These peasants, so far as I talked with them, had lost faith in the Constitutional Democrats. They felt that the members of this party were not always single-eyed; and in the Viborg manifesto they showed their lack of understanding of the peasants by asking them to do several ridiculous and impossible things, and then dropped into private life, leaving the peasants to muddle through with the practical side of the manifesto as best they could. “Why should we shed our blood for a Duma that is dead?” asked the man who had asked why England helped the government with money. “The old Duma can do nothing for us. It is over. Give us a constituent assembly, a Duma that will make all of the laws, that cannot be dissolved, and then things will be different. We would then feel that we had something worth fighting for.” “But your Duma has been dissolved, and you have no immediate prospect of a constituent assembly. What do you intend to do?” “We will join any movement for a new government,” was the surprising answer. “We won’t begin, because in this village we have no pressing reason. But if the peasants in the districts where there is famine will begin, we will join in. The peasants must rise together.” “How are you to do that?” “The Duma has taught us that it is possible for us to be united. Whatever is done now must be done by all of the peasants and all of the people.” “This being the province where the Emperor’s family came from,” I went on, “I expected to find the peasants here quite loyal.” There was a loud laugh at this, more direful than words. Up to this point the name of the Czar had not been mentioned. I was curious to know their feeling toward him, so I ventured a direct question: “When did you begin to lose faith in the Czar?” There was a momentary silence in which I almost regretted the question. Then some one answered: “We never speak of the Emperor now. But we cannot forget that when our representatives drew up a response to the throne speech, setting forth our needs, he refused to receive it.” The Kostroma peasants now were sympathetic toward revolution because they had slowly reached the conclusion that the existing régime must go because it was evil and they saw no other way of getting rid of it. Their faith in the Czar, which once was so strong, was hopelessly shaken, and they no longer were soothed by the empty phrases which are periodically lavished upon them in hollow, religious solemnity, in the imperial ukases and rescripts.