Our people were opposed to the war, and we did not go
on, lest the throne would be a forfeit." This is only an indication that
even in the country that is supposed to represent the most absolute of
empires, the people are manifesting a control. The Douma was given too
much power at first, so that universal suffrage was necessarily a
failure in the condition of the people at that time. But the Douma now
is gradually acquiring useful power and in the course of the next
twenty-five or fifty years Russia will probably have a popular
constitutional government. We have had democracy in this country for
one hundred and twenty-five years, or indeed for two hundred and
twenty-five years. It is now proposed to have more democracy to supply
the present defects of our existing democracy. This is one phase of the
present situation that I wish to discuss. Another is the spread of the
fraternal spirit, the desire of one to help another, the actual
improvement and increase in the brotherhood of man which we are seeing
in society, and a third is trades-unionism, its essence and what is to
be hoped for or feared from it.
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