28 JANUARY 1905, Page 17

Stories have been received of a great strike organised at

Moscow ; of a furious struggle at Radom (Poland), where the Reservists joined the strikers and fired on the soldiery ; of grave apprehensions at Odessa ; of a kind of revolt at Riga ; of a great workmen's demonstration at Helsingfors ; and of coming disorders in all the great cities ; but the censorship has evidently regained its 'courage, and a sort of haze has settled down over the Russian Empire. Much the most serious story is minutely told by correspondents of the Standard and the Express, who declare that the eight thousand sailors of the Black Sea Fleet in Sebastopol, exasperated by ill-treatment, especially as regards food, on the 23rd inst. broke into mutiny, and fired the arsenal and dock- yards. The officers, unable to quell the rising, summoned regiments to their aid ; but the soldiers refused to fire, and when further urged threatened their officers with death. It is known that the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet are in a most disaffected condition, and that the Admiralty buildings have been fired, but of the rest of the story there is as yet no confirmation. Nor is there any of the statement, believed by all Europe, that artillerymen fired case-shot last week against the pavilion in which the Czar was beginning the ceremony of blessing the Neva ; or of the allegation that on Sunday at one of the bridges of St. Petersburg a regiment laid down its rifles ; or of the ghastly tale that an aged General was beaten to death in a great street of the capital merely because he was a General. In all these instances ominous incidents have probably been exaggerated.