batteries, those very warships were sitting peacefully outside Macedonia, conducting their childish and ineffective bluff. The economic conditions could scarcely reach a worse stage than those existing at that time in all South Russia. Business was absolutely at a standstill, credit had collapsed and thousands of men had been thrown out of employment. The demand for most of the products of local manufacture had fallen off to almost nothing. The directors of enterprise dared not accumulate a surplus of their product for fear their warehouses would be destroyed at the next spasm of riot, so factories had closed up and the employés were in the streets, destitute and in the middle of winter. Most of the better class had left town, closed their residences, and dismissed their servants, who were also out of town. The railroad, telegraph and postal men were all on a strike, the end of which was not in sight. Most of them had no funds, and were begging on the streets. Everybody who had any money was sitting on it with a gun in each hand. With ten thousand beggars on the streets and the coldest weather of the winter biting through bone and marrow, and a ravenous hunger turning the ordinary docile man into little better than a brute, and with thousands of such at large, there is small wonder that people felt apprehensive. The bakers dared not bake for a day ahead for fear their shops would be broken open and looted, which indeed was happening every day. The Jews, who comprise nearly a quarter of the population, were “squeezing” everybody that came into their clutches and constantly fomenting trouble on the outside. It was probable that any day a mere street brawl might in a moment turn into a massacre, and these Russian massacres mean the unleashing of every element of evil which the town contains. The news that came in from the agrarian districts was increasingly serious, and everyone was guessing as to what the outcome would be. The reports that came in indicated that all over Russia, sometimes peaceably and sometimes with violence, the peasants were taking the land into their own hands. Stories of burning estates and fleeing land owners circulated in every quarter. The question that everyone was asking was if the peasants ever take the land, who will ever take it away from them. Surely the army, that was manifestly sullen and discontented and trusted by no one, could not be looked to for performing such a task. As a matter of fact, people generally felt that the soldiers in time of trouble are more to be feared than any other element in the community. The Czar had just issued his latest manifesto increasing the pay and the standard of living of his army, but the effect was about