Such is one reason for alteration in the relations between the rulers and the ruled.  Another still more important reason for this change is that the ruled, believing in the rights of the power above them and accustomed to submit to it, and as knowledge spreads and their moral consciousness becomes enlightened, begin to see and feel not only the ever increasing material harmfulness of this rule, but also that to submit to such power is becoming immoral.

It was possible five hundred or a thousand years ago for people, in obedience to their rulers, to slaughter whole nations for the sake of conquest, or, for dynastic, religious, or fanatic aims, to behead, torture, quarter, imprison, destroy, and enslave whole nations.  But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, subjugated people, enlightened by Christianity or by the humanitarian teachings which have grown up out of it, can no longer submit without pangs of conscience to the powers which demand that they should participate in the slaughter of men defending their freedom (as was done in the Chinese, Boer, and Philippine wars).  They can no longer with quiet consciences, as formerly, know themselves to be participants in the deeds of violence and the executions which are being committed by the governments of their countries.

Thus, force-using power destroys itself in two ways.  It destroys itself through the ever-growing depravity of those in authority and the consequent continually increasing burden borne by the ruled, and through its ever-increasing deviation from the ever developing moral perception of the ruled.  Therefore, where force-using power exists, a moment must inevitably come when the relation of the people towards that power must change.  This moment may come sooner or later according to the degree and the rapidity of the corruption of the rulers, to the amount of their cunning, to the quieter or more restless temperament of the people, and even from their geographic position helping or hindering the interaction of the people among themselves.  But sooner or later that moment must inevitably come to all nations.

To the Western nations, which arose on the ruins of the Roman Empire, that moment came long ago.  The struggle of people against government began even in Rome.  It continued in all the states that succeeded Rome, and still goes on.  To the Eastern nations of Turkey, Persia, India, and China, that moment has not yet arrived.  For the Russian people, it has now come.

The Russian people are today confronted by the dreadful choice of either, like the Eastern nations, continuing to submit to their unreasonable and depraved governments in spite of all the misery they have inflicted upon them; or, as all the Western nations have done, realizing the evil of the existing governments, upsetting it by force and establishing a new one. Such a choice seems quite natural to the non-laboring classes of Russia, who are in touch with the upper and prosperous classes of the Western nations and consider the military might, the industrial, commercial and technical improvements, and that external glitter to which the Western nations have attained under their altered governments to be a great good.