Questions for Review
- How did the submarine boat change methods of warfare?
- What is contraband of war?
- Was it right to prevent the importation of food into Germany?
- Why would a nation which manufactured a great deal of war material object to the sale of such material to fighting nations by nations at peace?
- Show how this rule, if carried out, would have a tendency to make all nations devote too much work to the preparation of war supplies.
- Show the difference between the British blockade and the sinking of ships by German submarines.
- Would the blowing up of American factories by paid agents of the German government have been a good enough reason for the United States to have declared war?
- How did the voyages of the Deutschland prove that the United States wanted to be fair to both sides in the war?
- What reasons had Austria and Germany for wishing peace in December 1916?
- Why did President Wilson ask the warring nations to state their aims in the war?
- How did Germany try to justify the sinking of ships without warning?
Chapter XXII.
Another Crown Topples
The unnatural alliance of the Czar and the free peoples.—The first Duma and the revolt of 1905.—The Zemptsvos and the people against the pro-German officials.—The death of Rasputin and other signs of unrest.—The revolution of March 1917.—The Czar becomes Mr. Romanoff.—Four different governments within eight months.—Civil war and a German effort for peace.
It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first place by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the unwillingness of Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor crushed, and that England came in to make good her word, pledged to Belgium, to defend that small country from all hostile attacks. Thus the nations of the Entente posed before the world as the defenders of small nations and as champions of the rights of peoples to live under the form of government which they might choose. You will remember that when the central powers said that they were ready to talk peace terms the nations of the Entente replied that there could be no peace as long as the Danes, Poles, and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her empire and as long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either to rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond of saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those enslaved by military rule—a conflict between self-governed nations and those which were oppressing their foreign subjects. Replying to this the central powers would always point to Russia. Russia, said they, oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the Letts, the Esthonians, the Finns. She, as well as Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of Roumanians within her territories. Her people had even less political freedom than the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.
The nations of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact there is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid of a Russian victory. They did not want the war to be won by the one nation in their group which had a despotic form of government. On the other hand the high officials in Russia were not any too happy at the thought of their alliance with the free peoples of western Europe. Germany was much more their ideal of a country governed in the proper manner than was France. As you have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian court were of German blood and secretly desired the victory of their fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep all power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of seeing Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up and demand more liberty.
You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time of the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at all sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of his people away from their own wrongs.
At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg, which they did with great ferocity. All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince, the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy’s food whenever Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few days. The poor little prince, of course, was made sick; whereupon, the Empress would hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon whose arrival the Czarevitch “miraculously” got well. In this manner this low-born fakir obtained such a hold over the Czar and Czarina that he was able to appoint governors of states, put bishops out of their places, and even change prime ministers. There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use his influence in their behalf. It is a sad illustration of the ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could have gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.
The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos. These were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia, elected by the people to decide all local matters, like the building of roads, helping feed the poor, etc. They had been started by Czar Alexander II, in 1862. Although the court was rotten with graft and plotting, the Zemptsvos remained true to the people. They finally all united in a big confederation, and when the world war broke out, this body, really the only patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the grand dukes and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the hands of the enemy.
It was a strange situation. The Russian people through the representatives that they elected to these little county assemblies were patriotically carrying out the war, while the grand dukes and the court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this trouble, were, for the most part, hampering the soldiers, either through grafting off the supplies and speculating in food, or traitorously plotting to betray their country to the Germans. With plenty of food in Russia, with millions of bushels of grain stored away by men who were holding it in order to get still higher prices, there was not enough for the people of Petrograd to eat.