The latest news shows that for the moment the country,
even in the storm-centres of Moscow and St. Petersburg, is outwardly calm. The Manifesto of the Dutna has apparently met with no response in the country, and the autocracy, contrary to all former experience, is finding that bayonets make an easy and convenient seat. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that Russia has merely the • appearance of calm. In secret every sort of agitation is going on, and when the revolutionaries judge that the time has come for action they will strike. What the opponents of the pautocracy desire at the present moment is, no doubt, that the Government should first be lulled into a sense of false security, and then take some step which will rouse the opposition of the whole people. No doubt it may be argued that the Government of the Czar have still enormous weight. in Russia, and that if they only use their powers no one will be able to stand up against them. If there were a Napoleon at Peterhof, or even a Nicholas I., this argument might be sound enough ; but those who use it forget that the autocracy is as bankrupt in men as it is in money, and that unless some accident should throw up a really great soldier, the popular forces are certain to win in the end. Even the occupation of the frontier provinces by another Power, which is being now so much debated on the Continent, will not save the situation. If the German Emperor were actually to occupy the Baltic Provinces and Poland in support of the Monarchical principle and "to preserve order," he would, we believe, only hasten the Revolu- tion, while at the same time raising in Germany problems of the greatest danger. The nature of these problems may be seen from the very interesting despatch from the Berlin correspondent of the Times published in Friday's paper. Extracts there given from the Clerical Kolnische Yolks- zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung show that the Conserva- tive and Evangelical Reicksbote by no means wins popular approval when it apprehends that if the Russian autocracy is overthrown, the German Empire will be the next thing to go.
