intrigue and influence with the hated bureaucracy. It was as natural as it
was for the German influence to be used against the democratic movement in
Russia, as it invariably was. Practically the entire mass of democratic
opinion in Russia, including, of course, all the Socialist factions,
regarded these royal, aristocratic, and bureaucratic German influences as a
menace to Russia, a cancer that must be cut out. With the exception of a
section of the Socialists, whose position we shall presently examine, the
mass of liberal-thinking, progressive, democratic Russians saw in the war a
welcome breaking of the German yoke. Believing that the victory of Germany
would restore the yoke, and that her defeat by Russia would eliminate the
power which had sustained Czarism, they welcomed the war and rallied with
enthusiasm at the call to arms. They were loyal, but to Russia, not to the
Czar. They felt that in warring against Prussian militarist-imperialism
they were undermining Russian Absolutism.

That the capitalists of Russia should want to see the power of Germany to
hold Russia in chains completely destroyed is easy to understand. To all
intents and purposes, from the purely economic point of view, Russia was
virtually a German colony to be exploited for the benefit of Germany. The
commercial treaties of 1905, which gave Germany such immense trade
advantages, had become exceedingly unpopular. On the other hand, the
immense French loan of 1905, the greater part of which had been used to
develop the industrial life of Russia, had the effect of bringing Russian
capitalists into closer relations with French capitalists. For further
capital Russia could only look to France and England with any confident
hope. Above all, the capitalists of Russia wanted freedom for economic
development; they wanted stability and national unity, the very things
Germany was preventing. They wanted efficient government and the
elimination of the terrible corruption which infested the bureaucracy. The
law of economic evolution was inexorable and inescapable; the capitalist