The Government recognized it too, and took immediate measures.
On the 14th the Tsar had proclaimed “his inflexible will to realize with all possible speed the reforms he had granted.”
On the 16th came a Government message denouncing “the groups who are threatening the Government, society, and all the population who do not share their views,” and threatening imprisonment against all strikers and inciters to strike.
That evening the hall of the Free Economic Society, which I described in the first chapter, was surrounded by troops and police. Three hundred men and women were arrested, and two hundred and sixty-four of them were imprisoned, including twenty of the Executive.
At the same time the editors of all the papers which had published the Committee’s manifesto were arrested, and their papers suppressed. Of the leading dailies, only the reptile Novoe Vremya continued to appear.
December 18.—An entirely new council and executive were appointed for the Strike Committee, and at once they determined on another general strike. “The Government has declared civil war,” ran the decree, “and, as it wants war, it shall have it.”
In the mean time, on December 8th, I had gone to Moscow, and it was to Moscow that the centre of revolution now shifted. But before I take up the narrative of the rising in that city, I will describe a few days’ visit I made from there into the open country and the villages where peasants live. The change in the order of date is unimportant, and the story of Moscow can then follow continuously.
PEASANT SLEDGES.
