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 to sleep, making it easy for the old man to tie my hands. It was the way I had planned it. Pablo would have no fear of me asleep. So I arranged it, knowing that Don Roberto would not have cause to hang me for being forced to fight on your side, Don Gabriel. But you see that I wink my eye when I say forced. Give me a gun. I will fight like seven doctors."

"All right," Henderson said. "Don Felipe, give this fellow a gun, and post him in the most dangerous place. If he falters before the enemy, or fails in his duty in the slightest degree, shoot him without a word."

"With the greatest pleasure," Felipe replied. "Go to the gate," he ordered Simon, "and when General Garvanza arrives presently, open it and let him pass."


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ENERAL GARVANZA arrived about midafternoon, unattended, as he had been instructed to come. Simon opened the gate to him with a feeling of weakness over him like a man rising too soon from a consuming illness.

"So I find you here, traitor!" General Garvanza said, giving the frightened sentinel a look that was his trial and condemnation.

"It will not shoot," Simon whispered, touching his gun. "They forced me to join them. I selected a gun that will not shoot. Pass, your grace. You are where there is a friend."

Roberto looked at the fellow curiously, and at the gun with sharp eagerness, verifying at a glance the truth of Simon's statement. The gun lacked a hammer; it was as harmless as a stick.

But it was through no contrivance of Simon that he bore such a useless piece. Felipe had seen to that particular. Felipe needed his dependable guns for dependable men. His purpose was to double Simon's peril in giving him one that would not shoot.

Roberto was dressed in the uniform of his rank, to which he had added something in the way of adornment, it appeared, over the amount his prede-

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 cessor had borne on his shoulder and breast. He rode forward with a sharp spurring of his horse, expressive of the defiance and contempt of those who had commanded him in the power of a situation which fortune had placed in their hands. Within a rod of the spot where Henderson and Felipe stood to receive him, Roberto threw his weight back on the reins, bringing the headlong advance to a spectacular and dusty stop.

Out of the dust of his defiant coming Roberto scowled on the two men who confronted him, his petulant long lip stretching at the corners as if he mouthed a bit. The end of a plaster covering the wound his own soldier had given him in the plaza came down to his eyebrow. He waited for them to speak; they, with more dignity, in spite of the dust of his trampling in which they stood, were determined that he must begin. Roberto must take the place of one who had come to sue, not to demand.

Roberto's anger swelled as they stood in silence. General that he was, his disposition was not founded on any great or substantial dignity. Seeing now that his consequence was not rated very seriously by the men before him, he boiled over like a pot of brose.

"If you have touched Don Abrahan you shall hang!" he said, his voice high and strained in passionate note. "Where is he? Produce him this instant!"

"Your bluster would not add an hour to Don


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 Abrahan's life if the time came to take it," Henderson told him, contemptuous of his wrath. "We sent for you, Roberto, to give you our terms, not to hear any from you."

"The terms I have to offer outlaws and murderers are settled in advance," Roberto replied. "I have come to demand my father, and the surrender of his property untouched. When that is complied with, then you shall hear my conditions touching yourselves."

"You may go back to the pueblo, Roberto," Henderson said, turning away as he would from a passionate, bigoted boy, considering the brief parley at an end.

"I will come back with a hundred soldiers!" Roberto threatened.

"When you are ready," Henderson replied indifferently.

"I tell you gravely," Roberto said, controlling his foolish anger, becoming more of a man, "that you are in a hopeless situation. You have played your hand, and what have you won? Nothing but a cannon and a few rounds of ammunition. You think with threats against my father's life and property you can compel me to grant amnesty for your offenses against the republic—permit you to leave, perhaps. Or you may think you can hold me off by these means until the Americans come from Monterey, where you have heard they are. That is a vain hope, poor rascals! It is founded on a lie. The Americans have not taken Monterey;


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 they cannot take it, or any other port or city that the valiant army of the republic guards."

"That is immaterial," Henderson said, his indifference seeming to increase as in a man who held a strong blow in reserve.

Felipe produced a cigarette, and the sun-glass for lighting it. He turned his back on General Garvanza to bring the little point of heat to the cigarette's tip. Where Henderson was merely indifferent, Felipe was lightly insolent. He jerked his shoulders; he sniffed with audible sound as he blew smoke out of his nose.

"And so you send your only cannon to the pass to stop the march of a lie," Felipe said, after a due and impressive silence.

"I believed the rumor until two hours ago," Roberto confessed, with what appeared sincerity. "Dispatches arrived after your foray on my poor cowards. If you had waited, you might have taken the messenger and confirmed what I tell you for yourselves. The United States navy has not been in the bay of Monterey; there are no United States ships on this coast."

"That was the smallest of our hopes," Henderson declared.

They had met Roberto about midway between the cannon and the gate. Roberto scowled as he looked around in the pause that followed Henderson's last word, pulling his long lip, flattening it against his teeth. He saw the few men under arms, and the nature of their weapons. None knew bet-


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 ter than Roberto what uncertain material such soldiers were.

"So that is your perilous situation," Roberto said, still gathering up in his eyes the details of their defense, open and unmasked as it was. He looked a moment at the flag, saying nothing of what passed in his thoughts on that particular. "If you expect offers and conditions from me, you expect too much."

"Return in peace," said Henderson, again starting to leave.

"I must see my father."

"That is impossible."

Roberto drew his eyes small, his long lip pressed thin again in that trick which gave an expression of inflexibility, of stern determination, to his face.

"I assure you as solemnly as man ever spoke that no help will come to you from Monterey. I ask you to believe me sincere and earnest when I tell you this, which I do to save, if possible, the tragic consequences of this foolish stand, if you persist in it. There is no hope for you."

It was difficult to conclude whether Roberto was telling what he believed to be true. Like all people of light and shallow conscience, Roberto had the faculty of giving the color of sincerity to the very thing that he intended for the deepest deceit. Henderson had seen many instances of this light regard for verity in the young man; he was not disposed to borrow any trouble on the account opened by Roberto's declaration now.


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 "My countrymen may not have taken Monterey yet, but if they have not it is simply because they have not arrived," Henderson returned. "We are well situated here; we can wait till they come."

"I will return in an hour to drag down that caricature of a base flag," Roberto threatened, his face growing dark with anger.

"I'll hang your father in your sight at the first shot you fire," Henderson declared.

"My father's life must not stand between me and my duty to my country," Roberto said. "But if you venture any further indignation upon his person, then I swear I'll burn you like a toad!"

"I wouldn't expect anything less from a coward in the coat of a soldier, who would murder a woman for a public show and a private jealousy," Henderson returned. "Now, get out of here!"

Roberto closed his mouth on useless words of retort. He had not lived long, but long enough to understand when there was no more to be said. As he passed through the gate Simon crowded close to his stirrup.

"Take me with you, your grace!" he implored. "That savage Don Gabriel"

"You can serve me better here," Roberto cut his plea. "Tell those monkeys who are marching around with guns that I am coming back in an hour with two hundred men. I will hang every one of them to a tree that stands against me with a gun. Tell them this; fill them with a fear that will make them run."


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 Henderson and Felipe watched this little passage between the two at the gate, Felipe with hand on his pistol.

"Let the double traitor start to leave!" he said.

Simon closed the gate behind Roberto, and turned again with as much show of ease and loyalty in his bearing as he could assume before the two who watched him, and read what was in his tricky mind.

"It would not give Roberto much grief to see his father hanging from a tree," Henderson said, looking after the young man as he rode swiftly between the olive trees.

"Nothing would please him better, although he would make it a pretense to cover his personal hate against you if you stumbled into his hands," Felipe returned. "He has been chafing over money since he came home from the capital; he was called back on account of his extravagance there. Roberto has wild desires which Don Abrahan refuses him the means to indulge."

"That angle of the case is to be considered," said Henderson, thoughtfully.

They were returning slowly to the place where the cannon stood. Old Pablo was emerging from the passage in the warehouse through which Henderson had made his dash to liberty on the day he broke from Don Abrahan's prison. Pablo had hidden Benito there, out of the danger of bullets.

"What do you think of Roberto's declaration that there is nothing in the news from Monterey?"


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 "I think he is lying," Felipe returned confidently. "It may be that a small force took the place, and is holding it, not attempting to march into the south. That is the way it looks to me, Gabriel."

"Roberto appeared easy and confident," Henderson said, doubt rising sharply again. "I believe he intends to attack us, as he threatened, and force our hands. The question is: Are we going to hang Don Abrahan in that event, or turn the cannon against the house and threaten to batter it down? Which, in your opinion, would Roberto place the greater value on, his father's life or his father's house?"

"The house, by all means," Felipe declared.

"My strategy is weak, I fear, Felipe," Henderson confessed gravely. "I made a mistake in my estimate of Roberto's filial affection and respect. And we are here, instead of on the road to Monterey, through my blundering."

"We have the cannon," said Felipe proudly. "It was a masterful stroke to take the cannon, Gabriel. We can cut them down like fire eats dry grass. Pah! Roberto and his hundred men! They are nothing—they are leaves in the wind."

"Yes, we've got the cannon," Henderson said, drawing a breath of self-justification, a sweet refreshment to a man in a doubtful crisis of his own contriving.

"And Roberto hasn't got a hundred men. I doubt if he will come back, Gabriel, at least before


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 night. He may attempt something at night, but we shall be awake—the cannon will not sleep."

"We haven't got much ammunition for a siege, Felipe."

"There is powder by the keg in Don Abrahan's storehouse—have you forgotten your invoice, Gabriel—polboro, you wrote it, the way the peones sounded it, instead of polvora."

"I remember, Felipe. I had forgotten the powder."

"And there are pebbles for grape-shot, and round stones made by the sea when it washed against these hills, for cannon balls. Cortez used them, as we shall use them if we need them, when he battered down the walls of Montezuma's capital."

"Felipe, you're the general of this army," Henderson declared, turning to him in admiration of his resourcefulness, and his enthusiasm over the round stones.

"Not so," Felipe denied vigorously. "When did I take a cannon with my own hands? When did I charge five soldiers in the plaza and carry a lady away to life and love?"

"I'd have made a mighty poor figure that day, Felipe, if it hadn't been for you," Henderson said, laying his hand affectionately on the little man's arm.

"But where is my scoundrel that I left-to stand at the cannon?" Felipe wondered, looking about for the artilleryman. "It is strange conduct for a


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 soldier to desert his post. He shall have a correction."

Felipe hurried to the cannon, gave one glance at its breech, and turned to Henderson, consternation, dismay, in his face.

"He has spiked it—he has fled to Roberto!"

"But no, Felipe! How"

"Look!" Felipe pointed to the touch-hole. "I cannot fire it. We are lost!"

"Easy, Felipe—the others must not know of this. It looks like the end of a file the scoundrel shoved in there and broke off—maybe we can get it out. Get a pair of pincers from the blacksmith shop and try."

Felipe was in a tremble of despair, almost panic. His reliance on the gun had been so entire, so confident, so vast, that he was now in the condition of one precipitated into the sea by an explosion that did not leave him a single plank to keep him afloat. Henderson was thankful that none of the volunteers was close enough to discover either Felipe's excitement or the cause of it. He waited at the cannon breech for Felipe to bring the pincers, inwardly dismayed, but outward calm.

The piece of steel wedged into the touch-hole—was down too far for the jaws of the pincers; a trial proved that it could not be removed that way.—Felipe threw down the useless tool, sweat of his mental turmoil streaming down his face.

"God save us! Only a drill will do it. We must fly, Gabriel, we must fly!"


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 "What would become of these men?" Henderson asked, as steady as if a cannon more or less mattered very little. "Roberto would hang them all."

"Their lives are not worth much," said Felipe, unmanned for the moment by this stunning loss. "The villain who has tricked us is with Roberto before this; he has told him all. Roberto will not wait the promised hour. He will come at once; he will hang us to a tree, and my God! I shudder to be hung!"

"Felipe," Henderson touched his arm, "I got you into it; I give you a free road to go. Take a horse and go, my good friend, and forgive me for bringing you into this peril."

"Not alone—never alone!" Felipe declared, steadied a little by Henderson's earnest plea that he leave him.

"Yes, alone. It's my stake, anyway. I should have gone to the north. Let me play it singlehanded now."

"We have time—we can take to the bosque," Felipe pressed.

"And leave these poor fellows to hang. Calm yourself, Felipe; don't let them know of this little accident to the gun. Go quietly and get your horse; ride out"

"And leave you and Helena to die alone! No, Gabriel, I will not go."

Henderson saw the fire in Felipe's eyes, the color come to his pale face above the black smirch of his


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 beard. His manhood seemed to descend on him and revive him, like a cool wind.

"As long as the men know nothing of this thing, they'll make a good fight," Henderson said. "Roberto can't bring more than twenty men against us; you and I alone can hold that many off. We'll tell the men we're saving the cannon for a bigger force, and tonight we'll get the tube open."

"We might do it if we had time," Felipe agreed. "Then we could give it to them—let a hundred come if they can!"

"Call Simon; order up all the idle men and put them to work with mattocks and shovels entrenching to flank the cannon. I'm going to commandeer all the guns and ammunition I can find—I know there must be a dozen good shotguns among the paid men on this ranch."

"Yes, there are shotguns," Felipe said. "I didn't have them bring the shotguns because I didn't consider the use of them in war exactly ethical."

"This isn't a matter of ethics—it's one of saving our necks."

"Since the cannon is useless, we are driven to them," Felipe said, as if he excused their extremity to somebody who had questioned the act.

Felipe was hitnself again. He ordered Simon to him with loud and commanding voice, startling the others under arms out of their close talk in the shade of the warehouse wall, where they speculated in low tones on the result of the parley with


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 Roberto. He posted a sentinel on the slope of the hill above Don Abrahan's house to watch for the soldiers.

"What is a cannon?" he muttered, as he watched Henderson hurrying from house to house collecting guns. "A general like Don Gabriel makes a cannon out of every man!"


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OBERTO did not appear at the elapse of an hour, as he had threatened to do. Henderson believed the delay was due to this ridiculous general over a scant company of soldiers having to wait until enough of them returned from their various details to make the attempt with confdence. It was evident that Roberto had come unattended to the parley, or at best accompanied by only a few men. He must have returned directly to the pueblo to gather his forces, and in that way missed the artilleryman who had such important information for his ear. If Roberto had known the cannon was out of service, he might have attempted their capture and succeeded, very likely, with a squad.

Opposed to whatever advantage there was in this delay was a thing that far outweighed it. Few of the idle men had responded to Felipe's summons to come and work on the trenches. They had yielded their guns and ammunition readily enough to Henderson, no labor and no risk attending that; but they had hung back on going farther. It was noticeable, also, that a spirit of disaffection was growing among the few who had taken up arms with them that morning. These men were laboring


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 at the earthworks under Felipe's direction now, but languidly, without heart.

Henderson suspected they must have learned that the cannon, around which their confidence and admiration centered, was of no more service now than a log. He did not blame them for cooling in what appeared, in his own reason and conviction, a hopeless situation. Their disaffection did not matter much, nor alter the gravity of the case greatly. He had collected the guns with the thought that he and Felipe might make a desperate defense alone, inflicting such loss on the soldiers that Roberto would retire, giving them an opportunity to slip away in the night. He believed he saw something beneath the demeanor of the men that shook even this desperate hope.

Felipe also was of the opinion that the men's cooling was the result of someone who had a knowledge of such things having seen the spike in the touch-hole of the cannon before he had covered it.

"There is nothing to them, Gabriel; they are carrion," he said sadly. "When I said their lives were worth little, I spoke the sad truth. A man's life is valuable only according to the nobility of his heart. It would have been no treason to them if we had gone our way an hour ago."

The ten or twelve men who worked with Simon throwing up the defenses turned their eyes on their leaders as they stood apart talking, a watchfulness in their faces that appeared to Henderson at once


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 suspicious and threatening. The guns which they had walked about with in such proud defiance but a short time ago lay against the warehouse wall, together with those which Henderson had collected from the houses.

Old Pablo was sitting in the growing strip of shade near the guns. He had volunteered both to fight and to dig, but Felipe would not permit him, out of respect for his age and dignity, to stoop to a menial task. The old man was sitting with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, hands clasped around them, as serene as if he waited by the roadside under his own sycamore.

Helena had kept to her quarters in Felipe's office, content to lean on the wisdom and protection of those who had torn her from Roberto's hands. Henderson had told her of Roberto's threat to return and attack them; she knew the preparations under way were evidence of a desperate intention to stand against him. But she did not know that the cannon stood useless in its brave show.

Henderson drew Felipe a little farther from the men, nearer the heap of miscellaneous guns.

"You know them better than I do, Felipe," he said. "I am afraid they are unworthy and treacherous in the grain. I see treason in their faces; they're plotting among themselves right now to lay hold of us and set their patron free to save themselves from Roberto's punishment."

"It's Simon's work. I was a fool to permit him among them."


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 "That's another blunder in this day of mistakes to be charged to me, Felipe. But we have gained one thing—the road to Monterey will be clear if Roberto has told the truth about that dispatch from the north. He'll have called all his men in to take us."

"You mean, Gabriel, that we are to depart?"

"That is the one sensible course open to us. We can't depend on the men; our cannon is crippled. My great scheme for using Don Abrahan as a hostage has turned out a miserable mockery. Itis the hope that we will hang Don Abrahan that is bringing Roberto against us. It isn't duty, but hope of coming into his inheritance in short order."

"That is true. But what of these men—how are we to dispose of them?"

"Take Simon, lock him up, and bring Don Abrahan to me. I will attend to the men."

While Felipe was about this business, Gabriel explained to Pablo in few words how matters stood with them. He told of the cannon, spoke of the spirit of sedition among the men, of his determination to make a hasty retreat. Pablo did not show any concern over the revelation.

"I have been watching them; I have seen rascality in their faces," he said. "They are waiting now for you to turn your back, then—the guns! Simon is the little head behind it all."

"You're right, Pablo. I had a right to hang the thief when you brought him here."

"I am watching them," said Pablo quietly, shift-


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 ing neither hand nor eye. "When one starts, I'll kill him."

"The guns—I'll remove them; I'll put them in the office. Helena must be told to get ready. If they make a rush while my back is turned, can you stop them, Pablo?"

"Go, Don Gabriel, and see to the lady and your horses. There are men among them who know how I shoot."

Henderson gathered all the guns and carried them to the office, where he told Helena how his great plans and abounding hopes of the morning had shriveled and come to nothing. He told her frankly that flight was imperative, the chances of the road as perilous to them as before. He requested her to change with all speed her pretty dress for the costume she had worn that morning.

"I will be ready in a few minutes, Gabriel," she said, calm, undisturbed. Her trust in him filled her life so completely that fear, it seemed, had no footing there.

Henderson turned back to the men in the trenches, who had left off work to gather in a close bunch like flies on a piece of sugar. They were listening gravely to one of the oldest among them, who was speaking in a lowand earnest voice. Their ears were for this old man, their eyes for Henderson as he approached them, pistol at his side.

"That is very well done, men," Henderson said in hearty words, nodding to the work they had done. "You have done good work, and now you


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 may go; we'll have no further need of you. I'm sorry that I can't pay you right now for your labor here today, but when my countrymen, who are on the way with an army, arrive here, you shall be well paid."

This open and cheerful dismissal struck the men between amazement and shame. Henderson knew very well that they had been talking of winning their own safety from Roberto's wrath by making prisoners of him artd Felipe; their faces betrayed it, for dissimulation is not an art with the simple. It was as if he had snatched their pardon away from them just as they felt it safely in their reach.

"You will give us back our guns, then, Don Gabriel?" the old man asked.

"I'll take care of your guns," Henderson returned, in quite a different tone. There was a commanding harshness in it that made their servile spirits cower.

"We were told that Don Felipe had deceived us—that the Americans were not coming," the spokesman said.

"Well, if you will listen to a a liar," Henderson returned, with contempt.

Henderson knew they were trembling in the fear of Roberto's vengeance as Simon had pictured it to them. A bold front before them was necessary; they must be given to understand their services were no longer needed on account of the Americans being close at hand. They would not throw away this one price of Roberto's favor that lay in their


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 power to pay. If they got wind of the planned retreat, they would try to stop it at any cost.

"The cannon is broken," the old man said. "That man who ran off put something in the little hole. There is no use trying to deceive us, Don Gabriel."

"There are twenty cannons coming through the pass," said Henderson, in emphasis despising merely one. "Go to your houses, every man of you, and go at once!"

Felipe was approaching with Don Abrahan; Henderson did not want one curious ear in that vacillating crowd to hear what must pass between him and the patron. The men put down their tools with slow hands, sullen faces, and came out of the trenches in defiant sulkiness. They went off hanging together in twos and threes, talking shoulder to shoulder, looking back at Henderson with scowling eyes.

Don Abrahan was pale and worried. Doubt of what waited him looked out of his face. Henderson stood at the cannon, waiting him.

"Don Abrahan, I had a design in restraining you this morning that subsequent developments have caused me to revise," Henderson said. "Briefly, I intended to make a bargain with your son, our safety against your life. Roberto sets a low and contemptuous value on my security. Don Abrahan, he discounts it to nothing; your life is valueless in his eyes."

"My son refused to treat with you on those


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 terms?" Don Abrahan inquired, lifting his worried face quickly.

"He refused, Don Abrahan."

"Thank God that he valued duty above my life!" Don Abrahan said.

The magistrate's voice was vibrant with the fervor of his thankfulness; his eyes were bright with the fire of his pride. He drew himself up proudly, his head high, breathing deeply as if he tasted new life in the savor of the wind.

"There is another matter that I have held against you, Don Abrahan," Henderson continued solemnly. "You deserve to die for the murder of John Toberman."

"I am not a suppliant, Don Gabriel, even for my life," Don Abrahan replied, meeting the young man firmly, eye to eye.

"And I am not cowardly enough to strike down a defenseless man who is hopelessly in my power, as you struck John Toberman down. Don Abrahan, I leave you to the judgment of my countrymen when they come. You are free. Felipe, the horses!"

Felipe sprang at the word, running toward the stable. At the corner of the warehouse, where the road to the pueblo could be seen through the trees, Felipe stopped, turning back, throwing out his hands in a gesture of defeat.

"We are too late, Gabriel," he said calmly. "The soldiers are here."

Don Abrahan quickened at the news. He turned


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 to Henderson, laid a hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eyes.

"I owe you for your generosity to me, Don Gabriel," he said. "You have restrained your passions and your hands where a smaller man would have struck. Go—make haste! I will meet the soldiers and hold them back as long as possible. I cannot promise you more—go!"

Gabriel started for the stable with Felipe, stopping at Helena's door to summon her. She was waiting, her long cloak around her shoulders. As she came out to join Henderson, Roberto rode to the gate, waving a white cloth in his hand.

A look of understanding passed between Henderson and Felipe. It was too late, indeed. Don Abrahan's good offices could not help them now.

"I'll go and meet him," Henderson said.

He gave his pistol to Felipe, and went on to meet Roberto unarmed. As he passed Don Abrahan he turned to him.

"Don Abrahan, for the sake of whatever you owe to my generosity, protect that persecuted girl," he said.

"As my own life, Don Gabriel," the magistrate promised.

Don Abrahan hastened to Helena as Henderson went on to meet Roberto in his truce. Doña Carlota loomed large behind Helena in the door, her eyes gaping to gather the understanding of this sudden flurry.

"Helena, my house is open to you. Come!"


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 Don Abrahan held out his hand; Doña Carlota's face glowed as if she stood in the light of a wedding night.

"No," said Helena in cold repulsion. "I prefer death with Don Gabriel to the treacherous friendship of your house."

"Oh, my little dove!" Doña Carlota pleaded.

Helena appeared neither to see nor hear. She was looking after Henderson as he went on to meet Roberto, who had leaped to the ground, flung the gate wide, mounted, and came galloping forward, the white token of his pacific intention in his hand.


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HERE were twenty cavalrymen in the lane, Henderson estimated. They had come to a halt when their leader galloped ahead of them, bearing his signal for a truce, and now waited not more than two hundred yards from the gate, formed in a charging front of fours. The officer next in command was drawn off a little way ahead of them, waiting his superior's return.

Henderson had hurried to meet Roberto, whose dismounting to open the gate had interrupted his advance. Due to this barrier, the two met somewhat farther away from the cannon than the previous parley had been held. Roberto stopped his horse with the same regardless hand as before, throwing his weight suddenly on the reins, setting the creature back on its hams. It was not in a spirit of bravado or bold show that Roberto did this trick; it was the mode among the of his time and place.

Roberto could not conceal the surprise that the preparations for defense gave him. He looked at the two fresh heaps of brown earth beside the cannon, saying nothing for the moment, but lifting himself to his toes in his stirrups as if straining to see what forces the earthworks contained. Pres-


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 ently he seemed to remember that he had come under a signal of truce, which he still carried in his hand. He turned to Henderson quickly, severity in his face.

"I came to propose terms on account of my father," he said, a certain unmistakable deference, a well-defined doubt, showing through his bearing of hauteur and defiance.

Henderson read his mind as readily, in the strained and sharpened acuteness of his own senses, as if Roberto had come honestly and told him all. The man who had spiked the cannon had informed his general of this great service. Roberto had advanced in confident eagerness to overwhelm them, but on the way had been assailed by doubt of the man's honesty. Caution had come whispering that this might be a trick of the Yankee sailor who had bribed the soldier. The sight of the earthworks that had been thrown up in the short time he had been away seemed to give substance to this shadow of doubt. The Yankee might be leading him up to the cannon, only to destroy him in a breath. All this Roberto's face and manner seemed to betray.

Henderson felt the jumping of a new hope, the outspreading of a new plan. It came to him in a flash, as the exigencies of his life seemed to demand of him to plan and decide. The doubt that Roberto had carried there with him must be blown into a blaze of certainty. Circumstances had shaped with peculiar nicety to further this design.


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 Don Abrahan was there, in plain sight, as if they had brought him out to pay the threatened penalty. The fact that Felipe stood close by the patron, a gun in his hands, watchfulness in his attitude, and that old Pablo was posted behind him, likewise with a gun, seemed evidence of their grave and desperate intention. To add to Roberto's unrest and multiply his uncertainty, there stood by a third desperado in long black cloak, who, from the fairness of his half-face as he presented his side to Roberto, appeared to be a Yankee.

A flight of conjectures, which were more than slightly colored with fear, rose in Roberto's mind. Henderson could see the shadow of them cross his face. Who could this person be? Was it possible that the Americans had come, after all, and were lying that moment behind the mounds of earth?

"I am waiting to hear you speak, Roberto," Henderson prompted him, seeing that his growing perplexities had swallowed his words.

"I am willing to make a compromise with you," Roberto said, pulling his eyes away from the earthworks, the cannon, the stranger in the dark cloak, with a wrench, it seemed. "I am willing to allow compassion and humanity to obscure my duty. There is nothing bitter in my heart against you, Gabriel, when all is considered. You have been the companion of some happy hours. In exchange for my father's safety I will give you freedom. I will withdraw my soldiers until tomorrow morn-


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 ing; I will leave the way to the harbor open to you. There you will find a British ship that will give you refuge, and carry you back to your home."

"Does this condition apply to Helena Sprague and Felipe Guiterrez as well as to me, Roberto?"

"No, Gabriel; to you alone."

"You affront me in proposing it!"

"I cannot embrace the others in any condition of leniency," Roberto contended with harsh severity. "Where I find them, they are mine."

"If you will withdraw your soldiers, leaving the way open to all of us, in whatever direction we may choose to go, I will accept."

"It is impossible," said Roberto, coldly.

"There is nothing more," Henderson said, speaking his thought aloud.

It appeared, indeed, that his use of Roberto's doubtful state had turned out another failure. In more skillful hands Roberto might have been led, he believed, or intimidated by a bold and insolent face, and compelled to grant terms to them all. Now it seemed there could be nothing more.

"It is not possible to admit the other two," Roberto said. "That is a different matter; they are Mexican citizens—they must answer."

"They must be caught first," Henderson returned, still able to play his part of confidence, no matter how low his hope.

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 see. Curiosity was stronger than caution in the men who had been dismissed. They stood in their doors, wives and children behind them, watching with all eyes.

Roberto saw in this proof of disaffection the result of Simon's crafty work. He concluded that the poor-spirited fellows had taken fright and deserted, the promise of independence and ease from patriarchal restraint having lost its glamour beside the hard fact of impending punishment. He turned to Henderson, a gleam of mocking triumph in his face.

"I will have a word with my father," he said.

As he spoke, Roberto lifted his right hand, in which he still held the signal of truce, pressed spurs to his horse, sending it forward with a bound. 'Henderson, standing near the animal's head, sprang and caught the bridle rein as it passed. This interference brought the horse up sharply, in a confusing trampling of dust.

"Stop! You came here under a flag of true, not as a spy," Henderson said.

Between the restraint of Henderson's hand on its bridle, and the agony of the spurs which Roberto ground against its sides, the horse was wild. It reared, so violent in its efforts to escape that Roberto, one hand wound in the white signal of peace, was in danger of being thrown.

Henderson hung to the bridle, furious that Roberto should attempt such treachery as to spy on


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 the state of their defenses under a white flag. Roberto, clinging desperately to the plunging horse, reached over his saddle-horn with his whiteswathed hand and fired a pistol in Henderson's face.

Henderson had the dust that made him indistinct, the lunging of the horse that made the pointblank shot uncertain, to credit for the bullet streaking a fiery channel through his cheek instead of through his brain. He felt the searing trail of it like a branding-iron laid against his face, and the blood springing out of it, cold it seemed, copious as water thrown from a cup.

Roberto was menacing him with the treacherously hidden pistol, the cloth that concealed it impeding his efforts to raise the hammer and fire again. So much Henderson saw through the swirl of dust and smoke as he dropped the bridle rein and sprang, grasping Roberto around the waist, dragging him to the ground.

Roberto's horse knew nothing of loyalty to a master so cruel. It galloped away as Henderson wrenched him from the saddle, the beat of its feet loud as it dashed through the gate and down the lane toward the cavalrymen.

Roberto fought to retain the pistol, his bright uniform in the dust, the blood from Henderson's wound streaming on it, brought to this abasement by his own treachery. His throat was like dough in Henderson's fingers, but the sailor curbed his just fury in time to leave a gasp of breath, a clouded


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 spark of life. Henderson rose with the pistol in one hand, the burned cloth that had hidden it in the other, to see the cavalrymen come charging up the lane.

"Get up!" he ordered Roberto, jostling him with his foot.

Roberto lay stretched and limp as if life had gone out of him, his arms flung out in the road. His face was purple, his lips were distended with congested blood; he was breathing with difficulty.

"Get up!" Henderson repeated, stooping to press the pistol to Roberto's temple.

Roberto rolled his eyes in appeal for the fragment of life that still hung in his body. Henderson took him by the collar of his magnificent coat and heaved him up. And there, with Henderson's knee at his back, the general of forty men sat in the dusty road. His plumed cap was lying by him, crushed by his horse's foot; his heavy, black hair, powdered with dust, fell over his forehead and eyes. He was as bedraggled, limp, and vapid as a drowned man. The spectacle of his soldiers charging to his rescue did not electrify him with one perceptible thrill.

"If they come through the gate, I'll shoot you," Henderson declared in terrible earnestness. "Stand up—stop them!"

He pulled the overthrown general to his feet, where he stood weaving, groping to understand what was desired of him. He made no effort, by word or sign, to halt the approach of his men.


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 Henderson stepped back a pace, and presented the pistol at Roberto's head.

This pantomime was understood by the officer who led the charge. He wheeled his horse, bringing his men to a halt. The soldiers leaned in their saddles to see what mischance had overtaken their general. The officer who led them rode forward alone. When he reached the gate Roberto lifted his hand, stopping him there.

"Fortune has thrown me," Roberto said, turning ruefully to Henderson.

"Treachery has defeated you, coward!"

"Well, what is to be done, Don Gabriel?" Roberto inquired, a tremor of fear and anxiety shaking his voice. It was plain that with every breath of growing strength the love of life increased in him. He stood ready to make a bargain that would sweep away everything but that.

"In a moment—look to your men first. If one of them enters the gate, you die."

Henderson glanced back to his friends, considering whether to march Roberto up the road and join them, risking a dash and a rescue by the soldiers, or hold him there and have Felipe bring Don Abrahan down. Helena had started towards him; she stood about half-way between him and the cannon, a gun in her hand, as if she had sprung at the moment of his greatest peril before the charging soldiers to throw her life away with his own. She had halted there when she saw the soldiers stop. Now she came running, her gun


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 flung down, her long cloak streaming after her.

"Gabriel! You are hurt, you are bleeding!" She ran to him, pressing her hand to his wound. "Oh, you are hurt, you are hurt!"

"Run to Felipe; tell him to bring Don Abrahan," Henderson requested her.

Roberto turned his head at the sound of her voice, the hateful jealousy that had ridden him to such unmanly length burning through his humiliation and distress. Helena drew back into the shadow of Henderson's protection.

"If he moves, shoot him!" she whispered. "Do not trust him, Gabriel—shoot him dead if he moves a hand!"

She sped away to summon Felipe, who came marching Don Abrahan down the road.

"So there is a new stake on the table," said Felipe, full of admiration for Henderson's victory against Roberto's treachery. "But your wound, Don Gabriel?"

"A cat scratched me—it is nothing," Henderson returned.

"It is time to cut its claws. And here is the old stake, that had become valueless, worth a fortune now, beside the new." Felipe ranged Don Abrahan beside his son.

Helena stood near Henderson, who still held Roberto at his pistol's point. Pablo had followed the others down, no pressure in the lives of men sufficient to urge him out of his deliberate way. The laborers were coming out from the shelter of


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 their doors, astonished by the fortune that seemed to wait on this unaccountable Don Gabriel's call.

"This is the condition upon which I will grant you life, Roberto Garvanza," Henderson said. "Tell me first, with the honesty of a man who stands condemned, whether there is a British ship in the harbor, as you have said."

"There is," Roberto replied.

Don Abrahan stood beside his son, a few feet parting them, his spare figure drawn erect, his thin face stern and severe. He had not said a word to the young man, although he had seemed on the point of addressing him once, only to frown and turn away. Now he looked at him sharply, drawing his brows as if he peered against the light.

"Then you will order your soldiers back to the pueblo, and you and your father shall ride with us to the harbor. I assure you solemnly that you shall both be shot the moment you attempt to escape, or that any rescue is attempted by your soldiers or friends. You will remain in our company as surety for our safety until we are on board the British vessel, when you may return ashore. On this condition I grant you and your father life. Do you accept the terms?"

"I accept, Don Gabriel," Roberto replied, his head bent, his voice shamed and low.

Don Abrahan turned to him, hand lifted as if to strike him, his face blanched with passion.

"Coward!" the old man denounced him. "Twice this day I have seen you a coward!"


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 "I consider your life," Roberto said. "As for my own"

"My life! Ivalue honor above life. Die like a man before you accept these terms!"

"I have passed my word," Roberto said sullenly, resentful of his father's arraignment.

"I have not!"

"Peace, Don Abrahan!" Henderson commanded.

"Peon!" the old man raged at him furiously; "only death can command my tongue!" He lifted his arm as if he held a sword. "Charge—to the rescue!" he shouted.

The officer at the gate dashed back to his men, who sat straining in the expectation of action. In a moment they were charging toward the open gate.

Henderson advanced his pistol until it touched Roberto's hair. He put out his hand toward Helena, not daring to remove his eyes a moment from the man whom he held under sentence of death.

"Go to Doña Carlota—run!" he said. "Roberto, if they pass the gate!"

"They stop!" said Felipe. "It is well for you, Don Abrahan!"

"Charge!" Don Abrahan shouted, sweeping his long arm as if he struck with a sword.

"They are turning—they are leaving!" said Helena, who had not retreated a step at Henderson's command.


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 "There is a dust in the road," said Pablo, pointing to the north. "There is a sound of"

"It is so," Felipe attested, his vigilance upon Don Abrahan relaxed a moment in his great wonder over this sudden deliverance.

All stood looking and listening, Roberto and Don Abrahan as greatly amazed by the action of the soldiers as the others. There was a dust in the road just beyond the head of the olive lane; it rose high, and yellow as the summer smoke of a fire in the green forest.

"There is a sound, like the sound of" said Pablo. He smiled.

The soldiers were galloping toward the pueblo, their officer riding after them as if threatened by some terror that would swallow him if he fell another rod behind.

At the turn of the road a flock of goats came pouring into the olive lane. In a moment they had flooded it, for they were being driven as no careful goatherd would urge a flock; in a moment they had found the open gate, and came running up the road to Don Abrahan's feet. After them there followed Liseta, carrying a long stem of the spearlike yucca that stands on the hillsides in summer tall and white as a stately bride.

Liseta's eyes were bright; her dark face was tinted with the red of her rich, racing blood. She was dusty, sweat-streaked, panting; her black hair blew in wild freedom about her face.

"Here are your goats, Don Abrahan Gar-


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 vanza," she said, coming straight to the patron. "Count them—see that every one is there. I will watch them no more! The Americans are coming—I am free!"

Don Abrahan did not give the slightest heed to Liseta's defiant proclamation, although the others heard her eagerly. He was looking along the lane after the fleeing cavalrymen.

"What hope is there for a nation whose soldiers run from a flock of goats!" said Don Abrahan, contemptuous bitterness in his voice.

"Goats!" Liseta mocked him. "If you had seen the Americans, Don Abrahan, you would have run after the soldiers!"

"Where are they, Liseta?" Henderson inquired, doubting the girl's excited report.

"There, a little way behind me. I saw them coming through the pass. I had watched for them many days, since you told us, Don Gabriel, they would come. I gathered the goats"

"How many, Liseta? Where are they? There is nobody in the road."

"The road is full of them, I tell you, Don Gabriel. There are as many horses as Don Abrahan has goats."

All had turned to gaze through the falling dust-cloud raised by the goats. Helena ran to the defenses, mounted the cannon, and stood looking up the Monterey road.

"They are coming!" she announced, almost shrieking in the mounting of her sublime joy. She


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 snatched off her sombrero and waved the others forward to share with her the sight of their deliverance.

Gabriel was thrilled with the hope that she had not seen a phantom worked out of the flying dust, but not sanguine enough to trust to any mischance by relaxing for one moment his vigilance over his two hostages. He signed to Felipe to bring Don Abrahan.

"There! Do you see them, Gabriel?"

Helena stood on the cannon, leaning and pointing, vibrant with delight. Her hair, coiled to fit into the crown of her sombrero, was falling from its anchorage in happy disorder; her eyes, her face, were alive with the fire of triumph kindled from the cold ashes of despair.

Henderson leaped to the mound of earth beside the cannon to see over the brushwood that grew close along the border of the road. He turned to Felipe, who stood expectantly.

"They are coming!" he said.

Roberto lifted his head from his crushed and humiliated shrinking.

"Don Gabriel, permit me to return and defend the pueblo," he requested. "My disgrace in your eyes is complete. Allow me to redeem myself, at least before my soldiers, and die for the republic like a man."

Henderson looked at Felipe. Felipe threw out his hand, raised his shoulders, shut his eyes, expressive of complete indifference in any further


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 adventures, honorable or dishonorable, that might come in Don Roberto's days.

"What is a general more or less?" he said.

"What do you say, Helena? You have most to forgive."

"Let him go, Gabriel," she requested, her compassion making her voice gentle for one who deserved no gentleness.

"There are some horses in the stable that belong to your government," said Henderson. "Take one of them and go. And here—here is your flag of truce. It has a black smudge on it, like your honor. Go!"

The tramp of horses was coming near in the road at the head of the olive lane, and the rumble of heavy wheels. The sun was low on the hills; their shadows reached into the valley, over Don Abrahan's mansion, submerging the road along which the conquerors advanced.

The chaparral grew tall at the roadside just beyond the head of the olive Jane; those who stood waiting, pulsing, straining with bright eyes and parted lips, could not see the advancing column whose dust rose high. But there was more than dust to prove that strong men were advancing into that pastoral, sleeping land that placid summer evening. Gabriel Henderson, straining until his eyes ached for the sight of them, removed his hat when he saw the token that appeared above the green bosque like a flame.

"There the flag came, lifted high. The man who


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 carried it—honorable distinction!—and they who marched with him, could not yet be seen through the intervening bosque, where the shadow of the hills fell on them, but the flag proclaimed them like a herald, lifted high above their heads into the sun. A beam of it was bright on the gilt spear of its staff; it was golden on the warm colors that stretched in the western wind.

Don Abrahan beheld it. He bowed his head as one who submits before a conqueror.


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126

“And pray that both do shortly come to us on the Rhine,

For which we’ll ever thank them, I and this lady mine.

Before this next midsummer he and his men shall see

Things done, which to his pleasure and honour great shall be.

“And likewise to King Siegmund my service take and say,

That I and all my people be bound to him alway,

Say also to my sister, that she must tarry not;

More worthy entertainment shall never be her lot.”

Brunhilda and Queen Uté, and every dame at hand,

Sent messages of service to all in Siegfried’s land;

Unto the lovely women, and many a man of worth.—

Then by the king’s good pleasure the messengers set forth.

In trav’lling guise they journey’d; their steeds and wearing-gear

Were ready made beforehand; so from the land they fare.

They made good progress onward to where their goal did lie,

The king came with an escort to speed his embassy.

At end of three weeks’ riding they came into the land

Wherein the Niblung stronghold, where they were sent, did stand

On the Norwegian border; and there they found the thane.

Both steeds and men were weary with their long journey’s pain.

Then was it unto Siegfried and to Kriemhilda said

How knights had come on horseback and so apparelléd

As in Burgundian country the fashion was that day:

Straight from the couch up-sprang she whereon she resting lay.


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text: The Road to Monterey

title: The Road to Monterey


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 1

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 1


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 2

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 2


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 3

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 3


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 4

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 4


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 5

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 5


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 6

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 6


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 7

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 7


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 8

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 8


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 9

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 9


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 10

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 10


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 11

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 11


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 12

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 12


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 13

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 13


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 14

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 14


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 15

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 15


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 16

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 16


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 17

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 17


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 18

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 18


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 19

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 19


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 20

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 20


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 21

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 21


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 22

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 22


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 23

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 23


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 24

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 24


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 25

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 25


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 26

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 26


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 27

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 27


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 28

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 28


text: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 29

title: The Road to Monterey/Chapter 29


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XII.]

And quickly to a window she bade a maiden go,

Who saw the gallant Gere stand in the court below,

Him and the comrades with him, who had been thither sent;

Instead of all her heartache how great was her content!

Unto the king then spake she: “Now look you down below,

How they with doughty Gere about the courtyard go,

Whom my good brother Gunther here down the Rhine hath sent!”

The stalwart Siegfried answered: “We’ll make them well content.”

Then all the court attendants did hasten out to greet,

And every one among them did speak a welcome meet;

They gave unto the envoys the best words that they had.

The old King Siegmund likewise was of their coming glad.

A lodging was appointed for Gere and his men,

The horses too were cared for. The messengers went then

Unto the hall where Siegfried near to Kriemhilda sat.

At court they had free entry: and therefore did they that.

The host rose with the hostess and near to them did stand.

Right well was Gere welcomed from the Burgundian land,

With all his knightly comrades,— King Gunther’s men to wit.

The noble Gere bade they upon the bench to sit.

“Before we sit allow us to tell you of our news;

Though weary with our journey, to stand the while we choose.

We have to give a message which unto you we bring

From Gunther and Brunhilda,—  and weighty is this thing.


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 MacDonald government in England. This will be a Labour government.

(: No.)

It is, or else you are against the decisions of the Fourth Congress. At the Fourth Congress we even quoted the case of Australia. Compare Saxony with MacDonald. Saxony is a bagatelle in comparison. But on the eve of the proletarian revolution in Germany it is a great episode. Compare the two. What do we see? Either the workers' government is a pseudonym for the proletarian dictatorship, or it is what the MacDonald government will be, a translation into English of the Scheidemann government. What did we have in Saxony? It was said objectively that it was an attempt on the part of the Communists to march together with the Social-Democrats, and objectively it resulted in a banal hoteh-potch.

Comrade Fischer quite rightly reminded us yesterday that the news of the entry of the Communists into the Saxony Government came during the Fourth Congress.

(: It was rejected.)

Rejected in Germany. The authoritative representatives of the Party, about twenty comrades including Thalheimer, Meier, and others were in Moscow. It is a fact that they favoured entry. We spent a whole evening fighting them, and the Russian Party leaders, including Lenin and Trotsky, unanimously resolved that we could not permit this, it would be opportunism. Why? I was and am of the opinion that the moment we entered this government, we would lose the practical possibility of utilising this watchword for the purpose of agitation. We take the workers' government as a pseudonym for proletarian dictatorship, and the moment it is achieved, it will damage the possibility of utilising this word agitationally.

The position with regard to the united front was similar. You will remember at the time the united front was resolved on came the idea of the Executive of the Three Internationals. I was of the opinion that this should be delayed as long as possible, for immediately we came together it would weaken the forces of the united front agitation. Nothing would come of it. Either we would make concessions to the Social-Democrats or nothing would come of it, and the centre of attraction of the united front would be lost. For it is nothing more than a method of agitation.

We must understand to apply it under varying conditions. He who expects more than this, stands on the position of the Social-Democracy. Yesterday Comrade Brandler said something that to me was most interesting. He said: we must admit that as a result of the application of the united front tactics the psychology of the masses has produced something in the nature of an evolutionary theory—first comes the bourgeois coalition, then the Social-Democratic Government supported by the Communists, and perhaps something will come after. Is it true


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 "CAUTION - Before takeoff, check operation of each engine on all eight main and auxiliary tanks"

"Takeoff on man tanks, cruise on auxiliary tanks, then back to main tanks for landing."

The company operations manual specifies that fuel will be used out of auxiliary tanks to an indicated minimum of 50 gallons and that remaining fuel may be used one tank to an engine at a time.

No reference was found in the operations or flight manuals regarding the different configurations of C-54 fuel system and fuel selector positions.

Captain Reid had flown C-54 aircraft 7,303 hours, 6,500 of which were as captain. The flight records of Captain Read indicated that since his employment with U. S. Overseas Aarlines July 21, 1958, he had completed 240 flying hours C-54-B series aircraft and 233 flying hours in C-54-₴ and G aircraft. His last previous flight was in a C-54-E series aircraft.

Copilot Cole had a total flying time of 9,024 hours, of which 255 hours were in C-54 aircraft. He had flown 69:45 hours in C-54 aircraft during the previous 30 days. He had flown a total of 209 hours in C-54-B series aircraft and 46:55 hours in C-54-E and G series aircraft.

The recorded weather at the time of the accident was: broken clouds at 2,500 feet, 10,000 feet overcast; visibility three miles in fog and smoke. However, according to verbal statements of the captain, the actual weather was scattered clouds with visibility unlimited and the moon fully visible. A U. S. Navy aircraft circling the wreckage shortly after the accident reported weather conditions as broken clouds at an estimated 3,000 feet and visibility 10 miles.

Analysis and Conclusions

An analysis of all evidence indicates that the accident resulted from fuel exhaustion due to positioning the fuel tank selectors to virtually empty tanks prior to takeoff. The 25 to 50 gallons of fuel in each auxiliary tank was sufficient to take off and reach the accident site and the No. 1 fuel tank contained slightly more fuel than the others. It is also obvious that the copilot did not move the fuel selectors during the emergency, as considered possible by the captain, but mistakenly considered himself to be in a 6-fuel-tank aircraft and believed, therefore, that the forward fuel selector positions were correct for the main fuel tanks and merely made sure that they were positioned to the forward detents as found.

The flight crew suspected improper or contaminated fuel but that area was thoroughly explored and completely eliminated by the various laboratory analyses of fuel samples and investigation of airport fuel handling and dispensing. The main fuel tanks were filled to a total of 951 gallons but the four auxiliary fuel tanks were not. Only 25 to 50 gallons of fuel remained in each of these tanks as indicated by the gauges when checked by the previous flight crew.

While at 10 not unreasonable for the captain to have considered the possibility of improper fuel as a reason for the loss of power, the Board believes it should not have been accepted to the exclusion of fuel starvation. Fluctuation of fuel pressure and fuel flow should have alerted the captain to the actual difficulty, particularly


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 that this view has arisen among the masses? If it is, then it is a strong argument against your application of the united front tactics.

 * "Brandler's article."

There is something more important than Brandler's article: not merely Brandler's fault or the fault of the Executive, but an important fact, which we must investigate.

 * "There is no such opinion."

 * "There is, particularly in Saxony."

Brandler was the first to assert this. In his declaration he laid special emphasis on this, for he was the father of the united front tactic in Germany, which is no reflection on him. We did this altogether. When he now says: objectively the position is that the masses conceive it was one government gradually developing out of the other, then we must ponder very deeply over where the fundamental error lies. I think it lies not in the united front tactics as such, but in their application. This must not be overlooked. This is a matter that cannot be taken lightly. It is a more weighty question than any other.

This then, is the position with regard to the united front. I think there is no cause for revising it fundamentally, Fundamentally, it is correct and will remain so. It is similar to the question of revolutionary parliamentarism. We stand with both feet firmly on that ground. How did we fight that question? We said Bombacci is a fool: the parliamentary faction in Germany is weak, so it is in France. But this is not taking up a position on principle. We must understand how to fight for the proper carrying out of an idea. The tactics are determined by the fact that we are a minority in the working class, and that the Social-Democracy has the majority, and that in the main we are still on the defensive and not on the offensive—Capitalism is on the offensive. Consequently, these tactics must apply for several years, throughout the duration of this position of the Communist Labour Movement. But in order to appreciate this idea we must ruthlessly combat any incorrect application of it. Otherwise, conrades, the ordinary workers will indeed say: it cannot be much of an idea; it is carried out badly in France, and also in Czecho-Slovakia and Germany, where they have the best Communist Parties. The united front tactic apparently is not a good idea at all. But the united front cannot be a good idea without flesh and blood.

In view of the formulation which is now given to it, it is most important that the matter be honestly thought out to the very end. On behalf of my party and with the unanimous approval of the Politbureau, I submit the following:—

"The united front is nothing more than a method of agitating and mobilising the proletarian forces in the period in which we at present find ourselves, All else is Social-Democratic." But, comrades, we must have regard to shades and colours. It would


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 not be difficult to find an elastic formula: we are all masters of this craft; "on the one hand," "not only," "but," &c. But we do not see this. When we are a minority on the Executive, we fight gradually to become a majority. We hope we will not become a minority. We must speak right out. A stage of so-called democracy in coalition with the Social-Democracy is out of the question. He who desires this already has one foot in the camp of the Social-Democracy, perhaps he has both feet there already. If so all the better. He who believes that an alliance is possible between the Communists and the Social-Democrats, holds the viewpoint of the Social-Democracy. Really he is a centrist.

Well, comrades, we have had some bad experiences in Germany. The only good thing will be if we can bring clarity into this matter.

I come now to the question of Social-Democracy in Germany and in connection with it to the questions of Fascism, who has won, &c.

Yesterday, comrade Radek rightly said that the first question a political leader asks himself is: who rules in the particular country? Who rules in Germany? But this question must not be put in too simple a form. He replies: the Fascists. I ask: Who share in the government of Germany? And I reply: the Social-Democracy.

(: Quite true.)

Oh, this is quite true, is it? We will soon see the logic of it.

Since 1918 a "bloc" rules in Germany. It is too simple to say the Fascists rule. A "bloc" rules. The bourgeois revolution came against the will of the Social-Democracy. Until the very last moment they stood for the monarchy. The bourgeois revolution took place in Germany in spite of the Social-Democracy. Germany described itself as a Socialist Republic. Now they wish to adopt the term November Republic. I ask the German comrades whether this term was really popular. I think we are interested in introducing the old Marxian terminology. When we speak of scientific definitions we should use Marxian terminology.

What have we in Germany? A bourgeois democracy. It is somewhat different from the French, American and Swiss Democracies, but the type is similar. During the five years of the existence of this bourgeois democracy the Social-Democrats have done everything they could gradually to transfer the whole of the power, or at any rate, the greater part of it, to the bourgeoisie. A "bloc" rules in Germany. In this "bloc" the relations of forces has somewhat changed recently. This is a fact. Somewhat changed. How easily you forget. You say the situation now is different, the Communist Party is prohibited now, whereas Noske did not prohibit the Communist Party.

(: It is much better now.)

Good. We must clearly scrutinise those who share power in Germany. The Social-Democracy. Is not Severing a minister? Severing is an accomplice.


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 What does this imply? That even now we have a bloc. Ebert is president, but that is not so important. We know that thousands and tens of thousands of Social-Democrats are in government offices. They sit in their jobs, and have something to defend. To speak precisely, it is too simple to say that Fascism is in power, Social-Democracy shares power with it. It is a bloc. And that is why the formula that Fascism has conquered—the November Republic—falls to the ground. It is totally wrong. Immediately we try to examine it closely it disappears. First of all, is the term November Republic correct? If you are Marxists, you must say bourgeois democracy. In principle, is it any other system? No. Bourgeois democracy is in power and approximately it is the same as in France. Do you think that the generals do not rule in France? Secondly: the republic cannot be defeated without the working class being defeated. This is a literary flourish, or a piece of opportunism similar to that at Leipsic. It were better if it were merely a literary flourish.

Why is it politically harmful? Because from it follows an incorrect estimation of the Social-Democracy, which for us is the most important question; whether there will be any new deviations among us. If it is true that the Social-Democracy is defeated, it follows that there must be an approach to it on our part. Comrade Arvid in a letter writes with a naive gesture: "Why do we employ this formula? Because only by this formula can we explain why we now repudiate partial slogans and partial struggles." But, comrades, this is all topsy-turvy. In order to make the repudiation of partial demands convenient, we employ wrong terminology. No one can deny that if it is true that Social-Democracy has been defeated, an approach to the Social-Democracy follows from this. Marx in his "Communist Manifesto," taught us much that when it is a question of reaction or the petty-bourgeoisie, we must go with the latter. In Germany, however, the situation is different. Reaction rules, but it shares power with the Social-Democracy. We must fight both. From your terminology, however, quite a different conclusion follows.

This, then, is the position. We must change the tactics for Germany, for as it is perfectly clear now, the Social-Democracy has become a wing of Fascism. It is a Fascist Social-Democracy. Hence the necessity for modifying our tactics.

(: That is what we say.)

No, you did not say that. You abuse them, but you fail to understand yet how to explain this to the masses of the workers in a Marxian manner. It is easy to abuse and call them the accomplices of the bourgeoisie. The Social-Democracy has not been defeated. It is a part of the whole thing, and the whole of international Social-Democracy is developing along the same way. We can see this quite clearly. What is Pilsudsky, and the others? Fascist Social-Democrats. Were they this ten years ago? No. Of course, at that time they were potential Fascists, but it is


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 precisely during this epoch of revolution, that they have become Fascists. What is the Italian Social-Democracy? It is a wing of the Fascists. Turati is a Fascist Social-Democrat. Could we have said this five years ago? No. Do you remember the group of academicians who gradually developed into a bourgeois force, the Italian Social-Democrats, now are a Fascist Social-Democracy. Take Turati, d’Arragona, or the present Bulgarian governmental Socialists. Ten years ago we had opportunists, but could we say then that they were Fascist Social-Democrats? No. It would have been absurd to say that them. Now, however, they are Fascists. They keep repeating: we are from the Second International, we are Social-Democrats. We must understand what is taking place. It is not enough to abuse the Social-Democrats. On the one hand we have MacDonald, chairman of the Second International. coming into power. The British bourgeoisie politely invite him to rule. Of course, it is evidence of the weakness of the bourgeoisie; the working class is growing; it became a factor, but it also shows what has become of the Social-Democrats. The British bourgeois places the president of the Second International in the saddle.

We can abuse MacDonald, we may call him traitor and accomplice of the bourgeoisie, but we must understand in what period we are living. The international Social-Democracy has now become a wing of Fascism. This we must explain to the German workers. But this is quite a different view. It will mark a new starting point in policy and agitation and throws a completely new light on the subject.

Here we must place a new construction on the subject. The first was incorrect. I could never defend it on the International. When the International takes up this work objectively and closely scrutinises it, its verdict will be: incorrect. It is a Radek article, and not a Party resolution.

I have written an article on Koltchak, which, to my mind, is far more correct than the Radek article which you have brought up for discussion.

What has the Editorial Board of your Executive Committee done? It published a commentary, which in fact is another Radek article. You have a perfect right to do this, but you have no right to ask where is the Right, where are the nuances? The Right are those who wrote the commentary.

However, it is in the minority. After the International has made its decision it will be in a still smaller minority. Take the Leipsic decision, the clamour over the pseudonym, the resolution of the National Committee, the policy in Saxony, and the Radek article, which you have printed as a commentary of the Editorial Board, it is sufficient to convince any political leader that the system is incorrect.

(: It is a system then, even if incorrect?)

It is a Menshevist system. What is Menshevism? It is often


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 said that Radek is a Menshevik, but he is not. Of course, he is a Bolshevik. But frequently he makes mistakes of a Menshevist character. If he were a Menshevik and I were a Bolshevik, our light would be conducted quite differently. That is the position, comrades, Radek says: Zinoviev would be right if the position in Germany was the same as it was in Russia. Well, comrades, you, as foreigners, are not obliged to recognise this policy, but Radek should be. It is not merely a question of the Mensheviks. There was also Purishkevitch. He was the Russian Hittler. It was a great movement, reactionary—Black Hundreds as they were then called. In fact it was a Russian Fascism with the large addition of social demagogy. The Black Hundreds were formed from this Party. It was a pillar of the monarchy. It had branches in every village and town, do you know that, Comrade Radek?

(: And workers belonged to it.)

House porters, working women and such like belonged to it in large numbers. They utilised religion to a certain extent. It was in some ways a popular, revolutionary movement, with strong propaganda against the Jews. It was a big movement which had a following of tens of thousands. It had the petty bourgeoisie and a following in the villages, in the towns and everywhere. Therefore, if you wish to make this comparison, you must not lose sight of this third tendency. And you have overlooked it.

(: With regard to the petty bourgeoisie, I stand completely on the ground that Zinoviev has quoted.)

Radek is right. He has emphasised the importance of the petty bourgeoisie. We must help the petty bourgeoisie. In this we are obliged to Radek. It is indeed one of the most important tasks. Your dealings with these small business men was good, it shows that you really have contact with the people. Of course this task still confronts us, and we must understand how to win the petty bourgeoisie to our side. I have not heard that the Left are against this. When, however, a great distinction is made in the resolution of the National Committee between Wittelsbachern and Hohenzollern, we say this is opportunism. If we will construct the working-class policy on this, and regard this as a great factor in the revolution, it will be a great error.

What was the point of the controversy between Lenin and Martov? Not over taking advantage of the nuances, but over the fact that Martov, absorbed in seeking for these fine nuances, completely forgot the main point. The three divisions of the people: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the proletariat. He was a menshevik, and he should serve as a warning example. This must not be overlooked,

And then there is the position taken up by Radek: either a Communist agitation party or a fighting party; a pure agitational policy; sect or mass party. This is a very bad position to take up. I do not say that Radek's position is the same as that of Levi, but in the main the error is the same, the starting


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 in view of the surging of the engines and the fact that the fuel boost pump did 1 not remedy the condition, and the fact that the low cylinder-head temperatures eliminated the possibility of the presence of jet fuel. Switching fuel selection to another tank should normally be one of the first acts of a pilot after a sudden decrease of fuel pressure and fuel flow. In addition, Captain Reid had four or more minutes to analyze his problem before impact.

Probable Cause

The Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was incorrect fuel system management, resulting in a power loss in three engines.

BY THE CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD:


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 point is the same. The controversy is precisely over the question as to whether we shall be a good agitation party; the question as to whether we are a Communist or a Centrist agitation party. It is no use raising the sect bogey here. We know it too well. We in Russia are a mass party. The defect of our parties is that they do not understand how to conduct Communist agitation. Take the British, the French, the Czecho-Slovak, and the German Parties, they do not understand yet how to conduct Communist popular agitation. They do not yet regard themselves as tribune of the people. Why has the speeches of one of our best men, Heckert, annoyed us so? We all like Heckert as a good fellow, we know that he is loyal to the Communist International and would die with it. All the more reason therefore why we were annoyed that he did not look upon himself as a popular tribune.

(: Have you read his speeches?)

I have read all that was possible, and I think not less than Walcher. We have not made this judgment in a narrow-minded spirit. When we drew up the letter we were all unanimous, and we read a dozen reports.

(: Everybody said it was a good Communist speech.)

Perhaps in normal times it would have been a good speech. But it did not give the impression that it was a speech of one whom the revolutionary wave had carried to the head of the masses of the workers. No, it could not be, when the attitude was: I am responsible to the Landtag, I stand on the Constitution.

(: There was no wave.)

It is true there was no wave in Leipsic at that moment, but the wave was there in Germany in October. Remmele has related how the masses remained in the streets the whole night, how they confiscated luxurious automobiles, and what the temper of the women was. Comrades, this, for us, was far more important than the volumes of the theses we wrote. We must have this mass sense. The picture that Remmele described, that Koenig has given, and Thälmann has often drawn, that was the most important thing in Germany. On October 25 it was not in Leipsic, but it was in Germany. Were you the megaphone of this mood?

The masses were acting spontaneously, but Members of the Central Committee, like Heckert, were not acting spontaneously. If he is a leader, he must be able to sense what is in the masses. We saw nothing in these Ministers of what was reflected by Thälmann, Remmele, and Koenig, and this was the most terrifying symptom. I will not come forward here like a Shylock and say why did you not have the arms within five days? That could not be done. That is not the charge brought against you. But why did not you become the passionate tribune of the masses? This is what we do not understand—and it is a bad symptom.


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 We agree that the retreat at the time of the Chemnitz Conference was unavoidable. It is not worth while now to argue about this. Apparently it was unavoidable in view of the situation then prevailing. But the attitude during the Saxony affair is evidence of the fact that semi-conscious right tendencies exist in the Party, and that hitherto there has not been a sufficiently well organised opposition in the Party. We have not opposed sufficiently, and we shall do so more in the future.

I come now to the situation in the Party. It has often been asked: do we require ten men like Remmele and Thälmann? That was the Central Committee which should have drawn fresh political and organisational forces to its aid. It was a Central Committee, it was the best and most valuable that we had in the Party. Of course I will not put forward the theory of Faust, but, comrades, it is the material we have. The greatest reproach that can be made against the Central Committee is that it did not know how to employ this, we may say, gold of the working class, but instead argued over theses and every Radek article was taken for discussion. You do not understand how to lend an ear to the working-class groups I referred to. This by no means implies that we can dispense with intellectuals—that would be demagogy. We need all our comrades from the intelligentsia, but we must once and for all adopt a firm basis.

What should be done now? A change in the leadership must be made now. What change? That the present majority on the Central Committee work with the Left wing of the Party, with the support and control of the Communist International: this is the advice we give you. The Poles say that on the German question we have sought a middle course. The Polish Party has never made any other proposal. They can always make their proposals. I do not think it becomes a party like the Polish Party to shed tears when we have suffered defeat.

(: We do not shed tears.)

You have decided on the letter to the Russian Communist Party without hearing us. You described this as a Solomon policy without making any proposals. It is to be hoped that you will make some proposal. All you propose in your letter is that people should not quarrel.

We hope that up till now we have acted correctly. You frequently say Muslov and Fischer are bad, Thälmann is good. Comrades, I have witnessed such things in our Party. But such methods are rarely successful. I know the worker not less well than you, and they resolutely protest against such attempts at splitting. There are shades of differences between Thälmann and Muslov, political and personal. That is clear. ThalmännThälmann [sic] comes out of the very heart of the working class, Muslov comes from the intelligentsia.

(: Thälmann gave of his best on the Central Committee.)


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HIS collection of documents should be of exceptional interest to the British Trade Union Movement. It traces the growth and development of the Trade Unions in Russia, and shows the responsibilities which have been thrown upon them as a consequence of the revolution. Their ideas and policy and their hopes of the future are expressed in their own words.

The documents are taken exclusively from first hand Russian sources in the translations issued by the All Russia Council of Trade Unions. The collection has been compiled by the Independent Labour Party Information Committee and the International Section of the Labour Research Department.

November, 1920.


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Trade Unions as fighting organs of the working class against the capitalists arose in Russia only after 1905. But the first hints at labour organisation could be traced to periods considerably before the first revolutionary mass conflicts between the workers and the autocracy. Among these early forms of working class organisations must be included all kinds of benefit societies, mutual aid societies, burial societies and other organisations aiming at elementary mutual aid. These forms of mutual aid societies were particularly widespread in Poland and the Baltic Provinces. In 1898 there were in the Baltic Provinces 98 workingmen's benefit societies and 113 burial societies including members of all classes. Several of these societies date back; to the beginning of the nineteenth century (1821). Similar societies also existed in the Ural region. Reference must also be made to the benefit societies among printers, compositors and lithographers founded in 1838 in Petrograd and to the printers' benefit societies in Moscow. In the eighties and nineties eleven printers' mutual aid societies existed in a number of towns in Russia.

Side by side with this there arose craftsmen societies and in 1898 there were 15 of these in Russia, besides 54 burial societies including all classes. The most widespread organisations previous to the first revolution were shop assistants' societies, and very often the employers were honorary members of these. Mutual aid societies among factory workers did not develop before the middle of the nineties. All these organisations were founded for the purpose of granting financial benefits to the sick, supplying medical assistance and funeral benefit, assistance to invalids, to widows and orphans, and loans and assistance to the needy. These organisations had no relation whatever to the economic struggle. The tsarist policy jealously took care of that. The rules of the factory benefit funds were confirmed by the Minister of Finance, the rules of other mutual aid societies had to be confirmed by the Minister of the Interior and permission for the establishment of such societies in Poland had to be obtained from the Tsar on the representations of the Cabinet of Ministers.


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 Rh

ADOPTED: September 14, 1960

U. S. OVERSEAS AIRLINES, INC., C-54-G, N 4000A, NEAR THE

U. S. NAVAL AIR STATION, JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, OCTOBER 15, 1959

At approximately 2105 e. d. t., October 15, 1959, a U. S. Overseas Airlines C-54-6, N 4000A, a cargo flight, was ditched in a small lake, caught fire, and sank In 10 feet of water approximately eight minutes after takeoff from the U. S. Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida, The two pilots, the only occupants, were seriously injured.

U. S. Overseas Airlines, Inc., operates both 6- and 8-fuel-tank C-54's, which have different fuel selector positions. The 6-tank system has a 2-position wing tank selector; the main tank positions are forward and the off positions are rear-ward. The 8-tank fuel system, which N 4000A had, has three tank selector positions; the auxiliary tank positions are forward, the main tank positions are center, and the off positions are rearward.

The accident was caused by fuel exhaustion due to the inadvertent positioning, prior to takeoff, of the four fuel selector to the nearly empty auxiliary tanks. During the four or more minutes that power was being lost, first on the No. 4 engine, then No. 3, then No. 2, the crew made no effort to reposition the fuel selectors to the full main tanks.

As a result of this accident, the company has blocked off the No. 2 and No. 3 tank selectors from the auxiliary positions on all 8-tank aircraft. Also, a large placard has been placed directly in front of the fuel tank selectors in all C-54 aircraft stating whether the aircraft has a 6-or 8-tank fuel system. The C-54 checklist has also been revised to require a response after MAIN TANKS of "Pull Forward"' on the 6-tank system, and "Center Position" on the 8-tank system.

Investigation N 4000A was engaged in a "Quicktrans" scheduled U. S. Navy contract cargo Flaght which originated In Oakland, California, the previous day. Captain Jewell Read and Copilot Gordon Cole was scheduled to make the flight from Jacksonville to MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, with a stop at Charleston, South Carolina.

N 4000A, flown by a different crew, arrived at Jacksonville NAS from Dallas at 1750. The two new crew members arrived for duty at 1800. The copilot completed the


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 All these societies, benefit funds and burial societies could only serve an insignificant section of the workers and in no case could they satisfy the need of the workers in a fighting organisation. As the whole machinery of the State was directed to crush the slightest attempt at organising a union in Russia, illegal trade unions began to arise which were part of illegal social-democratic organisations.

Strikes in Russia were prohibited and were regarded as crimes. As clause 318 of the Criminal C9de of 1874 declares: "Persons accused of belonging to societies having the aim of rousing hostility between employers and workers as well as provoking strikes are liable to imprisonment for 8 months with deprivation of rights and property and exile to Siberia." This law did not remain a mere dead letter; tsarism undeviatingly put it into force and severely persecuted every organised action of the workers and every attempt at improving their position. But repressions never could abolish the class struggle and since the seventies the strike movement in Russia has developed side by side with the development of capitalism. The sharp elemental, strikes of the seventies compelled the government to pass the law of the 1st of June, 1882, prohibiting the employment of children below 12 years of age and limiting the employment of children between 12 and 15 to 8 hours a day. In the eighties the central industrial districts were overwhelmed by a wave of strikes which took a particularly sharp form in Orechov-Zouev due to the imposition of fines. As a consequence of this a law was passed on June 3rd, 1886, referring to the hiring of workers in factories and one in 1885 prohibiting nightwork for women in several industries.

In spite of imprisonment, exile and savage persecution of strikers the strikes broke out in one centre after another. In 1896 a strike of 35 thousand textile workers broke out in Petrograd, which made a tremendous impression not only upon the Government but upon the working classes themselves. The Government, after a series of repressions, issued the law of 1897 which, for the first time in Russia, limited the working day for adult factory workers to 11½ hours for day work and 10 hours for night work. We see therefore that all our factory legislation is closely connected with the large strikes and that in order to avoid discontent, as Professor Tugan-Baranovsky points out, the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Department undertook the task of factory legislation.

The economic strikes were so obviously connected with politics that the first illegal socialist groups that arose in Russia after the defeat of the Narodniki devoted particular attention to the organisation of the economic struggle. The first strike funds were established as far back as 1888 in Vilna among stocking knitters, tailors and the workers in the paper and boot trades. In 1894 the Jewish workers' federation of Warsaw organised such funds in several trades. In Minsk 4 illegal


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 trade unions were organised with 220 members. In Vilna 12 funds were established. Altogether in Vilna there were 850 organised workers belonging to 27 trades and in Minsk 870 workers belonging to 15 trades. These strike funds played such an important part in the development of the Labour movement that when in 1897 the Jewish Labour League of Lithuania, Poland and Russia (the Bund) was established, these strike funds were its foundation stone. The part played by these organisations can be seen from the following figures: in 1900 of the total number of local Jewish workers in Bielostock 20 per cent. were organised in these societies, in Vilna, 24 per cent., in Gomel nearly 40 per cent. and in Minsk 35–40 per cent.

In the nineties unions for fighting for the emancipation of the working class arose in Central Russia and illegally, conducted strikes and assisted strikers. In several Petrograd factories illegal fighting funds were established of which one fourth of the members' contributions were devoted to strikes, a half for mutual aid and the rest for books. In 1895 a Labour Union was established in Ivanovo-Voznesensk which established funds and a library. In 1897 a Central Fund was set up in Nikolaeff, half of the income of which was devoted for strike purposes. All these strike funds and labour unions were created by the Social-Democrats who, in this manner, stood, so to speak, at the cradle of the trade union movement in Russia. These illegal fighting funds and strike funds undoubtedly were embryonic forms of trade unions. In 1898 all unions for the emancipation of the working class united into a single Social-Democratic Labour Party which in Central Russia relied upon illegal groups and organisations and in Poland and the Western provinces on the illegal purely party trade unions. The Russian trade union movement from the moment of its birth bound itself up with the political labour movement. This particular feature of the Russian labour movement manifests itself up to the present moment.

The accentuation of the economic struggle which took the form of political demonstrations against the autocracy suggested the idea in police circles of creating legal labour organisations for the purpose of combatting the harmful influence of the Social-Democrats. The Chief of the Moscow Police, Trepoff, and the Chief of the Moscow "Okrana" ZubatofT were engaged on this question. Trepoff, in one of his reports, states that "success in the struggle rouses a confidence in their strength, teaches them to adopt practical methods of fighting, trains and brings to the front able leaders, convinces the workers of the possibility and the utility of collective action and develops a consciousness for the necessity of the class struggle" and urges the necessity for creating an antidote to the political influence of the Social-Democrats. In Moscow, in 1902, a mechanic society was organised under the direct leadership and protection of the Okrana. In Minsk the Chief of the Police, Vassilev, and in Odessa, Shaevitch, set up similar well intentioned organisations. All the efforts of the Okrana were directed towards concentrating the attention of the working class upon mutual


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 assistance and diverting them from political questions; but they had quite an unpleasant experience. As long as these were small closed organisations they were quite harmless but as soon as the broad labour masses began to join, they became centres of the economic struggle. The historian of this police device, Professor Oseroff, declares that as soon as the weavers, for instance, on the initiative of the Okrana, organised a mutual aid society they sent delegates to the factories with a demand for an increase of wages. The union created in Odessa was the initiator of large strikes in which tens of thousands of workers participated. The attempt of the Okrana to protect the economic organisations roused protests on the part of the manufacturers who regarded this as an attempt ot the feudal government to save itself by stirring up the workers against the bourgeoisie. Complaints flowed from Moscow to Petrograd, the Minister of Finance took the side of the employers and Zubatoff was transferred to Vologda.

But as the labour movement was growing unrestrainedly a fresh attempt was made by the Police in 1904 to create support among the workers. A meeting of the Russian factory workers under the protection of the Minister of the Interior, Plehve, and the Metropolitan Antonius, formed a society for the purpose, as the rules state, of "arousing and strengthening national consciousness of the workers." At the head of this society stood Father Gapon who organised 11 branches. These branches in spite of their police origin became the centre of the labour movement in Petrograd. A series of strikes and demonstrations took place which ended in the bloody shambles of the 9th January (old style). This tampering of the police with the workers resulted in the defeat of the autocracy.

Bloody Sunday served as a starting point for a tremendous revolutionary impetus. In the course or several months more than 500,000 workers struck. Strikes broke out one after another. Economic strikes took the shape of political strikes. The pressure was so great that tsarism had to look through its fingers at the "illegal" activity of the workers. Simultaneously with the bloody January days and the strike wave roused by these events the work of organising the trade unions was proceeding. The first union to be formed was that of the printers. Immediately after a union of clerks and book-keepers was formed. At the same time a semi-legal union of shop assistants and a union of druggist assistants began to organise. At a secret meeting held in May, 1905, unions of watch makers, tailors, tanners and boot and shoe makers were formed.

A number of unions were formed in Moscow in the spring of 1905. The illegal printers' union which existed in Moscow since 1903 for improving the conditions of labour and which accepted the programme of the Social-Democratic Party, carried on since 1905 an economic struggle. But in September, 1905, a printers' strike broke out in Moscow and advantage was taken of the occasion to create a council of printers' delegates for Moscow which, in fact, became a trade union. In the spring of 1905 the Bolsheviks organised a party union of bakers, the founders of which practically became the leaders of