Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/46

 sense," which only needs fuller development. If the employers on their side are able, as one hopes they will be, to rise to a sense of their responsibilities, if the Government, that we may confidently expect to introduce many new measures, acts with wise and far-sighted energy, Russia will come victoriously through her present trials and set a great and beneficial example to the world.

It was neither his rate of pay nor the conditions under which he works that led the Russian workman to engage in the present revolutionary movement. The Revolution was from the first political, in the strictest sense of the word. It was directed against Czarism. Its aim was to win liberty. If any material consideration was mixed in it, it was at most a protest against famine that resulted from the bad organization of transport. We know, indeed, that the protests of women obliged to wait in queues during whole nights before the doors of the bakers, and the