NEWS OF THE WEEK.
LAST Saturday General Trepoff, the Commandant of the Palace, died at his residence at Peterhof, to which he had returned after accompanying the Emperor for a short distance on his yachting tour. He had long suffered from angina pectoris, and his death was due to natural causes. The son of the famous Prefect of St. Petersburg, he exemplified in his own career his father's principles. He served with distinction in the Russo-Turkish War, but his name was little known to the world till his barbarities at Moscow in January, 1905, gave him a sinister fame. He was ordered to Manchuria, but the order was countermanded by the Czar, who believed that be bad found in him a possible Dictator. Under the Bulyguine Ministry he was Chief of Police, and all last year he made his heavy hand felt in every form of repression. Last December be became Commandant of the Palace, where he was generally assumed to represent the reactionary power behind the Throne. In spite of his harsh methods, he seems to have held certain liberal views, and is believed quite sincerely to have opposed the Dissolution of the Duma. Popular imagination, however, accepted Prince Urusoff's description of him as having "the instincts of a policeman and the education of a corporal," and he was the most bitterly hated of all the reactionaries. The best that can be said of him is that he was a brave man, and resolutely followed his ruinous policy. He is succeeded at the Palace by General Dediulin, the Commander of the Gendarmes, a man trained under his own eye.
