In the winter of 1881 there took place in Cracow one of those great socialistic trials with which in those days it was hoped in Austria to smother the socialistic movements which were imported by unscrupulous agitators. The trial is known in the annals of social-democracy as the proceedings against Warnynski and his accomplices. Thirty-five men were indicted, among them twenty Russians from Volhynia, mostly students of the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg, who had been arrested in the work of agitation in Galicia. The prisoners noticed during the proceedings that they were conducted one at a time, under one pretext or another, out through a special door of the courtroom, and they could discover no explanation of this queer course of action. Finally, one of them, in passing through the door, found the reason. It was a double door provided with a deep niche. In this niche was a Russian functionary acting as a voluntary menial to the Austrian police, and at the same time as a spy in the Russian service, who took this opportunity of taking cognizance of his own people[Pg 174] among those who were led by. Of course the matter was not closed without the gravest insults to those caught, who could only be protected against further abuse by the court constabulary. And this police devotee, who showed such zeal in putting down international revolution, was no one else than the present all-powerful figure in Russia, his excellency the minister of the interior, M. von Plehve, at that time states-attorney in Warsaw. With this bit of sleuthing, which the Poles very well remember to this day, this fortune-favored statesman made his début in the world outside of Russia. He has remained true to his character. He is to-day, at the head of the greatest state in the world, nothing else but the greatest police spy in the world. His politics are stamped with all the characteristics of a police origin, police in the Machiavellian sense—i. e., crime in the service of order. In all Russia I spoke to no one who would have chosen for the description of Plehve\'s character any other expressions than those which serve for the delineation of the lowest level of moral existence. I shall here try to make a sketch of Plehve in accordance with the statements about him which were made to me with perfectly astonishing unanimity.

Justice must be done even the basest. It should be mentioned at the outset that in a land of universal venality the reputation of Plehve had this considerable advantage, he was said to be absolutely unbribable. That is a great deal, a very great deal, when[Pg 175] one considers that in Russia certain legislative acts are quite openly traceable to the payment of this or that high functionary. Suspicion, which as a rule does not even spare princes, never once tainted him. But little account do the Russians take of this characteristic. Probably they would prefer it if his other evil traits were a bit softened by the vice of venality. For Plehve passes for something far worse than a spendthrift or a wasteling. He is a rascal without scruples, a political Sadist, a bloodhound, an accomplished deceiver; at the same time, a cynic entirely without heart, a "va banque,"[2] a swindler to whom a political career or the playing with human lives means nothing more than a pleasant nerve stimulant—in short, a tiger clothed in a human form. At the same time, he has the most charming manners, is delightful and entertaining, and possesses the most true-hearted face possible. His unbelievable falseness is the next thing about which all complain who have had doings with him. "Every word that he speaks is a lie," is the assertion which one oftenest hears about him. The criminal element in his tactics consists not only in the fact that he persuades the Czar that revolution is at hand, and keeps him in continual, nerve-killing anxiety by means of threatening letters, proclamations, and so forth, which he causes to be smuggled into the Emperor\'s pockets, but still more in the[Pg 176] fact that he actually provokes disorders, in order to be able to use them as arguments and to strengthen his position, and in the further fact that he is continually discovering conspiracies and handling the supposed members in the most fearful way in order to prove his indispensability. The whole store of police tricks which have been played on despots in order to turn autocrats into willing tools of their Pr?torians has been pillaged by Plehve in order to bring his system to a state of perfection. In particular the Jews and the Poles must suffer in order to contribute to the danger of the situation—i. e., the indispensability of Plehve. Not a soul in Russia doubts that the Kishinef massacres were the direct result of his commands; the cynicism with which he rewarded Krushevan, the leading agitator from Bessarabia, with which he took under his protection the agitator Pronin, who had been insulted by a congress of teachers, is a shameless acknowledgment of his deed, which, to say more, he only repudiates before foreign countries, not, however, before his confidants. He seizes upon every little thing in order to make some big affair out of it. In Warsaw the widows of the members of a committee which had collected money for a Polish hospital corps were stoned by students. Immediately was sent the telegraphic order to investigate the thing most thoroughly, and if those who were the sufferers had not refused all assistance to the police another couple of dozen would-be rioters[Pg 177] would have been sent to Siberia, in order that the existence of a Polish revolution might be proved. A Russian editor, whose paper had been suppressed because of the publication of a revolutionary poem, sought audience of the head of the censorship at the ministry of the interior, in order to obtain permission for the reappearance of the paper. The chief of the department explained to the editor, according to a Russian nobleman, that if he should simply declare to the minister that the revolutionary poem had been smuggled into the paper by Jews, he would immediately obtain permission to publish his paper again! From a source whence I never should have expected such a statement, from a highly conservative aristocrat, an "excellency" in the service of the state, I received in all seri............