Accounts of the unrest in Russia grow more serious. It
is stated that the sufferings of the peasantry in the South, the most populous and richest division of the Empire, involve actual hunger, and that in the provinces of Pultawa and ICharkoff the peasants have proclaimed "war to the castle." Eighty residences of landlords have been sacked, and the local officials are so terrified that the Minister of the Interior, M. Plehve, has gone himself to the disturbed districts to brace up the bureaucracy. The artisans everywhere are clamouring against their employers, who, poor people, find orders so short that they recently appealed for Government help, and circulars have been discovered directed against the "foreign devils" who as foremen and overseers try to execute the owners' commands. The students have, it is said, circu- lated a forged ukase—given textually in another column— bestowing the land on the peasantry, and the leaders of the artisans have formulated their demands, which are the ordinary demands of English workmen, with the significant exception that they ask for a day of ten and a half hours. It is reported, moreover, that the "moral tone" of the non-corn. missioned officers can only be trusted when they are peasants, and that peasants of sufficient cultivation are not always in the ranks. Altogether, there is an ominous stirring among the dry bones, society in St Petersburg and Moscow is divided, and there are furious dissensions among the group around the Czar.
