Page:Michael Farbman - The Russian Revolution & The War (1917).djvu/16

 a Commission of Investigation. But the Commission appointed by Stuermer to investigate the banks became itself a blackmailing agency. The bankers had only to bribe the President of the Commission (a well-known general) and his fellows in order to escape censure. One of the most corrupt bankers in Petrograd was actually arrested in order to encourage the others to pay up. The Commission itself is now under trial and the forthcoming revelations may be expected to enrich criminal history with one of its choicest episodes. Already the trial of the notorious Mannsievitch Manuilov, one of the main blackmailing agents of this Commission, which took place just before the Revolution, is felt as a national nightmare.

The stories revealed in the evidence would be quite incredible were they not official facts, and would give the impression of a diseased imagination at work rather than of real happenings of contemporary history. But the bankers and industrials, thus systematically plundered by Government officials, compensated