The manner in which the Bolsheviki in their wild, groping, and frenzied efforts to apply theoretical abstractions to the living world, torn as it was by the wolves of war, famine, treason, oppression, and despair, served the foes of freedom and progress must not be lost sight of.  The Bolshevist, wherever he may present himself, is the foe of progress and the ally of reaction.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND REVOLUTION

I

When the Duma assembled On November 14, 1916—­new style—­the approaching doom of Czar Nicholas II was already manifest.  Why the Revolution did not occur at that time is a puzzle not easy to solve.  Perhaps the mere fact that the Duma was assembling served to postpone resort to drastic measures.  The nation waited for the Duma to lead.  It is probable, also, that fear lest revolution prove disastrous to the military forces exercised a restraining influence upon the people.  Certain it is that it would have been easy enough to kindle the fires of revolution at that time.  Never in the history of the nation, not even in 1905, were conditions riper for revolt, and never had there been a more solid array of the nation against the bureaucracy.  Discontent and revolutionary temper were not confined to Socialists, nor to the lower classes.  Landowners, capitalists, military officials, and Intellectuals were united with the peasants and artisans, to an even greater extent than in the early stages of the First Revolution.  Conservatives and Moderates joined with Social Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionists in opposition to the corrupt and oppressive regime.  Even the president of the Duma, Michael Rodzianko, a conservative landowner, assailed the government.

One of the principal reasons for this unexampled unity against the government was the wide-spread conviction, based, as we have seen, upon the most damning evidence, that Premier Sturmer and his Cabinet were not loyal to the Allies and that they contemplated making a separate peace with Germany.  All factions in the Duma were bitterly opposed to a separate peace.  Rodzianko was loudly cheered when he denounced the intrigues against the Allies and declared:  “Russia gave her word to fight in common with the Allies till complete and final victory is won.  Russia will not betray her friends, and with contempt refuses any consideration of a separate peace.  Russia will not be a traitor to those who are fighting side by side with her sons for a great and just cause.”  Notwithstanding the intensification of the class conflict naturally resulting from the great industrial development since 1906, patriotism temporarily overshadowed all class consciousness.