LXX

FORESHADOWING REVOLUTION

Without danger of overstatement or exaggeration, it may be said that
the most dramatic feature of the Great War's history during the period
February-August, 1917, was the revolution in Russia. To outsiders,
acquainted with Russian conditions only superficially, it was
startlingly unexpected. A revolution, usually, is merely the climax of
a long series of events of quiet development, the result of a long
period of propaganda and preparation, based on gradually changing
economic conditions. The overthrow of the Russian autocracy seems to
have been an exception to this general rule--at least in part. For
even to close observers nothing seemed more dead than the
revolutionary organizations in Russia on the outbreak of the Great War
in the summer of 1914. To be sure, when the opportunity came, they
sprang into life again and were able to place themselves in control of
the situation. But the great climax certainly did not come about
through their conscious efforts.

For this reason a detailed description of the early revolutionary
movements directed against the czar's government is not necessary to a
thorough understanding of the events which so startled the world in
March, 1917. The causes which brought them about originated after the
outbreak of the war.

We were in the habit of describing the two great governments, that of
the German Empire and that of the Russian Empire, with the word
"autocracies." And in that each was, and one still is, controlled
absolutely by a small group of men, responsible to nobody but
themselves, this was true. Aside from that, no further comparison is
possible.

The German autocracy is the result of the conscious effort of highly
capable men who built and organized a system with thoughtful and
intelligent deliberation. With a deep knowledge of human psychology
and the conditions about them, they have guided their efforts with
extreme intelligence, knowing when to grant concessions, knowing how
to hold power without being oppressive.

The Russian autocracy was a survival of a former age, already growing
obsolete, rarely able to adapt itself to changing conditions, blindly
fighting to maintain itself in its complete integrity against them.
Change of any sort was undesirable to those controlling its machinery,
even though the change might indirectly benefit it. It had been
crystallized in a previous epoch, even as the tenets of its church
were the crystall