The reports of the agitators to the central organisation, written hurriedly during this eventful week, are extremely graphic and interesting.  They declared that there is a frightful amount of work to be done and very few to do it.  Their stock of Social Democratic pamphlets is exhausted and they are hoarse from speech-making.  In spite of their superhuman efforts the masses remain frightfully “undeveloped.”  The men willingly collect to hear the orators, listen to them attentively, express approval or dissent, and even put questions; but with all this they remain obstinately on the ground of their own immediate wants, such as the increase of wages and protection against brutal foremen, and they only hint vaguely at more serious demands.  The agitators, however, are equally obstinate, and they make a few converts.  To illustrate how conversions are made, the following incident is related.  At one meeting the cry of “Stop the war!” is raised by an orator without sufficient preparation, and at once a voice is heard in the audience saying.  “No, no!  The little Japs (Yaposhki) must be beaten!” Thereupon a more experienced orator comes forward and a characteristic conversation takes place: 

“Have we much land of our own, my friends?” asks the orator.

“Much!” replies the crowd.

“Do we require Manchuria?”

“No!”

“Who pays for the war?”

“We do!”

“Are our brothers dying, and do your wives and children remain without a bit of bread?”

“So it is!” say many, with a significant shake of the head.

Having succeeded so far, the orator tries to turn the popular indignation against the Tsar by explaining that he is to blame for all this misery and suffering, but Petroff suddenly appears on the scene and maintains that for the misery and suffering the Tsar is not at all to blame, for he knows nothing about it.  It is all the fault of his servants, the tchinovniks.

By this device Petroff suppresses the seditious cry of “Down with autocracy!” which the Social Democrats were anxious to make the watchword of the movement, but he has thereby been drawn from his strong position of “No politics,” and he is standing, as we shall see presently, on a slippery incline.

On Thursday and Friday the activity of the leaders and the excitement of the masses increase.  While the Gaponists speak merely of local grievances and material wants, the Social Democrats incite their hearers to a political struggle, advising them to demand a Constituent Assembly, and explaining the necessity for all workmen to draw together and form a powerful political party.  The haranguing goes on from morning to night, and agitators drive about from one factory to another to keep the excitement at fever-heat.  The police, usually so active on such occasions, do not put in an appearance.  Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, the honest, well-intentioned, liberal Minister of the Interior, cannot make up his mind to act with energy, and lets things drift.  The agitators themselves are astonished at this extraordinary inactivity.  One of them, writing a few days afterwards, says:  “The police was paralysed.  It would have been easy to arrest Gapon, and discover the orators.  On Friday the clubs might have been surrounded and the orators arrested. . . .  In a word, decided measures might have been taken, but they were not.”