ne-guns were being distributed among the police in Petrograd and
placed at strategic points throughout the city. It was said that Protopopov
was mad, but it was the methodical madness of a desperate, reactionary,
autocratic regime.

III

Protopopov and Sturmer and their associates recognized as clearly as the
liberals did the natural kinship and interdependence of the three great
autocracies, the Romanov, Habsburg, and Hohenzollern dynasties. They knew
well that the crushing of autocracy in Austria-Hungary and Germany would
make it impossible to maintain autocracy in Russia. They realized,
furthermore, that while the nation was not willing to attempt revolution
during the war, the end of the war would inevitably bring with it
revolution upon a scale far vaster than had ever been attempted before,
unless, indeed, the revolutionary leaders could be goaded into making a
premature attempt to overthrow the monarchy. In that case, it might be
possible to crush them. Given a rebellion in the cities, which could be
crushed by the police amply provided with machine-guns, and by "loyal"
troops, with a vast army unprovided with food and no means of supplying it,
there would be abundant justification for making a separate peace with
Germany. Thus the Revolution would be crushed and the whole system of
autocracy, Russian, Austrian, and German, preserved.

The morning of the 27th of February--new style--was tense with an ominous
expectancy. In the Allied chancelleries anxious groups were gathered. They
realized that the fate of the Allies hung in the balance. In Petrograd
alone three hundred thousand workers went out on strike that day, and the
police agents did their level best to provoke violence. The large bodies of
troops massed at various points throughout the city, and the police with
their machine-guns, testified to the thoroughness with which the government
had prepared to crush any revolutionary manifestations. Thanks to the
excellent discipline of the workers, and the fine wisdom of the leaders of
the Social Democrats, the Socialist-Revolutionists, and the Labor Group,
who constantly exhorted the workers not to fall into the trap set for them,
there was no violence.

At the opening session of the Duma, Kerensky, leader of the Labor Group,
made a characteristic address in which he denounced the arrest of the Labor
Group members of the War Industries Committee. He directed his attack
against the "system," not against ind