REVOLUTION AND REACTION 273the less influential Social Democratic Party (SDKPiL), subordinated their plans
to those of their Bolshevik and Menshevik mentors. The SRs and the Jewish
Bund increased their activities in the western provinces. A deteriorating eco-
nomic situation encouraged political militancy. The Japanese War closed Far
Eastern markets to Polish industry. One hundred thousand Polish workers were
laid off work. Most people in employment were obliged to take a cut in pay.
Demonstrations and protests were broken up by the police with increasing vio-
lence. Twenty people were wounded when a salvo was fired into the crowd at
Biatystok on 28 September. The gravity of the crisis was underlined on 13
November 1904 when a gun battle erupted on the Grzybowski Square in
Warsaw. A company of gendarmes had charged into a crowd of singing Sunday
demonstrators, aiming to confiscate a red banner which read: 'PPS: Precz z
wojnq i caratem! Niech iyje wolny, polski lud' (PPS: Down with the war and
with Tsardom, Long live the free Polish people). They were met by a hail of bul-
lets from a squad of gunmen. Six men were killed, scores injured, and hundreds
arrested. This was the first open challenge to Russian authority in Poland for
forty years. It preceded the 'Bloody Sunday' outbreak in St. Petersburg by three
months.^1
The extent of Polish ambitions was evidenced by visits to Japan undertaken
by rival political leaders. Early in 1904, Pilsudski had been in contact with the
Japanese ambassador in London. In June-July he travelled via New York and
San Francisco to Tokyo, only to find that Dmowski was already installed there
in the Hotel Metropole. Each man proffered mutually contradictory advice.
Dmowski was strongly opposed to a Japanese foray into Polish affairs, fearing
that foreign intervention would force the Tsarist government to abandon all
ideas of constitutional reform. He intimated that the National Democrats
would use all the means at their disposal to prevent anti-Russian disturbances
in Poland. Pitsudski, in contrast, urged the creation of a Polish Legion, to be
recruited from Polish prisoners in Japan and from Polish—American volunteers
and to be commanded by officers provided by the PPS. He maintained that one-
third of the Russian troops in Manchuria were of Polish origin, and that they
would be very willing to desert. 'The common interest of Japan and Poland', he
declared, 'lies in the weakening and breaking of Russian power'.^2 In the event,
the Japanese government took no decisive action. Their military attaches in
London and Paris were authorized to supply the PPS with arms and explosives
in exchange for intelligence on the dispositions of the Russian Army in Poland.
In the autumn, both Dmowski and Pilsudski returned to Europe to apply them-
selves to an uncertain future. The one continued to count on political methods;
the other on armed confrontation. In the next few months they would both
enjoy moments of elation and of disillusionment, but neither would claim any
definitive success.
The 'Bloody Sunday' massacre in St. Petersburg on 22 January 1905
unleashed passions in Poland which at first favoured the activists. The immedi-
ate reaction took the form of a school strike which lasted for nearly three years.