we can and must demand rights and liberty!” After hearing the petition read the meeting decided that if the Tsar did not come out at the demand of the people strong measures should be taken, and one orator indicated pretty plainly what they should be:  “We don’t require a Tsar who is deaf to the woes of the people; we shall perish ourselves, but we shall kill him.  Swear that you will all come to the Palace on Sunday at twelve o’clock!” The audience raised their hands in token of assent.

Finding it impossible to dissuade Gapon from his purpose, the Social Democrats told him that they would take advantage of the circumstances independently, and that if he was allowed to enter the city with his deputation they would organise monster meetings in the Palace Square.

The imperious tone used by Gapon at the public meetings and private consultations was adopted by him also in his letters to the Minister of the Interior and to the Emperor.  To the former he wrote: 

“The workmen and inhabitants of St. Petersburg of various classes desire to see the Tsar at two o’clock on Sunday in the Winter Palace Square, in order to lay before him personally their needs and those of the whole Russian people. . . .  Tell the Tsar that I and the workmen, many thousands in number, have peacefully, with confidence in him, but irrevocably, resolved to proceed to the Winter Palace.  Let him show his confidence by deeds, and not by manifestos.”

To the Tsar himself his language was not more respectful: 

“Sovereign,—­I fear the Ministers have not told you the truth about the situation.  The whole people, trusting in you, has resolved to appear at the Winter Palace at two o’clock in the afternoon, in order to inform you of its needs.  If you hesitate, and do not appear before the people, then you tear the moral bonds between you and them.  Trust in you will disappear, because innocent blood will flow.  Appear to-morrow before your people and receive our address of devotion in a courageous spirit!  I and the labour representatives, my brave comrades, guarantee the inviolability of your person.”

Gapon was no longer merely the president of the Workmen’s Union:  inebriated with the excitement he had done so much to create, he now imagined himself the representative of the oppressed Russian people, and the heroic leader of a great political revolution.  In the petition which he had prepared he said little about the grievances of the St. Petersburg workmen whose interests he had a right to advocate, and preferred to soar into much higher regions: