The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎641r] (172/239)

PEACE AND INTERNAL POLITICS : A LETTER FROM RUSSIA. 141
the alienation of the bureaucracy from the mass of the people are
the two factors responsible for our national discontent and dis
order.” On the other hand, the handful of stiff-necked courtiers
w r ho are supposed to supply the Tsar with arguments, advise
that the Autocracy face its fate, and take the chance of going
down proudly, attacked from within and without, rather than
make one base surrender, the effect of which will be merely to
hasten another. The Autocracy, it is argued, is still tough, and
the continuation of the war may yield a series of negative suc
cesses which will place Russia again in a position to treat for
peace on honourable terms, and confound its domestic foes. And
so on, in exact parallel to the confusion of military and political
considerations which led to Russia’s initial disasters. But the
practical questions : What will Japan want ? What can we afford
to give? Is the material and moral loss involved in surrender
worse than the material and moral loss inevitable to a continued
war? seem to concern no one.
There is some excuse, it must be admitted, for this. As the
whole is greater than the part, so the fate of Manchuria only is
of no consequence whatever compared with the fate of the whole
Russian Empire, which trembles in the balance. Those who re
garded the victories of Japan as providential machinery for
dragging the Russian people along the painful road of emancipa
tion have not been much encouraged by the latest develop
ment. For the last four months Rojdestvensky’s armada has
been the greatest factor in Russia’s internal politics. The ” fleet
in being ” acquired a significance ignored altogether by the
theorists of naval strategy. The malcontents who voiced so suc
cessfully the cry of “Japan and the Russian people against the
Bureaucracy,” knew perfectly well that their country’s chances
of success on land ended with the overthrow of Mukden. Of the
smallness of her chances at sea they had much less accurate
measure. They knew, however, enough to see that the defeat
of Admiral Togo, predicted by the Chauvinist Press, would end
the war more decisively than fifty victories on land. But their
w T hole movement had been born out of Russia’s defeats. What
would result from Russia’s victory? Triumphant Autocracy,
they answered, would crush them under foot, and, what is more,
the nation would support it. Rojdestvensky’s defeat, on the
other hand, would be the last blow to the old system. Abso
lutism would be deserted by its last adherents, the bellicose party;
and, faced by a cyclone of popular wrath, the Tsardom would
either surrender to the people in time, or be overwhelmed in
conflict.
The vanity of these great expectations was soon proven. Fore-