Meanwhile the war with Japan, unpopular from the first, had proved to be an unbroken series of military defeats and disasters for Russia.  From the opening of the war in February to the end of the year the press had been permitted to publish very little real news concerning it, but it was not possible to hide for long the bitter truth.  Taxes mounted higher and higher, prices rose, and there was intense suffering, while the loss of life was enormous.  News of the utter failure and incompetence of the army and the navy seeped through.  Here was Russia with a population three times as large as that of Japan, and with an annual budget of two billions as against Japan’s paltry sixty millions, defeated at every turn.  What did this failure signify?  In the first place, it signified the weakness and utter incompetence of the regime.  It meant that imperialist expansion, with a corresponding strengthening of the old regime, was out of the question.  Most intelligent Russians, with no lack of real patriotism, rejoiced at the succession of defeats because it proved to the masses the unfitness of the bureaucracy.

It signified something else, also.  There were many who remembered the scandals of the Turkish War, in 1877, when Bessarabia was recovered.  At that time there was a perfect riot of graft, corruption, and treachery, much of which came under the observation of the zemstvos of the border.  High military officials trafficked in munitions and food-supplies.  Food intended for the army was stolen and sold—­sometimes, it was said, to the enemy.  Materials were paid for, but never delivered to the army at all.  The army was demoralized and the Turks repulsed the Russians again and again.  Now similar stories began to be circulated.  Returning victims told stories of brutal treatment of the troops by officers; of wounded and dying men neglected; of lack of hospital care and medical attention.  They told worse stories, too, of open treachery by military officials and others; of army supplies stolen; of shells ordered which would fit no guns the Russian army ever had, and so on.  It was suggested, and widely believed, that Germany had connived at the systematic corruption of the Russian bureaucracy and the Russian army, to serve its own imperialistic and economic ends.

Such was the state of Russia at the end of the year 1904.  Then came the tragic events of January, 1905, which marked the opening of the Revolution.  In order to counteract the agitation of the Social Democrats among the city workers, and the formation by them of trades-unions, the government had caused to be formed “legal” unions—­that is, organizations of workmen approved by the government.  In order to give these organizations some semblance to real labor-unions, and thereby the better to deceive the workers, strikes were actually inspired by agents of the government from time to time.  On more than one occasion strikes thus instigated by the government spread beyond control and caused great alarm.  The Czar and his agents were playing with fire.