hold Russia in chains completely destroyed is easy to understand. To all
intents and purposes, from the purely economic point of view, Russia was
virtually a German colony to be exploited for the benefit of Germany. The
commercial treaties of 1905, which gave Germany such immense trade
advantages, had become exceedingly unpopular. On the other hand, the
immense French loan of 1905, the greater part of which had been used to
develop the industrial life of Russia, had the effect of bringing Russian
capitalists into closer relations with French capitalists. For further
capital Russia could only look to France and England with any confident
hope. Above all, the capitalists of Russia wanted freedom for economic
development; they wanted stability and national unity, the very things
Germany was preventing. They wanted efficient government and the
elimination of the terrible corruption which infested the bureaucracy. The
law of economic evolution was inexorable and inescapable; the capitalist
system could not grow within the narrow confines of Absolutism.

For the Russian capitalist class, therefore, it was of the most vital
importance that Germany's power should not be increased, as it would of
necessity be if the Entente submitted to her threats and permitted Serbia
to be crushed by Austria, and the furtherance of the Pan-German
_Mitteleuropa_ designs. It was vitally necessary to Russian capitalism that
Germany's strangle-hold upon the inner life of Russia should be broken. The
issue was not the competition of capitalism, as that is commonly
understood; it was not the rivalry for markets like that which animates the
capitalist classes of all lands. The Russian capitalist class was animated
by no fear of German competition in the sense in which the nations of the
world have understood that term. They had their own vast home market to
develop. The industrialization of the country must transform a very large
part of the peasantry into factory artisans living in cities, having new
needs and relatively high wages, and, consequently, more money to spend.
For many years to come their chief reliance must be the home market,
constantly expanding as the relative importance of manufacturing increased
and forced improved methods of agriculture upon the nation in the process,
as it was bound to do.

It was Germany as a persistent meddler in Russian government and politics
that the capitalists of Russia resented. It was the unfair advanta