bitter to make it possible for the mass of the Russian people to welcome
the thought of another war. It cannot, therefore, in truth be said that the
war with the Central Empires was popular. But it can be said with sincerity
and the fullest sanction that the war was not unpopular; that it was
accepted by the greater part of the people as a just and, moreover, a
necessary war. Opposition to the war was not greater in Russia than in
England or France, or, later, in America. Of course, there were religious
pacifists and Socialists who opposed the war and denounced it, as they
would have denounced any other war, on general principles, no matter what
the issues involved might be, but their number and their influence were
small and quite unimportant.

The one great outstanding fact was the manner in which the sense of peril
to the fatherland rallied to its defense the different races, creeds,
classes, and parties, the great tidal wave of genuine and sincere
patriotism sweeping everything before it, even the mighty, passionate
revolutionary agitation. It can hardly be questioned or doubted that if the
war had been bitterly resented by the masses it would have precipitated
revolution instead of retarding it. From this point of view the war was a
deplorable disaster. That no serious attempt was made to bring about a
revolution at that time is the best possible evidence that the declaration
of war did not enrage the people. If not a popular and welcome event,
therefore, the declaration of war by the Czar was not an unpopular one.
Never before since his accession to the throne had Nicholas II had the
support of the nation to anything like the same extent.

Take the Jews, for example. Bitterly hated and persecuted as they had been,
despised and humiliated beyond description; victims of the knout and the
pogrom; tortured by Cossacks and Black Hundreds; robbed by official
extortions; their women shamed and ravaged and their babies doomed to rot