Bulgaria's accession to the ranks of our enemies and the resultant
overthrow of Serbia, the fall of Kut, Roumania's unhappy
experience--sink into insignificance compared with the downfall of the
Romanoffs and what that downfall led to.

Had the cataclysmic upheaval in Russia been averted, or at least been
delayed until hostilities were at an end, the war would have been
brought to a successful conclusion before the close of the year 1917.
Much loss of life would have been saved. The European belligerents,
one and all and whichever side they fought on during the contest,
would be in an incomparably less anxious economic position than they
actually are in to-day. The Eastern Hemisphere would have settled its
own affairs without intervention, other than naval and financial, from
the farther side of the Atlantic. Peace would in consequence have been
concluded within a very few months of the cessation of hostilities,
instead of negotiations starting on a preposterous basis and being
protracted for more than a year.

That the Revolution could have been prevented, or at all events could
have been deferred until subsequent to the end of the war, I firmly
believe. Our diplomacy has been severely criticized in connection with
Near Eastern affairs in 1915; nor will any one maintain that it was
successful, judged by results. But the situation in the Balkans was
one of extraordinary perplexity in any case, and the problem was
complicated by the fact that the Allies were not all of one mind as to
what course to pursue on almost any single occasion. The position of
affairs during the critical months leading up to March 1917 in Russia,
on the other hand, was no puzzle, and the political situation had
never been a puzzle since the outbreak of war. Our French and Italian
friends, moreover, fully realized that this country, if it chose to do
so, possessed the means of exerting a special and controlling
influence within the governing clique holding sway at the head of the
empire, and they were most anxious that that influence should be
exercised. But before touching on this question some comments on the
military conditions within the territories of our whilom eastern Ally
previous to, and at the time of, the catastrophe will not be out of
place.

The potentialities of Russia for carrying on a war of first-class
magnitude had been altogether overestimated at the outset in the
United Kingdom and in France, alike by the public and by the m