More on the War (1)

It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first place
by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the unwillingness of
Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor crushed, and that
England came in to make good her word, pledged to Belgium, to defend
that small country from all hostile attacks. Thus the nations of the
Entente posed before the world as the defenders of small nations and
as champions of the rights of peoples to live under the form of
government which they might choose. You will remember that when the
central powers said that they were ready to talk peace terms the
nations of the Entente replied that there could be no peace as long as
the Danes, Poles, and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her
empire and as long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians,
Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either
to rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of
blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond of
saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those enslaved by
military rule--a conflict between self-governed nations and those
which were oppressing their foreign subjects. Replying to this the
central powers would always point to Russia. Russia, said they,
oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the Letts, the Esthonians, the
Finns. She, as well as Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of
Roumanians within her territories. Her people had even less political
freedom than the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.

The nations of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the
Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact there
is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid of a Russian
victory. They did not want the war to be won by the one nation in
their group which had a despotic form of government. On the other hand
the high officials in Russia were not any too happy at the thought of
their alliance with the free peoples of western Europe. Germany was
much more their ideal of a country governed in the proper manner than
was France. As you have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian
court were of German blood and secretly desired the victory of their
fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep all
power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of seeing
Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up and demand
more liberty.

You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time of
the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were
threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at all
sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of his
people away from their own wrongs.

At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry
from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective
government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he
called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could
talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had
had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the
government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops
were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg,
which they did with great ferocity. All this time there had been
growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being
robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They
distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but
weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife,
his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called
Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to
great power in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone
could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince,
the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the
ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy's food whenever
Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few days. The poor
little prince, of course, was made sick; whereupon, the Empress would
hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon whose arrival the Czarevitch
"miraculously" got well. In this manner this low-born fakir obtained
such a hold over the Czar and Czarina that he was able to appoint
governors of states, put bishops out of their places, and even change
prime ministers. There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use
his influence in their behalf. It is a sad illustration of the
ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could have
gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.

The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos. These
were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia, elected by the
people to decide all local matters, like the building of roads,
helping feed the poor, etc. They had been started by Czar Alexander
II, in 1862. Although the court was rotten with graft and plotting,
the Zemptsvos remained true to the people. They finally all united in
a big confederation, and when the world war broke out, this body,
really the only patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the
grand dukes and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the
hands of the enemy.