Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/124

 112 group of Socialist deputies representing the workers and the peasants. Once more an open Labour Press appeared. The potential strength of the Labour forces at this time may be judged from the difficulty experienced by the Government in suppressing the Labour newspapers. They were suppressed and reappeared again and again. Collections for them were openly made in the factories. 1913 was undoubtedly a year of considerable political vigour and boldness. 1914 was a year of great hopes on the one hand and of grave anxiety on the other. Unrest was growing and was assuming an openly political and revolutionary character. Under pressure from the left, Russian Liberalism also was evincing more boldness in its attitude to the Government.

This social unrest and awakening coincided with the increasingly aggressive attitude of the militarists. Their sabre-rattling began to grow more rowdy. The War Office inspired articles in the Press and threw down the gauntlet to some unknown foe in an inspired article, "We are ready!" More space began to be devoted in the newspapers to questions of war and war-preparedness; some newspapers began to have permanent columns reserved for military affairs. The atmosphere of war was in fact diligently created many months before the war broke out. Here in the countries of the Entente it has generally been considered an established fact that the Russian Government took all possible measures to preserve peace. Only since Sukhomlinov's trial, on his evidence and that of Yanushkevich, the public in the Entente countries has discovered that the Russian war-party had its share of responsibility for the outbreak of the war. On the narrow technical question of "Who mobiliselmobilised [sic] first?" which has always been the bone of contention between the diplomacies of the Entente and the Central Empires, I may add that for the Russian people there never was any question about it, that this time at any rate Russia had not been left behind. In the first days of the war,