, Russian Thought, is
recognized as one of the most acute political thinkers in
Europe. He was one of the chief founders of the Constitutional
Democratic Party (the Cadets) and was member for St.
Petersburg in the Second Duma. He is also known as an
economist of great erudition.

PETROGRAD, Sept. 16.

The future historian will note with astonishment that official Germany,
when she declared war on Russia, was in no way informed of the state of
public opinion in our country.

This is all the more astonishing because not a single country to the
west of Russia maintains so close a communication with Russia as
Germany. The Germans, better than other peoples, could and should have
known Russia and her material resources, her internal state, and her
moral condition. When she declared war on Russia, Germany evidently
counted, above all, on the weakness of the Russian Army. There was
nothing, however, to justify such an estimate of the armed forces of
Russia. Certainly Russia had been beaten in the Japanese war, but in
that war the decision was reached on the sea, and after the fall of Port
Arthur the land war had no object. The Germans have probably convinced
themselves already how superficial was such an estimate of the forces of
Russia, but in reality their mistake was due to an entirely superficial
view of the national culture of Russia and an extremely elementary idea
of our internal development. The Germans did not believe that there is
in Russia a genuine and growing national civilization, and did not
understand that the liberation movement in Russia had not only not
shaken the power of the Russian State, but had, on the contrary,
increased it.

Not understanding this, they thought that any blow from outside would
tumble over the Russian State like a rotten tree. German aggression, on
the contrary, united the whole population of Russia, and by this alone
strengthened a hundredfold her external power. This, of course, would
have been the natural effect of any attack from without upon any sound
people or any State that was not in decomposition. But in this case
there was something else. Such a war as this could not fail to take on
at once the character both of a world war and of a national war. That is
why in this struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary, elemental forces
united in one impulse and spirit both the Russian Radicals, with their
tendency to cosmopolitanism, and the extreme Natio