"Stop the war!" is raised by an
orator without sufficient preparation, and at once a voice is heard
in the audience saying. "No, no! The little Japs (Yaposhki) must
be beaten!" Thereupon a more experienced orator comes forward and a
characteristic conversation takes place:

"Have we much land of our own, my friends?" asks the orator.

"Much!" replies the crowd.

"Do we require Manchuria?"

"No!"

"Who pays for the war?"

"We do!"

"Are our brothers dying, and do your wives and children remain without a
bit of bread?"

"So it is!" say many, with a significant shake of the head.

Having succeeded so far, the orator tries to turn the popular
indignation against the Tsar by explaining that he is to blame for all
this misery and suffering, but Petroff suddenly appears on the scene and
maintains that for the misery and suffering the Tsar is not at all
to blame, for he knows nothing about it. It is all the fault of his
servants, the tchinovniks.

By this device Petroff suppresses the seditious cry of "Down with
autocracy!" which the Social Democrats were anxious to make the
watchword of the movement, but he has thereby been drawn from his
strong position of "No politics," and he is standing, as we shall see
presently, on a slippery incline.

On Thursday and Friday the activity of the leaders and the excitement
of the masses increase. While the Gaponists speak merely of local
grievances and material wants, the Social Democrats incite their hearers
to a political struggle, advising them to demand a Constituent Assembly,
and explaining the necessity for all workmen to draw together and form a
powerful political party. The haranguing goes on from morning to night,
and agitators drive about from one factory to another to keep the
excitement at fever-heat. The police, usually so active on such
occasions, do not put in an appearance. Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, the
honest, well-intentioned, liberal Minister of the Interior, cannot make
up his mind to act with energy, and lets things drift. The agitators
themselves are astonished at this extraordinary inactivity. One of them,
writing a few days afterwards, says: "The police was paralysed. It would
have been easy to arrest Gapon, and discover the orators. On Friday the
clubs might have been surrounded and the orators arrested. . . . In a
word, decided measures might have been taken, but they were not."

It is not only Petroff that has abandoned his strong position of "No