"Have we much land of our own, my friends?" asks the orator.
"Much!" replies the crowd.
"Do we require Manchuria?"
"No!"
"Who pays for the war?"
"We do!"
"Are our brothers dying, and do your wives and children remain without a bit of bread?"
"So it is!" say many, with a significant shake of the head.
Having succeeded so far, the orator tries to turn the popular indignation against the Tsar by explaining that he is to blame for all this misery and suffering, but Petroff suddenly appears on the scene and maintains that for the misery and suffering the Tsar is not at all to blame, for he knows nothing about it. It is all the fault of his servants, the tchinovniks.
By this device Petroff suppresses the seditious cry of "Down with autocracy!" which the Social Democrats were anxious to make the watchword of the movement, but he has thereby been drawn from his strong position of "No politics," and he is standing, as we shall see presently, on a slippery incline.