to overthrow the old regime with its manifold treachery, corruption, and incompetence.  When, on August 22d, the Progressive Bloc was formed by a coalition of Constitutional Democrats, Progressives, Nationalists, and Octobrists—­the last-named group having hitherto generally supported the government—­there was a general chorus of approval throughout the country, 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 corruption and pro-German treachery.  Many writers have called attention to the fact that even in normal times the enormous exportation of food grains in Russia went on side by side with per capita underconsumption by the peasants whose labor produced the great harvests, amounting to not less than 30 per cent.  Now, of course, conditions were far worse.