matic service and in the most important departments
of the Russian government, including the army. The Russian Secret Service
was very largely in the hands of Germans and Russians who had married
German wives. The same thing may be said of the Police Department. Many of
the generals and other high officers in the Russian army were either of
German parentage or connected with Germany by marriage ties. In brief, the
whole Russian bureaucracy was honeycombed by German influence.

Outside official circles, much the same condition existed among the great
landowners. Those of the Baltic provinces were largely of Teutonic descent,
of course. Many had married German wives. The result was that the nobility
of these provinces, long peculiarly influential in the political life of
Russia, was, to a very large degree, pro-German. In addition to these,
there were numerous large landowners of German birth, while many, probably
a big majority, of the superintendents of the large industrial
establishments and landed estates were German citizens. It is notorious
that the principal factories upon which Russia had to rely for guns and
munitions were in charge of Germans, who had been introduced because of
their high technical efficiency.

In view of these facts, and a mass of similar facts which might be cited,
it was natural for the democrats of Russia to identify Germany and German
intrigue and influence with the hated bureaucracy. It was as natural as it
was for the German influence to be used against the democratic movement in
Russia, as it invariably was. Practically the entire mass of democratic
opinion in Russia, including, of course, all the Socialist factions,
regarded these royal, aristocratic, and bureaucratic German influences as a
menace to Russia, a cancer that must be cut out. With the exception of a
section of the Socialists, whose position we shall presently examine, the
mass of liberal-thinking, progressive, democratic Russians saw in the war a
welcome breaking of the German yoke. Believing that the victory of Germany
would restore the yoke, and that her defeat by Russia would eliminate the
power which had sustained Czarism, they welcomed the war and rallied with
enthusiasm at the call to arms. They were loyal, but to Russia, not to the
Czar. They felt that in warring against Prussian militarist-imperialism
they were undermining Russian Absolutism.

That the capitalists of Russia should want to see the power of Germany to