the idea that the people were the
basis of government, profoundly affected political conceptions and
conditions. There followed a reaction in the Holy Alliance, which was a
combination to maintain the Divine Right of Kings, and then the spirit
of the French Revolution reasserted itself in 1830. In fact from then on
until now the movement toward more and more popular government has gone
on continuously in France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere. It is
spreading today even more widely than it ever did before, and every
country, even Russia, has to count the cost with respect to the will of
the people.

When I went through Russia after the Russian-Japanese War, I met one of
the leading diplomats of that country who greeted me with, "Well, how do
you like it?" "How do I like what?" I asked. "How do you like helping
Japan to lick Russia?" Those were the homely expressions that he used.
To which I replied, "We did not help Japan to lick Russia." "But," he
said, "you did in effect. Your people and your press sympathized and
they expressed the kindly sympathy that counts for so much at such a
time." "The government cannot control our people," I responded. "They
think for themselves and express themselves as they see fit. We cannot
control the press in our country, but we have observed all the laws of
neutrality with respect to the war, and if some of the people expressed
themselves in favor of Japan, it was only because they were in favor of
the under dog in the fight." "Why did you give up?" I inquired further;
"You were getting stronger and stronger." "Yes," he said, "we had to
fight at the end of a 5,000-mile, single-track railway, but handicapped
as we were, we got our forces out there ready to fight and we could have
gone in and beaten the Japanese." "Why didn't you?" I asked. "Why did
you make peace?" "The trouble is," he explained, "we were living on a
volcano at home. Our people were opposed to the war, and we did not go
on, lest the throne would be a forfeit." This is only an indication that
even in the country that is supposed to represent the most absolute of
empires, the people are manifesting a control. The Douma was given too
much power at first, so that universal suffrage was necessarily a
failure in the condition of the people at that time. But the Douma now
is gradually acquiring useful power and in the course of the next
twenty-five or fifty years Russia will probably have a popular
constitutional government. W