T HE external impact of the massacre in St. Petersburg, and
the external consequences which may flow from it, must be very great. In the first place, General Kuropatkin must be almost paralysed. His army has Veen strengthened by the despatch of many "suspected " regiments from Russia Proper; by tens of thousands of Reservists, including an excessive proportion of Jews ; and by hundreds of officers who went there under peremptory orders. They are half disaffected, and must be bewildered, if not unnerved, by the news which the enemy will carefully spread among them, and possibly exaggerate in the telling. In Man- churia, as everywhere else, the Russian policy of conceal- ment gives rumour its fullest play. The contingency of a mutiny we may dismiss, for besides the usual bonds which hold troops in the field together, the soldiers on the Sha-ho would not have the means of getting back to Russia. Whatever happens in St. Petersburg, the army in Manchuria must crush, or be crushed by, the Japanese. The chances of the latter contingency will, however, be gravely increased. Revolutionaries may cut. the Trans- Siberian Railway to compel a stoppage of the war, though it would be like cutting an artery to cure au attack of apoplexy. The strikes of themselves arrest the despatch of munitions, picked regiments, and fresh engines. Kuropatkin must either retreat once more, and so break the heart of his army, or he must take the Offensive before he is ready, thus risking that immense defeat and ruinous dispersion which his tactical skill, aided perhaps by Marshal Oyama's over-thoughtfulness, has hitherto avoided. There is no escape from this dilemma except a sudden suppression of the revolts, a contingency the probability of which the most careless reader can judge. In Marshal Oyama's camp, again, and in Tokio itself, there will be new activity, for the Japanese tend rather to exaggerate than to depreciate the value of Order in a State, and will not expect the terrific outburst of national energy which revolutions so often involve. We suspect that the conclusion of the Austrian diplomatist who on reading the accounts of the massacre in St. Peters- burg exclaimed, " This is the greatest victory the Japanese have gained," will prove to be exactly true.
The next consequence, equally probable, if not inevitable, will be the weakening of the ties which bind Russia and France in alliance. The Radicals, who in spite of M. Combes's fall are still in power in PariS, have all along been vexed by the thought that their Republic is in some sense dependent on the friendship of an autocratic and repressive Power, and now that repression has culminated in massacre they will feel their .intellectual consciences sorely offended. As we see from the language of their Press, they will despise and hate the actual Government of Russia, and will be most indisposed to render it assistance in floating its constant loans. It is true the French peasantry cannot afford to hope for anarchi, in Russia, for they hold some four hundred millions' worth of Russian bonds. But though, as usual, they will hold on to the stocks they possess, and wait for better times, their genius for pecuniary precaution will prevent them from adding to the debt. Their rulers will turn with new ardour to the entente cordiale with Great Britain and Italy, and will have no hesitation in applying to a discredited Power the rules of international law in all their severity. That of itself makes a new difficulty for Admiral Rozhdestvensky. The effect of the massacre in Germany is more complex. The great people there rather approve of repression by Military force, more especially when an uprising is partly „caused by ideas which they consider Socialistic. The German workmen, however, always hostile to RuSsia, as the great reserve force behind despotism in general, are almost as indignant as those of Great Britain; while the great German middle class, which is educated, at least in monetary affairs, will reflect with dismay that a revolution, whether repressed or successful, must always impair public credit for a time. In Austria the magnates dislike massacre, as a sign that the rulers are alarmed ; while the lower classes, a large proportion of whom are Slav, will not only sympathise with their kinsfolk, but dread for them- selves that military repression with which they have often been threatened. Throughout Europe, not excluding even the classes which approve the massacre as a " regrettable incident " forced upon the Government by an unreasoning proletariat, there is a feeling of contempt for that Govern- ment, as at once needlessly oppressive, timorous, and, as regards those whom it should protect, malignant. The Austrian despotism, bad as it has often been, has always had in it a curious vein of bonhomie towards the unarmed and submissive. Throughout the world the undercurrent of feeling for the autocracy and its present nominal head is one of even unjust scorn—for a man can be no greater than he is, however great the emergency—and in that scorn the force of prestige, which is very great, though statesmen have been known to ridicule it, temporarily melts away. There are influences so cold that under them, as Professor Dewar has recently been showing London, even steel cannot retain its strength and the diamond loses its cohesion.
There is yet one other effect of the agitation in Russia which, though it is often exaggerated, must under conditions like the present be very real. Russia is surrounded by a ring of somewhat feeble but bitterly hostile dependencies. In the extreme North she is detested by the Finns, who are even alleged to be 'organising a general revolt. From Finland to Poland, through Lithuania and Esthonia, and all down the shore of the Baltic, the people hate Russia, though, being hopeless, they usually seem contented. The hostility of the Poles has never cooled, and though their revolt is hope- less—partly from their character, and partly because three Empires have united to crush them—they have never, when a chance has appeared, been appalled by the risks of insurrection. In the Caucasus martial tribes who regard Russia with despairing loathing are only held down by military force. It is perfectly true that all these enemies in ordinary times are powerless, and that the true " Russians," if moved to fury, could extirpate them all. But to keep them quiet and at work requires large forces, and if those forces are withdrawn to meet disturbances in the interior, the result must be at least a suspension of taxpaying which the Treasury will severely feel. The Russian Army, no doubt, is very large, but the demands on it are also very large. With the troops in Manchuria to be kept fed by reinforcements to fill the gaps created by slaughter and by typhoid, with all the great cities to be held under a state of siege, and every province afraid of local jacquerie*, with the ring of potentially hostile States to be held like enemies' countries, even that Army may be over- taxed. The Reservists are already resisting the call of the State, and there seems no reason why, if order gives way, that spirit should not spread to the young conscripts also. It is a dark picture which we are compelled to draw, and, evil as much of its history has been, we cannot but feel for the Romanoffs and their inadequate chief some of that pity which the most intelligent classes of Europe expressed for the house of Bourbon when, scarcely more than a• hundred years ago, its long career of victory, magnificence, and oppression came suddenly to an end. The precedent must not be applied to Russia, for the conditions are radically different ; but there are many ways of dying, and though some of them are slow, the funeral always arrives, and the body always disappears from the sunlight.
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