We should call these men Nihilists now.

There were among them writers and thinkers, noble souls which, under the stress of oppression and sympathy, had gone astray.

They had failed, but they had proved that there were men in Russia capable of dying for an ideal.

When the cause had its martyrs it had become sacred--and though it might sleep, it would not die.
The man sitting upon the throne of Russia now was not torn by conflicts between his ideals and inexorable circumstance.

His natural instincts and the conditions of his empire both pointed to the same simple course--an unmitigated autocracy--an absolute rule supported by military power.