Finally, he makes an appeal which has been made at all times and in all countries in times of popular dissatisfaction, and has always been made in vain. The words which I am about to quote embody what has been thought in this country during all the last months by the vast majority of thinking people, by all who had brains to think and were not blinded by fanatical rage.
“Without consulting your Minister, call together your whole Council. Let it appear to the public that you can determine and act for yourself. Come forward to your people; lay aside the wretched formalities of a king and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have been fatally deceived: the acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but rather an honour to your understanding. Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your Government; that you will give your confidence to no man that does not possess the confidence of your subjects; and leave to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or not it be in reality the general sense of the nation that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded....”
Hope, indeed, springs eternal in the human breast; otherwise people would not persist in giving such admirable, such simple advice, seeing how little chance there is that it will ever be adopted.
Yesterday morning a man threw a bomb at the Governor-General’s carriage, killing his aide-de-camp and losing his own life, while the Governor-General escaped miraculously. About an hour after the explosion I went to the Hôtel Dresden with a naval officer who was staying with me. It appeared that the man who had thrown the bomb was disguised as a naval officer; a man in such a costume is seldom seen in Moscow, and is certain to attract attention. I and my naval friend had already been to the hotel in the morning; when we returned the hotel keeper said to us, “You are suspected of having thrown the bomb.” It was easy to prove that we were not guilty, owing to the presence of the dead man who had done the deed. His naked body was lying in a house on one side of the Square; he had a horrible wound in his head. The attitude of the general public with regard to the attempt was curious. When we got home, people said to us, “Have you heard the news? What a pity that two men were killed uselessly, and that the Governor-General escaped!” They talked about it exactly as if they had narrowly missed backing a winner. Later I heard of two girls who quarrelled because one of them said that she was sorry the aide-de-camp had been killed. The lower classes do not seem to pay the slightest attention to the matter. In the middle classes people have lost all moral sense with regard to these outrages. They consider that throwing bombs is a kind of lynch-law; they do not distinguish one individual from another, the honest from the dishonest, the harmless from the guilty. But the people who are to be blamed are those who, by bringing certain things to pass, have created this feeling. When the Government takes no notice of outrages committed on the people, and allows the perpetrators to go scot free, it is not to be wondered that the people are “more than usual calm” when they hear that a governor has been blown up. It is none the less very demoralising for the present young generation in Russia.
May 11th.
Two men asked me for some money in the street this morning because they had been drunk yesterday. I went to the soldiers’ hospital in the afternoon, and was much struck by the way in which the soldiers talked of the Duma. These men, during the epoch which had followed the “Manifesto,” had been violently against what they called the “Strikers.” They had told me that when the procession attending Bauman’s funeral had passed the windows of their hospital they would have liked to have shot the dogs. Now they say that they understand that had there been no strike there would have been no Duma, and that on the Duma everything depended. One man asked me how long the Duma would last and when the first Parliament was made in England. One of the soldiers asked me for books the other day, and I bought him several of Scott’s novels. He was so delighted with “Quentin Durward” that the nurse told me he read all day and would not leave his book for a moment. He told me the whole story of “Quentin Durward” with the various conversations between the characters.
CHAPTER XVII
THE OPENING OF THE DUMA
St. Petersburg, May 14th.
I had the good fortune to gain admission to the Duma yesterday afternoon. I think it is the most interesting sight I have ever seen. When you arrive at the Tauris Palace, which outside has an appearance of dignified stateliness, the stateliness of the end of the Eighteenth Century, you walk through a spacious front hall into what looks like a gigantic white ball-room built in the late Louis XVI. style. This is the lobby; beyond it is the Hall of the Duma itself. In this long gallery members and visitors were already flocking, walking up and down, talking, and smoking cigarettes and throwing away the ashes and the ends on the polished floor. One saw peasants in their long black coats, some of them wearing military medals and crosses; popes, Tartars, Poles, men in every kind of dress except uniform. When the sitting began I went up into the gallery. The Hall of the Duma itself is likewise white, delicate in decoration, an essentially gentlemanlike room. The sitting began about three o’clock. The members go to their appointed places, on which their cards are fixed, and the impression of diversity of dress and type becomes still stronger and more picturesque.
You see dignified old men in frock coats, aggressively democratic-looking “intelligents,” with long hair and pince-nez, a Polish bishop dressed in purple, who looks like the Pope; men without collars; members of the proletariate, men in loose Russian shirts with belts; men dressed by Davies or Poole, and men dressed in the costume of two centuries ago. The President walked in to his seat under the portrait of the Emperor, which is a rather shiny study in blue and white. One thanked Heaven the Duma had not been redecorated in the art nouveau style, for almost all the modern buildings in Russia, from Moscow to Kharbin, are built in the mixture of Munich, Maple, and Japan which is called art nouveau (modern style), and in Russia “decadent.”