CHAPTER III FATHER GAPON AGAIN Meeting of December 4th--The Salt Town--Gapon’s followers--Barashoff, the Chairman--The Hymn of the Fallen--Russian music--Police spies--Russian Oratory--Moderate demands of the Gaponists--Opposition of the Social Democrats--Scarcity of Anarchists--Conversation with Father Gapon--His apparent Nature--Charges of Opportunism 50 CHAPTER IV THE FREEDOM OF THE WORD Effect of the post strike--Volunteer sorters--Epidemic of strikes--Joy in public speaking--The power of speech--Sudden outburst of newspapers--_The Russian Gazette_--_The New Life_--_The Son of the Country_--_The Beginning_--_Our Life_--_Russia_--The Jewish Papers--The Reactionary Press--_Novoe Vremya_--_The Citizen_--_The Word_--The satiric papers and Cartoons--Character of Russian satire--The Social Revolutionists had no paper--Nor had the Radicals--The dangers of division--The split in a Polish restaurant--The joy of life--The assassination of Sakharoff--The protest of the Strike Committee against Government finance--Arrest of Khroustoloff and the Executive 60 CHAPTER V THE OPEN LAND The town of Toula--The road to the country--The travelling peasant--The wayside inn--A country house--Landowners at home--A typical village--A cottage interior--The stove and the loom--Doubts on the Mir--A beggar for scraps--Flogging for taxes--Tolstoy on the End of an Age--How Empires will now cease--The aged prophet--The restoration of the land--The rotting towns--New ideals of statesmanship--Indifference to poets and Shakespeare--The grace of sanctity and the limitations of logic 81 CHAPTER VI THE STATE OF MOSCOW The return of the Army--How they were received--Fears and hopes about their return--Would the soldiers obey?--The Rostoff regiment--The Cossacks and the crowd--Instinct of mutual aid--The post strike--Private assistance--Formation of unions--The tea packers--The shop assistants--Failure of gaiety--University closed--Lectures for the Movement--Soldiers in revolt--The Zemstvoists--Miliukoff’s paper--A Moscow factory--The barrack system--Wages--The post strike and freedom of speech--Gorky on the rich and educated--_The Children of the Sun_--The street murders 97 CHAPTER VII THE OLD ORDER