ingly the Americans were drilled to bear this burden without andue fatigue. This was the stage American operations in France had reached by the beginning of August, 1917.

Little was disclosed regarding naval movements-beyond the activities of American destroyers, which were not only occupied in convoying transports and passenger liners through the submarine zone, but cooperated with British patrols in checking submarine destruction in other lanes of travel. The British recognized them as a formidable part of the grand Allied fleet.

As to the navy itself, its personnel was increased to 150,000 men. Where the main American fleet was-whether with the British fleet at the Orkneys, or stationed in some other zoneno event transpired to give any clue. But patrol of the South Atlantic, as well as of the American coast, was assumed by the Pacific coast fleet under Admiral Caperton, the remaining French and British warships in those waters acting under his authority.

Sea warfare conditions, outside the useful work of the American destroyers provided by the German submarines, gave little scope for naval operations, and it was assumed that the main American fleet, like the British, was lying quiescent, with its finger on the trigger, awaiting its opportunity. The Navy Department meantime busied itself arming scores of American merchant vessels to brave the submarines, and in carrying out an extensive building program, which included the construction of hundreds of submarine chasers-a new type of swift, powerfully armed small craft-as well as of many new destroyers.

PART IX-THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

CHAPTER LXX

FORESHADOWING REVOLUTION

ITHOUT danger of overstatement or exaggeration, it may be said that the most dramatic feature of the Great War's history during the period February-August, 1917, was the revolution in Russia. To outsiders, acquainted with Russian conditions only superficially, it was startlingly unexpected. A revolution, usually, is merely the climax of a long series of events of quiet development, the result of a long period of propaganda and preparation, based on gradually changing economic conditions. The overthrow of the Russian autocracy seems to have been an exception to this general rule—at least in part. For even to close observers nothing seemed more dead than the revolutionary organizations in Russia on the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914. To be sure, when the opportunity came, they sprang into life again and were able to place themselves in control of the situation. But the great climax certainly did not come about through their conscious efforts.

For this reason a detailed description of the early revolutionary movements directed against the czar's government is not necessary to a thorough understanding of the events which so startled the world in March, 1917. The causes which brought them about originated after the outbreak of the war.

We were in the habit of describing the two great governments, that of the German Empire and that of the Russian Empire, with the word "autocracies." And in that each was, and one still is, controlled absolutely by a small group of men, responsible

to nobody but themselves, this was true. Aside from that, no further comparison is possible.

The German autocracy is the result of the conscious effort of highly capable men who built and organized a system with thoughtful and intelligent deliberation. With a deep knowledge of human psychology and the conditions about them, they have guided their efforts with extreme intelligence, knowing when to grant concessions, knowing how to hold power without being oppressive.

The Russian autocracy was a survival of a former age, already growing obsolete, rarely able to adapt itself to changing conditions, blindly fighting to maintain itself in its complete integrity against them. Change of any sort was undesirable to those controlling its machinery, even though the change might indirectly benefit it. It had been crystallized in a previous epoch, even as the tenets of its church were the crystallized superstitions of a barbaric age. It was, in fact, a venerable institution which certain men wished to perpetuate not so much from self-interest as from a blind veneration for its age and traditions. To them even the interests of the people were of far less importance than the maintenance of this anachronism in its absoluteness. Where the German rulers had the intelligence to divert opposing forces and even to utilize them to their own benefit, the Russian autocrats fought them and attempted to suppress them.

The chief of those forces which oppose autocracies are, naturally, the growing intelligence of the people and the resulting knowledge of conditions in other countries which they acquire. Realizing this fact, at least, the Russian rulers were bitterly opposed to popular education and made every effort to suppress the craving of the common people for knowledge of any kind.

These facts considered, it is not surprising that the first revolutionary movements in Russia should have been generated among the educated classes, even among the aristocracy itself. As far back as a century ago a revolutionary society was formed among the young army officers who had participated in the Napoleonic Wars, and who, in their contact with the French,

imbibed some of the latters' democratic ideas, though they were then fighting them. Failing in their efforts to impregnate these ideas among the czar and his ruling clique, they finally, in 1825, resorted to armed violence, with disastrous results. Nicholas I had just ascended the throne, and with furious energy he set about stamping out the disaffection which these officers had spread in his army, and for the time being he was successful.

CHAPTER LXXI

THE RISE OF NIHILISM

THE first agitators for democracy among the civil population

were the Nihilists, those long-haired, mysterious individuals whose bomb-throwing propensities and dark plottings have furnished so many Western fiction writers with material for romances. The Nihilists, so well described as a type in Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons," were the sons and daughters of the landed aristocracy, the provincial gentry, who went abroad and studied in foreign universities, or, studying at home, imbibed revolutionary ideas through foreign literature. Coming together in small groups, they began to formulate ideas of their own especially adapted to Russian conditions. At first these ideas were of a nonpolitical character and extremely abstract. They wished to go among the ignorant peasants and educate them in the Western sciences. "Going among the people" was a phrase among them which assumed the significance of a program. But with its antipathy toward all forms of learning the Government soon showed its determination to suppress all these efforts at educating the common people, and the youthful agitators were arrested and thrown into prison by the hundreds.

As a matter of fact their abstract ideas had made little impression on the ignorant mujiks, and had the Government ignored the Nihilists it is probable that their organization would have died a natural death from lack of success. But the opposi

tion of the police only roused the fighting spirit of the young aristocrats, and they not only became more enthusiastic, but added recruits to their ranks more than enough in numbers to fill the gaps made by those in prison. The persecution by the police, furthermore, forced them to make a secret organization of their loosely knit groups, and ths too fired the romantic imaginations of the young people.

The fight between the agitators and the police waxed stronger and more bitter. Then one day all Russia was shocked by the news that a Petrograd police chief had had a young woman in prison as a Nihilist suspect disrobed and flogged.

Hitherto the Nihilists had been entirely peaceful in their methods; violence had formed no part of their tactics. The indignation roused within their ranks by the outrage to the young woman resulted in a change. They decided to instill terror into the hearts of the Government officials by a systematic policy of assassination, whereby the most oppressive of the officials should be removed from their field of activity by death. The first of these assassinations, not quite successful, took place in Kiev in 1878. From then on violence on both sides increased and the bitterness intensified until in 1881 it culminated in the assassination of Alexander II. This so enraged the Government officials and vitalized their energy that soon after all the most active Nihilists had been captured or driven abroad, and for some years there came a full in the agitation for democracy in Russia. But it was, after all, lack of success which had killed Nihilism rather than the violent measures of the Government. Practically all of the Nihilists had imbibed the radical doctrines of Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, especially those of the latter, himself a Russian and more inclined toward violent anarchism than toward political socialism. These doctrines were far too abstruse for the untutored and practical minds of the peasants, and in most cases they had shown animosity rather than sympathy toward the agitators.

Yet the Nihilist doctrines and program formed the basis for later efforts toward creating a revolutionary spirit among the Russian people. To this day the few surviving Nihilists of the