The Times of Thursday publishes the indictment of M. Lopukhin,
formerly Director of Police in the Russian Ministry of the Interior, who is charged with high treason for having betrayed the police spy Azetf to the Social Revolutionaries. The ease against M. Lopukhin is that, although he had official knowledge of the immense value of the services Azeff had rendered to the Secret Police and the State by penetrating into the centre of the Social Revolutionary organisation and revealing plots, preventing assassinations, Sie., he revealed to an emissary of the Social Revolutionaries the fact that Azeff was a police spy, with the result that Azeff had to seek refuge in flight. These allegations are supported by the evidence of M. Gerassimoff, the Chief of the Secret Police, and of Captain Andreeff, who was sent to Paris by the Ministry of the Interior to investigate M. Lopukhin's relations with the Social Revolu- tionaries. M. Lopukhin, it may be added, does not deny that he informed the Social Revolutionaries of Azeff's connexion with the Secret Police, but justifies his action on the ground that he had been eonvinced by information received from the Revolutionaries that Azeff was their actual head, and had organised the murders both of the Grand Duke Sergius and Ti!. Plehve. M. Lopukhin will be tried by special instance of the Senate—not by the ordinary Law Courts—and M. Stolypin has promised that the trial shall be held in public.
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