Last week General von der Launitz, the Prefect of St.
Peters- burg, was murdered, and on Wednesday morning General Pavloff, the Chief Military Prosecutor, suffered the same fate. He was shot in a small garden behind his rooms by a revolutionary agent disguised as a clerk of the War Office. General Pavloff has long been a marked man. Last July he appeared in the Duma as the advocate of capital punishment, and was howled down amid cries of " Hangman !" He knew that his life was in danger, and took every precaution, never leaving the Court-Martial building, taking his only exercise in the garden where he fell, and giving strict instructions to all officials to admit no strangers. He was a brave man of the type of Ignatieff and Plehve, and no threats deterred him from what he believed to be his duty. The ingenuity of the revolutionaries enables them now to pierce any seclusion, and the reign of terror they inspire is leading to a general demoralisation. The only hope lies in some agreement between M. Stolypin and the new Duma by which they can carry progressive measures without raising the extreme issue between reactionaries and revolutionaries.
