ypin," was Azef's playful allusion to the ever-ready
gallows to which he, plotting with Rasputin, Manuiloff, Guerassimof,
and others, was so constantly sending innocent persons.
Truly, Russia was a strange country even before the outbreak of war.

The immediate object of Azef's activities, combined with Rasputin's, was
at Germany's direction to extend the Terrorist action and thus cause
trouble and unrest in the Empire. By every fresh success he obtained more
money from Berlin, and at the same time strengthened his privileged
position in the ranks of the Terrorists, while his worth was increased in
the eyes of both the Minister of the Interior and of the Emperor. The
scoundrel's revolutionary career and his police career were inseparable.
He was a Terrorist to-day, a police official to-morrow, but, like
Rasputin, a secret agent of Germany always!

Terrible as it may seem, the Okhrana, with the connivance of the
Wilhelmstrasse, and with the Empress's full knowledge--of this there is
no doubt, because documentary evidence exists which proves it--caused the
highest personages in Russia to be murdered or hanged in order to prove
to those lucky ones who survived how necessary was the organisation for
their own existence!

A hundred dramas could be written upon the intrigues of Grichka and Azef.
Some of them were amazing; all were disgraceful. The life of the most
upright and honest man or woman was not safe if marked down by the pair
of scoundrels. The attempt upon Admiral Dubassof, in which Count
Konovnicin met his death; the attempt upon General Guerchelman,
Governor-General of Moscow; the assassination of General Slepzof at Tver,
with half a dozen other murders of the same kind, were all the work of
Azef. Why? Because both Azef and General Guerassimof, chief of the Secret
Police, were in the toils of Germany. The Wilhelmstrasse paid well, but
threatened exposures if this or that person were not removed. Hence Azef,
as one of the heads of the Terrorists, received his orders through
Rasputin, and, obeying, was paid his blood-money.

Many of the dastardly crimes which Azef, aided by the monk, committed at
Germany's orders will never be known. Hundreds of innocent persons were
arrested, and when the police searched their homes the most incriminating
documents were found concealed--documents which when produced they had
never before seen. Hundreds of men and women were hurried to Siberia, and
hundreds of others were sent to