y, If the program of the Bloc was not radical
enough to satisfy the various Socialist groups, even the Laborites, led by
Kerensky, it was, nevertheless, a program which they could support in the
main, as far as it went.

All over the country there was approval of the demand for a responsible
government. The municipal councils of the large cities passed resolutions
in support of it. The great associations of manufacturers supported it. All
over the nation the demand for a responsible government was echoed. It was
generally believed that the Czar and his advisers would accept the
situation and accede to the popular demand. But once more the influence of
the reactionaries triumphed, and on September 3d came the defiant answer of
the government to the people. It was an order suspending the Duma
indefinitely. The gods make mad those whom they would destroy.

Things went from bad to worse. More and more oppressive grew the
government; more and more stupidly brutal and reactionary in its dealings
with the wide-spread popular unrest. Heavier and heavier grew the burden of
unscientific and unjustly distributed taxation. Worse and worse became the
condition of the soldiers at the front; ever more scandalous the neglect of
the sick and wounded. Incompetence, corruption, and treason combined to
hurry the nation onward to a disastrous collapse. The Germanophiles were
still industriously at work in the most important and vital places,
practising sabotage upon a scale never dreamed of before in the history of
any nation. They played upon the fears of the miserable weakling who was
the nominal ruler of the vast Russian Empire, and frightened him into
sanctioning the most suicidal policy of devising new measures of oppression
instead of making generous concessions.

Russia possessed food in abundance, being far better off in this respect
than any other belligerent on either side, yet Russia was in the grip of
famine. There was a vast surplus of food grains and cereals over and above
the requirements of the army and the civilian population, yet there was
wide-spread hunger. Prices rose to impossible levels. The most astonishing
anarchy and disorganization characterized the administration of the
food-supply. It was possible to get fresh butter within an hour's journey
from Moscow for twenty-five cents a pound, but in Moscow the price was two
and a half dollars a pound. Here, as throughout the nation, incompetence
was reinforced by corrup