Russia : its history and condition to 1877 . of the masseswas an advantage from one point of view, but onthe other hand it deprived the Government of allpopular support at a time when it needed it most,and obliged it to fight the battle unassisted by na-tional enthusiasm. A French statesman said thatthe Boer War was not won by the British army norby the British generals, but by the temper of theBritish nation. In Russia that feeling of patrioticdetermination was almost absent throughout theFar Eastern campaign. There were plenty of indi-viduals who wished to fight to the last, but the nationas
Russia : its history and condition to 1877 . of the masseswas an advantage from one point of view, but onthe other hand it deprived the Government of allpopular support at a time when it needed it most,and obliged it to fight the battle unassisted by na-tional enthusiasm. A French statesman said thatthe Boer War was not won by the British army norby the British generals, but by the temper of theBritish nation. In Russia that feeling of patrioticdetermination was almost absent throughout theFar Eastern campaign. There were plenty of indi-viduals who wished to fight to the last, but the nationas a whole was utterly without enthusiasm. At thesame time there was a large and increasing num-ber of people who did realize the critical situationof the country brought about by the war; everyfresh mobilisation augmented the number of thosewho suffered from its material effects, and everyadditional days fighting meant more artisans out ofwork, more families deprived of their breadwinners,and a greater reduction of business. The reverses 288. o RUSSIAN PUBLIC OPINION seriously shook intelligent public opinion and gal-vanised the forces of discontent throughout theEmpire. Of the various opinions on the war, that of theextreme Chauvinists held by the official classes andtheir close adherents was the simplest. They hadthree formulae for explaining everything in a mannersatisfactory to Russian amour propre: first, Napo-leons retreat from Moscow in 1812 (every mileof the Japanese advance into Manchuria puts themmore at the mercy of their enemies); secondly,all the wars which Russia has fought have begunbadly and ended well; thirdly, it is not the Jap-anese who are the real adversaries of Russia, butthe English and the Americans who back them upand finance them. This last statement has beenbrought forward on every occasion, and formedthe theme of reams of leading articles, for it wasgenerally believed that the pubUc would view a waragainst England with far more enthusiasm thancould be
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Keywords: ., bookauthorvillaril, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1910
