JUST a fortnight ago communications ceased between Petrograd and the rest of the world. When they were resumed they disclosed a revolution already accomplished, with far less sacrifice of life than might have been anticipated in so vast a political change. . .

The revolution is a movement of the whole people. The Duma had behind it not only the democratic Unions of the Towns and the Zemstvos, but also the ultra-conservative Council of the United Nobility and all the more prominent of the Grand Dukes. It is not a movement for peace, but for victory, that victory which Russia believes to have been withheld from her arms by mysterious treachery within her borders. It is a movement against the “dark forces” which have been constantly denounced in the Press and the Duma. Warning had been given to the Court party, notably in the murder of Rasputin, who was neither priest nor monk, but an illiterate sensualist possessed of a strange psychic power. By that time the movement was too strong to be terrorized even by a Protopopov, for it had gathered to itself the whole people, convinced that Russia must take her own course apart from the autocracy and the bureaucracy. The revolution has been controlled throughout by the Duma, which through failures and mistakes inevitable to the early years of a newly constituted parliament had come at last to the wise exercise of power.

Already the effect upon Russia has been marvellous. The nation is again one, inspired by a new courage and a new confidence. . .

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