So long as the Russian government and the military and police authorities encourage massacres, and do not rebuke such enormities as these, absolutism will continue to be tempered by assassination. Under such pressure as this the strongest wall of reason, the finest ideals of manhood, fall away, and the impulse of the moment becomes not merely the supreme, but the only dynamic of life. Terrorism, however, does not rest on a mere personal basis. These incidents--to which might easily be added a vast number--simply account for the picking off of a man here and there, usually a man of subordinate rank. The terrorists of the revolution bear precisely the same relation to the movement as a whole as sharp-shooters bear to a regular army. No military officer ever advocated turning a whole army into scouts and sharp-shooters, and no revolutionist I ever talked with desired turning the revolutionary movement into a vast terroristic organization. But as an auxiliary agency the fighting organization has its work, just as distinct and as important as the work of the military organization. The Russian revolutionary parties, properly so-called, are two--the Social Democratic Party and the Social Revolutionist Party. The former is a Marxian socialist party, dominated by German thought, and influenced even to its working methods by German ideals. More and more the Social Democrats are tending toward the doctrinaire. They aim to keep in step with the international socialist movement, and their immediate efforts are all toned and tempered by their ultimate program, which is the establishment of a socialistic state in Russia, to supersede autocracy, as soon as the rank and file of the people are sufficiently instructed in the nationalistic principles which underlie their philosophy. Active fighting and insurrection with the Social Democrats is now only occasional, and is determined by peculiar local conditions.