they were not beguiled by Bobrikov's deceitful promises of reforms.

When passive resistance proved insufficient, the more convinced Constitutionalists discussed joint action with Russian revolutionaries. In a meeting in Stockholm early in 1903, it was decided to send Finnish delegates to a meeting of Russian revolutionaries scheduled to be held in Paris in October of that same year, and in Paris the decision was reached to take steps to end autocracy in Russia and, when that was accomplished, to restore to Finland the rights of which it had been illegally deprived. The following year there was secretly organized in Helsinki a new `Finnish Active Resistance Party' to work along those lines.

Naturally the Finns tried every possible way to rid themselves of Bobrikov, who had received additional authority and had become a dictator in fact. When attempts to influence the Czar to correct Finnish conditions came to nothing, an official of the school administration, Eugen Schauman, assassinated the hated Governor-General and then killed himself in the Senate building on 16 April 1904. In Schauman's pocket was found a letter in which he addressed the Czar in stirring fashion, explaining the purely patriotic motives of his deed. After the assassination of Bobrikov, and following the subsequent assassination in St. Petersburg of Plehve, Russia's feared Minister of the Interior, who was also Minister Secretary of State for Finland, imperial advisers began to believe that only a man of high aristocratic rank could restore in Finland the faltering respect for the Czar: Duke Ivan Obolensky was considered capable of accomplishing this, and so he was appointed Governor-General of Finland at the end of June, 1904. Obolensky arrived in Finland obviously prepared to be conciliatory. The Diet received an invitation to meet, and other signs of improvement began to be apparent : a Finn, Konstantin Linder, was appointed Minister Secretary of State, and before long even the illegal conscription program was halted.

In Russia, meanwhile, revolutionary activity continued. Seemingly brought under control and even halted at times during the reign of Alexander III, the foment broke out again with the RussoJapanese war, which Czar Nicholas' desire to annex Manchuria and Korea had brought about. Russian unawareness of Japan's strength brought serious consequences : Japanese torpedo boats penetrated the inner harbor of Port Arthur on 8 February 1904 under the cover of darkness and crippled Russia's best Far East navy units there for a long time, so that the Japanese were able to land troops on the mainland without interference. The sequel was just as unfortunate for the Russians: its land forces were

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