No struggle for human freedom was ever wholly vain.  No matter how vast and seemingly complete the failure, there is always something of enduring good achieved.  That is the law of progress, universal and immutable.  The First Russian Revolution conformed to the law; it had failed and died in a tragic way, yet its failure was relative and it left something of substantial achievement as the foundation for fresh hope, courage, and effort.  Czarism had gathered all its mighty black forces and seemed, at the beginning of 1906, to be stronger than at any time in fifty years.  The souls of Russia’s noblest and best sons and daughters were steeped in bitter pessimism.  And yet there was reason for hope and rejoicing; out of the ruin and despair two great and supremely vital facts stood in bold, challenging relief.

The first of these facts was the new aspect of Czarism, its changed status.  Absolutism as a legal institution was dead.  Nothing that Nicholas II and his advisers were able to do could undo the constitutional changes effected when the imperial edict made it part of the fundamental law of the nation that “no law can become binding without the consent of the Imperial Duma,” and that the Duma, elected by the people, had the right to control the actions of the officials of the government, even when such officials were appointed by the Czar himself.  Absolutism was illegal now.  Attempts might be made to reintroduce it, and, indeed, that was the real significance of the policy pursued by the government, but Absolutism could no longer possess the moral strength that inheres in the sanctity of law.  In fighting it the Russian people now had that strength upon their side.

The second vital and hopeful fact was likewise a moral force.  Absolutism with all its assumed divine prerogatives, in the person of the Czar, had declared its firm will “to grant the people the unshakable foundations of civic freedom on the basis of real personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, of speech, of assemblage and of unions.”  This civic freedom Absolutism had sanctioned.  By that act it gave the prestige of legality to such assemblages, discussions, and publications as had always hitherto been forced to accept risks and disabilities inseparable from illegal conduct.  Civic freedom had long been outlawed, a thing associated with lawlessness and crime, and so long as that condition remained many who believed in civic freedom itself, who wanted a free press, freedom of public assemblage and of conscience in matters pertaining to religion, were kept from participation in the struggle.  Respect for law, as law, is deeply rooted in civilized mankind—­a fact which, while it makes the task of the revolutionist hard, and at times impedes progress, is, nevertheless, of immense value to human society.