radical organizations by the administration, had greatly reduced the
Socialist parties in membership and influence. The masses were, for a long
time, weary of struggle, despondent, and passive. The Socialist factions
meanwhile were engaged in an apparently interminable controversy upon
theoretical and tactical questions in which the masses of the
working-people, when they began to stir at last, took no interest, and
which they could hardly be supposed to understand. The Socialist parties
and groups were subject to a very great disability in that their leaders
were practically all in exile. Had a revolution broken out, as it would
have done but for the war, Socialist leadership would have asserted itself.

As in all other countries, the divisions of opinion created by the war
among the Socialists cut across all previous existing lines of separation
and made it impossible to say that this or that faction adopted a
particular view. Just as in Germany, France, and England, some of the most
revolutionary Socialists joined with the more moderate Socialists in
upholding the war, while extremely moderate Socialists joined with
Socialists of the opposite extreme in opposing it. It is possible, however,
to set forth the principal features of the division with tolerable
accuracy:

A majority of the Socialist-Revolutionary party executive issued an
anti-war Manifesto. There is no means of telling how far the views
expressed represented the attitude of the peasant Socialists as a whole,
owing to the disorganized state of the party and the difficulties of
assembling the members. The Manifesto read:

There is no doubt that Austrian imperialism is responsible for the
war with Serbia. But is it not equally criminal on the part of
Serbs to refuse autonomy to Macedonia and to oppress smaller and