28 JANUARY 1905, Page 17

only in repression. General Trepoff, an "iron-fisted" officer already distinguished

for unscrupulous severity, has been appointed Governor-General of St. Petersburg—a new office —with practically absolute powers. He supersedes the Minister of the Interior as far as the capital is concerned, he is authorised to call out and use any number of troops, he is specially declared absolute over all Government " Works," and he is empowered to control the Press at will. He is, in fact, Dictator. He has already arrested many of the "intelligent's " suspected of Liberal sentiments, and confined them in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and has threatened the workmen that unless they return to work they will be sent back to their villages. As we go to press, a considerable number of workmen have yielded to this threat; and a Ukase issued on Wednesday by the Czar attempts to dissociate the strike from revolutionary propaganda and to pacify the workmen by promises of reform in the labour laws. Repres- sion, as Russians understand it, is meanwhile to have its full swing, and there is little doubt, if the troops continue to obey and the Treasury remains full, that all resistance in St. Petersburg will for the time be trodden down. Naturally it is reported that Nihilism is rearing its head again, that the Czar has been " sentenced to death," and that assassination will again be frequent. That will, of course, detach from the revolution the sympathies of Europe, and give to repression new energy, the tyrants believing, with justice, that their lives are at stake.