and lawgivers are arch lawbreakers—the characters of the individuals living under such a régime must suffer. And alas, for the rising generation! When one thinks on these things the prophecy of Tolstoi has greatest weight—perhaps the seer in this, as in so many other things, is right, and Russia will continue to go from bad to worse, until the whole people awake in the very bottom of the abyss, and then, and then only, will they turn to God as their only hope of salvation.
If the public opinion of the world would cry out against foreign bankers periodically advancing money to the present government to maintain its grip at the very throat of the people, governmental concessions would have to be granted. As it is, the people of Russia feel themselves pitted not only against their own government which has all of the machinery of the army and police to support it, but also against the financial interests of Europe and the rest of the world. The mere moral sympathy of America is not much of an offset to a French loan, or an Anglo-Russian alliance, unless it results in preventing American bankers from advancing American money to perpetuate the existing régime.
These foreign loans are a terrible discouragement to the Russian people. Whenever the people reach the point where they believe their government will be obliged to yield certain fundamental human rights, through sheer inability to longer feed the forces of reaction, and to pay for the upkeep of the army, then the foreign bankers spring to the rescue.
In Russia I do not look for any voluntary “grant” of liberties or freedom from czardom. I believe that, however much one may desire constitutional reform, the Russian people will eventually obtain their liberties through fighting for them. I foresee a long, long struggle.
Since October, 1905, the Russian people have advanced enormously, and the Duma experiments, handicapped as they were, have yet proved immense educational influences; they have served to arouse the whole people to what may be, and to awaken within them a realization of what sooner or later must be. On this count alone the value of these short-lived parliaments must not be underrated. The Russian people now understand their own situation as they never have grasped it before. They have not merely lost faith in the Czar, they have learned that the trouble with Russia to-day is that it suffers a blight, and that blight is autocracy, which in its very essence is incompatible with modern civilization, and that while the obliteration of autocracy may be a long task, the only escape from their present bondage is the accomplishment of this task. And the period of the struggle making for this end will be recorded in history as the Russian Revolution.
APPENDICES
A—Caucasian testimony; B—The Duma’s Reply to the Throne Speech; C—M. Lopuchin’s letter to M. Stolypin; D—Report on Siedlce pogrom; E—Notes on Wages and Cost of Living.