15 APRIL 1899, Page 2

The signs of unrest in Russia multiply. Apart from the

local insurrections caused by the prevailing scarcity, which in some places, notably Kazan, are serious,.there are the artisan troubles which we noticed last week ; and now the University students are in mutiny. Their real grievance is the brutality with which every expression of their feelings is suppressed by the Cossack police, who strike them with their whips, arrest, and otherwise maltreat them. The students have combined to pro- test against this treatment, and between their strikes and expul- sions thirty thousand young men have left the Universities, whose doors are closed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, Kharkoff, Odessa, Kazan, Tomsk, and Warsaw. The female students will, it is stated, follow the example of the men, and are much more dangerous, as they at once become re- volutionaries. Indeed, there would seem from some docu- ments published to be small revolutionary parties embedded in the movement. As each student has many families interested in his success, the matter is a .serious one for the Government, . which once. again finds. itself in collision with the whole. educated _class. Nothing will, or can, happen in Russia until'the military class is discontented) or the Empire finds a reforming Czar ; but no Government likes to feel itself hated by the class from which, aftee all, it must draw all its own agents. There is, however, no remedy to be perceived, except through the Emperor, and Nicholas IL, though he wishes thorcnighly well to his people, has no strength of initiative,