At this convention, held at St.
Petersburg, November 6, 1904, attended by many of the ablest lawyers,
doctors, professors, scientists, and publicists in Russia, a resolution was
adopted demanding that the government at once call representatives of the
people together for the purpose of setting up a constitutional government
in Russia. It was a revolutionary act, a challenge to the autocracy, which
the latter dared not accept. On the contrary, in December the Czar issued
an ambiguous ukase in which a number of concessions and reforms were
promised, but carefully avoiding the fundamental issues at stake.
VI
Meanwhile the war with Japan, unpopular from the first, had proved to be an
unbroken series of military defeats and disasters for Russia. From the
opening of the war in February to the end of the year the press had been
permitted to publish very little real news concerning it, but it was not
possible to hide for long the bitter truth. Taxes mounted higher and
higher, prices rose, and there was intense suffering, while the loss of
life was enormous. News of the utter failure and incompetence of the army
and the navy seeped through. Here was Russia with a population three times
as large as that of Japan, and with an annual budget of two billions as
against Japan's paltry sixty millions, defeated at every turn.
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