era for Russia and for mankind. They insist that the one event is as inevitable as the other, that resistance is equally futile, that any form of opposition will only make the ultimate triumph more decisive and more bloody, and that Russia is doomed to travel the same road as the France of 1789—from Despotism through Terror, towards Liberty.
We saw in 1905 the scenes familiar to every student of history, the same passions, the same demagogues, the same spirit of optimism; we listened with the same grim irony to the same debates on the abolition of the death penalty on the very eve of a life-and-death struggle in which the same philanthropists threatened us that rivers of blood must flow. And did we not seem to hear the ring of the same historical words? How many revolutionists must have repeated on the dissolution of the first Duma the words of Mirabeau: Nous sommes ici par la Volonté du peuple et nous n'en sortirons que par la force des bayonnettes! How many of them were nerving themselves to action with the dictum of Danton: De l'Audace, et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace! How many of them challenged their enemies with the Frenchman's outburst: Jetons leur en défi une
