M. de Plehve, often described as the autocrat behind the
Czar, and certainly the grand advocate both of repression and of hostility to the Jews, was on Thursday blown to pieces. He was just on his way to report to the Emperor at Peterhof, when near the terminus of the Warsaw Railway a man dashed out of a restaurant and flung a bomb at his carriage. The coachman, the horses, and the carriage were all shattered, both legs were torn from the unhappy Minister, and of course he died on the spot. It is supposed that the murderer, who was arrested, is a member of one of the revolutionary societies ; but M. de Plehve had a thousand enemies, provoked by his severity, during an official life of thirty years, to Finlanders, Jews, and all who betrayed liberal opinions, whether in politics or theology. The murder will probably increase the severity of repression; but it may warn the great bureaucrats who advise the throne that their system of terrorism has reached the breaking point, and is creating enemies who are as danger- ous to the successful administration of the Empire as any foes Russia is likely to encounter in the field. Good, however, never comes of great crimes, and the observer can but record the death of M. de Plehve as one more evidence of the moral anarchy which permeates all Russian society, and suggests to the pessimist that some great convulsion is at hand. The deceased was the son of a German Protestant pastor who had a Jewish strain in him, but he had made himself in creed, opinions, and manners a typical Russian.
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