satisfied with the Government for waging the war, while the classes above them were dissatisfied with the Government for not waging it well enough.
For one moment these various discontents were united, and in one matter. When the revolution had begun, when the flux had already gathered speed, when the banks of the hitherto placid stream were already crumbling under pressure of the torrent, there was not a single class in the nation that was not dissatisfied with the Tsar. The Tsar, accordingly, left the stage as politely as he could, as stainlessly as a person in a play. And, seeing the bloodless character of his removal, mistaking his removal for the object and end of revolution, English, Americans and French united in applauding the most moderate, the biggest, the most surprising revolution in the world. The bourgeois classes in the fighting countries and those of the laboring classes, who had been tamed by reading the newspapers to a happy acquiescence in bourgeois ideas, were a little troubled lest the disturbance in Russia should affect their war, they having forgotten that they were fighting for democracy, and that the enfranchisement of 180 million souls was in itself a greater victory than they had set out to gain, so that, from that moment, the main object of the war should have been to save that victory. But, if the bourgeois classes in the allied countries were a little troubled, their disquiet was as nothing in comparison with the helpless terror of the bourgeois classes in Russia. They had taken no part in the actual start of the revolution. Miliukov, as he openly confessed to his party, had seen from his window the soldiers pouring out into the streets with red flags to fight for the people instead of for their masters, and he had said to himself: “There goes the Russian Revolution, and it will be crushed in a quarter of an hour.” A little later he had seen more soldiers in the streets and decided that it would not be crushed so easily. It was only when the risks had already been taken by plain soldiers and workmen, by cossacks who refused to fire on them; it was only when the revolution had begun, that the already existing organ of the bourgeoisie, the Duma, threw itself into line, and, foam on the crest of an irresistible wave, tried vainly to pretend that it had the power to control and direct the wave itself.
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