Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1905 — NOT RIPE FOR REVOLT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NOT RIPE FOR REVOLT

BUCCEBSFUL REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA STILL FAR OFF. People Not Sufficiently Strong Nor Sufficiently Organized to Enforce Their . Demands Russian Peasant Classes Hard to Enthuse.

The revolution which many believed would result from the massacres in St. Petersburg and the politico-industrial up-

heavals in other Russian cities has no t materialized. Oppressed as nre the Russian people and desirous as they are to obtain political rights, they are not sufficiently strong nor sufficiently organized to enforce their demands. They lack cohesion and they lack leadership. It may, too,

be doubted if they are agreed upon the natufe of their political necessities. Above all, in the disturbances which have just swept over Russia there were no concert of action, no uniformity of demand and no solidarity of purpose. In St. Petersburg, it seems as though the industrial misery of the strikers was made a pretext by the socialists and revolutionaries, representing but a small percentage of the discontenfld, to make political demands which were really revolutionary in character. Like a flock of sheep the strikers followed their revolutionary leaders, paying with their lives in many cases the penalty of their confidence and credulity. And in other purely Russian centers the condition seems to have been similar. In the cities of Poland and Finland the demonstrators, as should be expected, were better organized. There the principal of nationality was involved. The Poles and Finns not only demanded increased political rights, but are utterly opposed to Russian government and sovereignty in any form, and if in the near future a formidable revolution is to occur in Russia it will have its beginning and its greatest support among the oppressed nationalities of Finland and Poland.

Not Ripe for Revolution. Viewing the situation dispassionately, there does not seem an encouraging chance of successful revolution in Russia In the near future. The justification for it exists —causes which in other lands would speedily subvert the government sustaining them —but the Russia!} people have not as a whole reached that degree of development, that stage of political aspiration, which would lead them through blood and fire, through sacrifice and .suffering, to free institutions and political supremacy. The peasant classes of the country were little affected, if at all, by the recent turmoil, and they constitute an element without which revolution is impossible. The industrial workers of the cities form only tWo per cent of the population, nnd not all of these look higher than the mere means of sustenance. Evidently then the day of successful revolution in the empire of : the Czar is far distant.

Yet the disturbances may have a salutary effect upon the government. They ure the voice of discontent and dissatisfaction speaking in the only way that is ppen in a country where freedom of the press and freedom of speech are denied, and sooner than have that voice growing in volume and Intensity, threatening the stability of institutions and undermining national loyalty and fqnlty to the throne, the government may see the wisdom of granting reforms, whicli may stave off that day which, sooner or later, is bound to come, when the people shall enter into possession of their rights and wipe out the rule of caste, so long the bane of Russia and the withering blight upon the development of her people.

GEN. TREPOFF.