advantage a passing discontent of the people against the former authorities.
It seems, indeed, that the Russian Liberals had hoped to see something of the kind happen in 1905; they were delighted at the number of peasant and working-class insurrections; it has even been asserted that they heard with great satisfaction of the reverses of the army in Manchuria.[1] They believed that the Government, getting alarmed, would have recourse to their enlightenment; as there is a large number of sociologists among them, the little science would thus have obtained a huge success; but it is probable that the people would have been left to twiddle their thumbs.
It is, I suppose, for much the same kind of reason that the capitalistic shareholders of L'Humanité are such ardent admirers of certain strikes; they look upon the proletariat as a very convenient instrument with which to clear the ground, and they feel certain from their study of history that it will always be possible for a Socialist Government to bring rebels to reason. Moreover, are not the laws against anarchists, made in an hour of madness, still carefully preserved on the Statute books? They are stigmatised as rascally laws; but they may yet serve to protect capitalist-socialists.[2]
B. (1) Further, under the influence of this conception it would no longer be true to say that the whole organisation of the proletariat was contained within revolutionary
- ↑ The correspondent of the Débats, in the issue of November 25, 1906, related how the members of the Duma had congratulated a Japanese journalist on the victories of his compatriots. (Cf. the Débats, December 25. 1907.)
- ↑ We may also ask how much the old enemies of military justice desire the abolition of the courts martial. For a long time, the Nationalists were able to maintain with some show of reason that they were retained in order that Dreyfus, if the Court of Cassation ordered a third trial, should not be brought up before a Court of Assizes; a court martial can be more easily packed than a jury.
