arrest for the most trivial offences and on the slightest suspicion. A young man who has saved his money and is buying his sweetheart a few expensive blossoms on her birthday is arrested by the person standing next him in the shop on suspicion of having received the money from some counter-revolutionary organisation. He is kept in prison for several months. A delicate woman is kept three days in prison for having too large a supply of white flour in her house. She got it for a dying father and a sick sister by selling valuable household goods. She was "denounced" by a former servant who occupies a room in the same house though he is not now in their service.
This Extraordinary Commission has its agents everywhere, in every organisation and at every public gathering; and nobody can be sure of his neighbour or even of his friend. It has its own soldiers, who enjoy better rations than the men at the front, its own prisons and its "secret police." It formerly had the power of life and death, and has executed thousands of persons without trial. Though nominally that power has been taken from it and handed over to the Revolutionary Tribunals, it is by no means clear that the power does not actually remain. In any case, the Revolutionary Tribunals work in complete sympathy with the Commission, so there is no real change.
