for anyone in Russia to find out who the Ministers of the government were.

Protopopov released Sukhomlinov, the former Minister of War who had been
justly convicted of treason. This action, taken, it was said, at the
direction of the Czarina, added to the already wide-spread belief that the
government was animated by a desire to make peace with Germany. That the
Czar himself was loyal to the Allies was generally believed, but there was
no such belief in the loyalty of Protopopov, Sturmer, and their associates.
The nation meantime was drifting into despair and anarchy. The railway
system was deliberately permitted to become disorganized. Hunger reigned in
the cities and the food reserves for the army were deliberately reduced to
a two days' supply. The terror of hunger spread through the large cities
and through the army at the front like prairie fire.

It became evident that Protopopov was carrying out the plans of the
Germanophiles, deliberately trying to disorganize the life of the nation
and make successful warfare impossible. Socialists and labor leaders
charged that his agents were encouraging the pacifist minority and opposing
the patriotic majority among the workers. The work of the War Industries
Committee which controlled organizations engaged in the manufacture of
war-supplies which employed hundreds of thousands of workers was hampered
in every way. It is the testimony of the best-known and most-trusted
working-class leaders in Russia that the vast majority of the workers,
while anxious for a general democratic peace, were opposed to a separate
peace with Germany and favored the continuation of the war against
Prussianism and the co-operation of all classes to that end. The pacifists
and "defeatist" Socialists represented a minority. To the minority every
possible assistance was given, while the leaders of the working class who
were loyal to the war, and who sought to sustain the morale of the workers
in support of the war, were opposed and thwarted in their efforts and, in
many cases, cast into prison. The Black Hundreds were still at work.

Socialist leaders of the working class issued numerous appeals to the
workers, warning them that Protopopov's secret police agitators were trying
to bring about strikes, and begging them not to lend themselves to such
treacherous designs, which could only aid Germany at the expense of
democracy in Russia and elsewhere. It became known, too, that large numbers
of machi