We are told by writers who seem to have had the confidence of the revolutionaries that the complete suppression of overt criticism by Alexander III and his son had led to the formation of a new and very powerful secret movement. It had branches in all parts of Russia, and it is said to have had as many as three million members in the year 1904. Twelve men of distinguished ability directed its propaganda, and many wealthy Russians, disgusted at or injured by the atrocious system which Nicholas II maintained, devoted their whole fortunes to its work. Many of the stories told of its secret action are melodramatic and improbable, but it cannot be doubted that a vast and well-organised movement existed, not unlike the secret republican organisation which was then being formed in Portugal. The Russian movement, however, was not definitely republican. It aimed at converting the Tsar, under pressure of his people, to constitutional views. It resented and despised the turbulent movements of the students and Socialists, and it countenanced assassination only in very grave and carefully-selected cases. We are told that its agents repeatedly placed on the Tsar’s desk letters in which the situation was fully described and Nicholas was urged to make peace with his people by granting a constitution and casting off the influence of the Dowager-Empress. The early agitation was crushed with the customary brutality. One of the most repulsive adventurers of the time, Plehve, had become Minister of the Interior, and under his genial lead the police and magistrates fell upon every suspicion of revolt. Over the greater part of Russia the protection of civil law had been virtually suspended since 1881. Under what was called “The Regulation for Reinforced Protection” suspects might be at any time arrested and imprisoned, journals suppressed, the civil courts entirely ignored. In the year 1903 nearly 400 men and women had been arrested under this barbarous system, and it was estimated that there were already more than 100,000 in the jails of Russia and in Siberia. The work had continued, however, and the revolutionaries boast that in the very year before the war, the year when they seemed to be feeblest, they circulated two million pamphlets among the Russian people. As the agitation grew with the war, Plehve retorted with increased savagery; and on July 28th (1904), he was, in spite of his extraordinary precautions, assassinated. The murderer, Sazonoff, was sentenced only to twenty years’ imprisonment, and Nicholas reduced this to fourteen years. The revolutionaries claim that they warned the Tsar that he answered with his life for the life of Sazonoff. It was, at all events, made plain to the Tsar by the press of Europe that his system of ruling was regarded as barbarous.