THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1907. THE RUSSIAN DUMA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8368, 27 February 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1907. THE RUSSIAN DUMA.

The second Russian Duma has been elected after a year of unprecedented anarchism and terrorism and under conditions which were intended to make certain the return of Government candidates. The result is a startling impeachment of the Czarocracy. In spite of all the powerful official influences brought to bear upon the various elective bodies and of the wholesale coercion exercised in every part of the Empire, threefourtht> of the members elected are opposed to the Government. The immediate fall in Russian stocks which followed in Paris upon the announcement of the results shows the impression which the elections have made among those who are interested solely in the security of their investments. It is the more noticeable because the sympathies of Western Europe are strongly with the Russian reformers,, in France as in England so that the Uneasiness in the stock market is in no way caused by any sentimental antagonism to the reform movement. Its sources lie in the positive conviction that the Czarocracy will not yield its powers, privileges, and prerogatives'without a struggle, and in the proof afforded that the great mass of the Russian people are more determined than ever

to demand radical concessions. Of the seriousness of the situation there can be no doubt, nor is it any the less serious, because it is quite incomprehensible to the Western mind. For a year and more the Russian Government has been straining its energies to stifle the reform movement and to overawe the revolutionary parties; while at the same time the revolutionists have hesitated at no violence which might strike terror into the heart of every Government official. By the one side, wholesale massacres have been committed upon the slightest provocation, and often upon manufactured provocation; the hangman and firing party have been constantly busy; the gaols and prisons have been crammed to overflowing with suspected persons, and the sorrowful road to Northern Siberia has never been more closely thronged. By the other side, assassination has been heaped upon assas- j sination with amazing rapidity and recklessness; organised robbery has been made to fill the revolutionary coffers, where illegal levies failed to supply the required funds; bomb, pistol, dagger, and poison have been indiscriminately resorted to; no official has been too high and none too low for revolutionary vengeance; and no place has "been a sure refuge for any against whom the popular wrath has turned. In some way or other, without order in its towns and with famine racking its agricultural districts, the vast empire of the Czar has been kept together. It is still possible to travel by train, still possible to post a letter, and still necessary to pay taxes. Troops are still mustered, warships still manoeuvred, prisoners still held, at the order of the Czar. But though revolt has been stamped out with grape and bullet and Cossack whip wherever it lifted its head, it was beyond the power of the Russian Government to so coerce enough of the limited num- , ber of electors as to secure even a bare majority in the new Duma. I Russia is certainly a most wonderful and incomprehensible country.