1905 BATTLE OF SEBASTOPOL assemblies of the people, accepted the new proposals of the Czar, but only with great caution. It prom ised to support the Ministry "only in so far as it will correctly and consistently carry out the constitutional principles of the Manifesto." If the representatives of orderly agitation received the Czar's Manifesto with suspicion, it may be readily inferred that it had no effect whatever upon the disorderly elements. The Anti-Semites took advantage of the prevailing anarchy to massacre the Jews. By November 2 it was reported that 5,000 members of this peaceful race had been murdered in riots at Odessa and elsewhere. At Sebastopol the striking workmen were joined on November 24 by an entire squadron of the Black Sea fleet, including the "Kniaz Potemkin" that with an entirely new crew seemed still to carry in its forecastle the haunting spirit of mutiny. And not in its forecastle alone, for a Lieutenant Schmidt led the revolt. The mutineers killed Admiral Pisarevsky, captured the city, and stopped all railroad traffic. On the next day, however, the Government forces retook the ships, although not until after these had committed much destruction by shelling the city. Further trouble broke out at Cronstadt, the naval stronghold on the Baltic, and also at Vladivostok, but the revolts were sternly repressed. General confusion in the business world was occasioned by a strike, beginning on November 30 and extending well into December, of the postal and telegraph employees. It was occasioned by a Government order forbidding them to form a union. Every industry was becoming unionized. There was even a Peasants Union, formed by tenants for the purpose of securing possession of the land, which Tolstoy had taught them was theirs by natural right. During December there were many agrarian disturbances, chiefly in the Baltic Provinces, where the great landowners are Germans. BRITISH LIBERALS REGAIN GOVERNMENT 1905 Labor was also coming to its own in Great Britain, where for the first time in the history of that land made great by handiwork, a manual laborer was chosen to a seat in its Cabinet. The disintegration of the Balfour administration, which Secretary Chamberlain started two years before by proposing to introduce Protection, had now reached the point of dissolution. The dwindling strength of the administration had permitted its defeat on several questions, and Balfour had been compelled to resort to very tenuous excuses to justify its continuation in power. Then Mr. Chamberlain completed his work by a speech in which he referred contemptuously to the humiliating position of the Prime Minister. In December Mr. Balfour and his associates resigned. The King at once summoned Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who formed a Cabinet of Liberal and Labor representatives to hold office pending a general Parliamentary election. Never before were so many men distinguished either for intellectual attainments or executive ability, or both, gathered together in a Government ministry. And not the least distinguished and certainly the most picturesque figure of them all was John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, who had risen from the position of an engineer to become a successful labor leader and a member of Parliament, and now had been chosen to form a part of a council to which were committed the destinies of a world-encircling empire. Music, art, literature, and the stage suffered greatly by death during the year. Theodore Thomas, the great American composer and orchestra leader, died at Chicago, on January 4, at the age of 69. George H. Boughton, the English painter, died on January 19 at the age of 70. General Lew Wallace, the author of "Ben Hur" and other novels of great popularity and enduring merit, passed away at the age of 78 in his home in Crawfordsville, Indiana, on February 15. 1905 DEATHS OF THE YEAR On March 24, Jules Verne, whose hundred or more works of imaginative fiction, based on the marvels of nature and modern science, have both entertained and instructed youthful readers in every quarter of the globe, died at his home in Amiens, France, aged 77 years. On April 23, Joseph Jefferson, the most beloved actor of the American stage, made his exit from life at Palm Beach, Florida, aged 76 years. On May 21, Albion W. Tourgee, whose novels of the days of Southern reconstruction attained great vogue a quarter of a century before, died at the age of 67 in Bordeaux, France, where he was American consul. Maximo Gomez, the Cuban patriot, closed a long life of revolution at Havana on June 17, in the calm assurance that his beloved country had entered upon an era of undisturbed peace and prosperity. J. J. Henner, a French painter, noted as an original colorist, died at Paris, July 23, at the age of 76. Adolphe W. Bouguereau, another French artist of possibly greater talent but certainly less genius, whose ideals of beauty always fell in with the popular taste and hence won for him great popularity, ended his life at La Rochelle, France, at the age of 80. Henry Irving (the stage name, legalized in 1889, of John Henry Brodribb), the greatest actor of the English-speaking stage, died in London on October 13, aged 67. But none of these brilliant men left behind him works or influences at all comparable to the institution and idea which a plain business man, George Williams (who died in London, on November 6, at the age of 80), gave to the world in the Young Men's Christian Association, which he conceived and founded a half-century ago. EVENTS OF 1906-1910 Workmen's Councils Boycott the Duma-Disorders in Baltic Provinces -M. Fallieres Elected President of France-Conference of Powers at Algeciras-Coal Strike-Contest in Congress Between Administration Forces and Insurgents-Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius-Earthquake in California-Packing Houses Investigated-Pure Food Law-Provisional Government for Cuba-Anti-Japanese Agitation -Brownsville Riots-Panic of 1907-Standard Oil Company Fined $29,240,000-Oklahoma Admitted to Statehood-Panama Canal Construction Placed in Charge of Army-Jamestown Exposition -Kingston Earthquake-William H. Taft and James S. Sherman Elected President and Vice-President-King Carlos I. of Portugal, and Prince Luiz Felippe Assassinated-Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith Becomes Prime Minister of England-Olympic Games-Quebec Tercentenary Celebration-White House Conference-Battleship Cruise -Austria Annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina-Bulgaria Proclaims Independence-Island of Crete Repudiates Turkish Suzerainty-Cities and Towns of Sicily and Italy Destroyed by Earthquake-President Taft Inaugurated-Ex-President Roosevelt Sails for Africa on Big Game Hunt-North Pole Discovered by Peary-Frederick A. Cook's Claims-Lieut. Shackleton's South Pole Expedition-Second Cuban Republic-Turkish Revolution-Sultan Abdul Hamid DeposedUnited States of South Africa-Alaska-Yukon-Pacific ExpositionHudson-Fulton Celebration-Paris Floods-English Budget Rejected-New Parliament Elected-Ballinger-Pinchot ControversyDefeat of Speaker Cannon-Rockefeller Foundation-Passion Play at Oberammergau. W ITH the opening of the New Year the disorders in Russia assumed a new character, all the more ominous because orderly. On January 2 the Workmen's Council of St. Petersburg joined the representatives of various proletarian organizations across the Finnish border in a momentous conference. It was decided to engage in no more sporadic uprisings, but to proceed quietly with the organization throughout the empire of Workmen's Councils, representatives of which were to form a General Congress. As a protest against the undemocratic conditions imposed upon electors, the workmen decided not to take part in the coming elections for the Duma. This meant a boycott of the Witte program of moderate constitutional reform. As the workmen were dominant in the provinces where revolution still existed—namely, the Baltic Provinces, 1906 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY Poland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and several governments in southern Russia-the Moderates at once organized to win the election, not from the Reactionists, which was a foregone conclusion, but from the Radicals. On January 18 there met at St. Petersburg the first National Conference organized by a political party in the history of Russia, that of the Constitutional Democrats. It adopted a platform of liberal republican principles, and advocated participation in the Duma so long as this body acted in sympathy with its principles of free constitutional government. In the meantime the autocracy was making the most of its waning lease of power. Revolution was sternly suppressed everywhere it raised its head. In the Baltic Provinces, where the peasants had risen against the German landlords, from December 14 to February 14 the military hanged 18 persons and shot 621. Three hundred and twenty were killed in armed encounters, and 251 were flogged. Ninety-seven farmhouses, twenty-two town dwellings, and several schools, town-halls, and clubhouses were burned. On February 3, the day after the Czar had promised a deputation of peasants relief from oppression, fifty-three of their fellows were shot to death at Vilna. The indecision or powerlessness of the Czar was further shown by the lack of harmony prevailing in his Cabinet. On January 14 M. Durnovo, one of the leaders of the Reactionary party, was promoted to the post of Minister of the Interior. Within a month he had brought things to such a pass in the Cabinet that Premier Witte, representing the progressive influence, threatened to resign, and was restrained from doing so only by the urgent personal request of the Czar, who required his services in the pending negotiations with foreign bankers for large loans with which to pay the appalling expenses of the Japanese war. Witte acceded to the Czar's request, and this fact had much to do with the turning against him of the Radicals |