M

AN does not yet know, can hardly venture to imagine, what great changes in the political and social structure of the world may attend the end of this war. President Wilson upon entering it said that one purpose of the United States in drawing the sword was to make the world safe for democracy. But to the protection of existing democracies shall there be shall there be added the extension of democracy? Shall we see Germany discarding its present system of absolutism tempered only by the right of the Reichstag fruitlessly to grumble, in favor of a constitutional monarchy, or even a republic? It does not seem mere accident that of the four considerable nations included in the Teutonic alliance-Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey every one is an autocracy even though camouflaged by a few constitutional limitations, while of the twenty-eight governments more or less actively allied against the Teutons only one-Siam-is an absolute monarchy, while nineteen are republics, and eight constitutional monarchies with the powers of the monarch so limited that as in Great Britain, Belgium and Italy-the government is essentially republican.

In the earlier days of the war this alignment was less impressively in favor of the Allies. There was a flaw in their democratic front. One of their chief figures, the nation. which perhaps of all save Germany did most to make the war inevitable, was not merely an absolute monarchy, but an autocracy unrelieved by any democratic qualifications.

Russia seemed in curious company fighting beside England and France against the extension of absolutism. Pro-Germans in all lands made the most of the unnatural partnership, pointing to it as evidence of the insincerity of the other and dominant partners.

The moment came when the Russian people themselves removed this cause for cynicism and distrust. Whatever the Russian Revolution, the story of which I am about to tell, may give the world in the end as an example of a government created by the people, it has at least overthrown the old blood-stained Czardom. It has ended the government of the knout and the gallows, the secret dungeon and the snow-bound Siberian trail. It has destroyed much evil, and while at the moment the Russian people seem to falter and fumble in their gropings after a way out of their disorders, let us remember that none of the revolutions of history was brought to full fruition in less than a term of years. We think of a republic as the necessary fruit of a revolution. But France had not only the Terror and the Napoleonic phase to pass through, but even a period of restoration of the monarchy before that perfect fruit of her revolution was ripe. And in our own revolution-led by essentially orderly and conservative men the famous Declaration of 1776 had lain in its pigeonhole for sixteen years before the Constitution which was to give it enduring vitality was adopted by the states. So distinguished an historian as John Fiske pronounced the period betwixt the breaking of the yoke of George III at Yorktown and the date of the ratification of the Constitution, "The Critical Period of American History.

Russia is now-1918-at the beginning of its critical period. Its skies are red and its atmosphere clouded. There is much clamor of dissentient tongues, and seemingly little of patience and the constructive spirit. But

the philosophic historian knows that revolutions never go back. The old Russia of the Czar will never return. Exile by administrative process is as dead as the lettres de cachet which used to open the doors of the Bastile inward. The dungeons of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul below the lapping waters of the Neva will be show places like the cell of the Prisoner of Chillon. The Little Father is deposed and there will be no other unnatural parents of his sort for the Russian people.

The ease with which the Russian revolution, in its initial steps, was accomplished must long be a matter of wonder to all save those who were directly concerned in it. In an earlier chapter one of its first symptoms was referred to in the story of the assassination of the charlatan. monk, Rasputin.

In the latter part of 1916 there had been dissension in the Russian Duma, that representative body which the Czar had been forced to create against his will, which sat only in face of the ill-concealed hostility of the monarch and his ministers, and which had thus far been able to accomplish nothing of material service for the Russian people. In

many ways it was not unlike the States-General forced on Louis XVI and which proved the entering wedge of the French Revolution. The Russian body was due to meet on the 25th of January, 1917, but prior to that the government postponed its session for one month. Plausible excuses were made about the necessity for giving the new Premier, Prince Golitzin, time to familiarize himself with the duties and the record of his office. But the people were suspicious and grumbled. They noticed that all other deliberative bodies, official or unofficial, the Zemstvos and the general congress of the Union of the Towns had been likewise forbidden, at the instance of the Premier of the time, Sturmer, a man who had never denied his sympathy with Germany, and his opposition to the war in which Russia was engaged. As a result of this opposition he was forced out of officethe one great victory won by the Duma. To him succeeded Prince Golitzin. Under the new régime the provocative policy of the government continued. The numbers and arrogance of the secret police were greatly increased. Machine guns, withdrawn from the army, were mounted on Petrograd roofs

as though for service against the people. News from the army was all disconcerting. Here the troops had no food. There they were out of ammunition. At another place they had no leadership or what was worse, treacherous commanders. All Petrograd swarmed with German spies, who whispered that a separate peace was under consideration that the Czar was nearly ready basely to desert his allies, and force his country under Hindenburg's heel. Discontent became rife everywhere.

There is some reason to believe that the revolution which grew out of this situation was deliberately fomented by those who would profit most by its suppression. The court party which surrounded the Czar was deeply permeated with pro-German sentiment. The Czarina Alexandra is a German princess deeply imbued with Hohenzollern convictions and ambitions. Courtiers are always more aristocratic than the monarch himself, and the swarm of privileged parasites who hung about Nicholas could not understand why he was fighting on the side of democracy and hesitated but little to tell him so. Rasputin, during his period of high favor, had been nothing short of a German paid agent. To him succeeded in the im

perial confidence Alexander Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, a politician who starting as a liberal leader became a reactionary; after shining as an orator in support of the cause of the Allies became an emissary of the Kaiser; after being a true representative of the people descended to the ignominy of being their most sinister foe. Moreover, he was under suspicion-conviction almost —of being a German agent, for he had been detected in secret conference with a German attaché in Stockholm where he had stopped on his way back from an Allied conference in London.

Mingled with political perfidy there was in Protopopoff a curious strain of mysticism, which made him the dupe and tool of Rasputin, and caused his participation in the mystic séances which the neurotic court of the time affected and in which affairs of state were determined.

Though the people were quiet, there were those at court who knew the extent of the unrest that stirred them to their depths. These plotters, the German agents, the neurasthenics, the mere parasites who had adopted the Pompadour's maxim, "After us the deluge," saw that their tenure of office was getting very doubtful. The Czar, intel

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lectually a weakling, would neither break with the Allies and negotiate a separate peace as the court party desired, nor prosecute the war with vigor as the nation wished. Months after, when the revolution had thrown open the secret archives, there was discovered a bundle of letters exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas at the time of the Russo-Japanese war. They were signed in cousinly style "Willy" and "Nicky" and revealed the fact that even at that day the

two monarchs were ready to ride roughshod over the constitutional limitations imposed by their governments and make personal treaties, or by individual agreements break established alliances. That revelation, however, succeeded the revolution. It had no part in fomenting it.

It is easy to see how the intriguers about the court might reckon that an abortive revolution which they would at once suppress, would strengthen them with the timid Czar,

and give them new powers with which remorselessly to crush the rising tide of democracy in Russia. But they made one serious error in their calculations. They were successful in provoking the revolution, but failed utterly to provide themselves with the power for its suppression. They had not informed themselves as to the spread of popular and democratic sentiments in the army, nor could they understand how deeply the public sense of decency had been affronted by the orgies of sensualism and mysticism of which Rasputin had been the incarnation. And above all they were unable

to comprehend the deep resentment felt by all the manhood of Russia for the betrayal of the army by treacherous ministers and corrupted generals.

The war had not been unpopular in Russia. The peasant is an ideal soldier, brave, dogged and thoroughly amenable to discipline. In this war his early successes in East Prussia and Galicia had given him a sense of victory and personal dignity which caused him to resent bitterly the betrayal which manifested itself in conflicting orders and a munition famine at the most critical moments.

Severe privations came to reenforce the discontent caused by political conditions. The army's needs had strained the railroad facilities of the country to the utmost, and for lack of an official plan the cities were left without the grain and other supplies that crowded the depots in the farming districts. Hunger stalked in Petrograd and Moscow.

The

men's wives organized processions of protest. test. March 9, 1917, the streets, for no apparent reason, were crowded with citizens. Everywhere the occasional bodies of troops which were stationed in the city fraternized with the people and gave assurances of friendship. Even the Cossacks, supposed to be drilled and disciplined to a

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