There was treachery in the General Staff and throughout the War Department, at the very head of which was a corrupt traitor, Sukhomlinov.  It was treachery in the General Staff which led to the tragic disasters in East Prussia.  The great drive of the Austrian and German armies in 1915, which led to the loss of Poland, Lithuania, and large parts of Volhynia and Courland, and almost entirely eliminated Russia from the war, was unquestionably brought about by co-operation with the German General Staff on the part of the sinister “occult government,” as the Germanophile reactionary conspiracy in the highest circles came to be known.

No wonder that Plechanov and his friends in their Manifesto to the Russian workers declared that the reactionaries were defending Russia from subjugation by Germany in “a half-hearted way,” and that “our people will never forget the failure of the Czar’s government to defend Russia.”  They were only saying, in very moderate language, what millions were thinking; what, a few months later, many of the liberal spokesmen of the country were ready to say in harsher language.  As early as January, 1915, the Duma met and cautiously expressed its alarm.  In July it met again, many of the members coming directly from the front, in uniform.  Only the fear that a revolution would make the continuance of the war impossible prevented a revolution at that time.  The Duma was in a revolutionary mood.  Miliukov, for example, thundered: 

" ...  In January we came here with ... the feeling of patriotic alarm.  We then kept this feeling to ourselves.  Yet in closed sessions of committees we told the government all that filled the soul of the people.  The answer we received did not calm us; it amounted to saying that the government could get along without us, without our co-operation.  To-day we have convened in a grave moment of trial for our fatherland.  The patriotic alarm of the people has proved to be well founded, to the misfortune of our country.  Secret things have become open, and the assertions of half a year ago have turned out to be mere words.  Yet the country cannot be satisfied with words. The people wish to take affairs into their own hands and to correct what has been neglected.  The people look upon us as legal executors of their will.”

Kerensky spoke to the same general effect, adding, “I appeal to the people themselves to take into their hands the salvation of the country and fight for a full right to govern the state.”  The key-note of revolution was being sounded now.  For the spirit of revolution breathed in the words, “The people wish to take affairs into their own hands,” and in Kerensky’s challenge, “I appeal to the people themselves to take into their hands the salvation of the country.”  The Duma was the logical center around which the democratic forces of the country could rally.  Its moderate character determined this.  Only its example was necessary to the development of a great national movement