ilitary
authorities--in France perhaps even more so than in this country. The
armies of our eastern Ally did, it is true, accomplish greater things
in some respects than had been anticipated, because they struck an
effective blow at an earlier date than had been believed possible, and
they thereby relieved pressure in the West at a critical juncture even
if their enterprising and loyal action in East Prussia was later to
lead them into a terrible disaster. During the first two or three
months after the outbreak of hostilities their weakness in regard to
equipment and to munitions was not, however, known, or at all events
was only partially known. There was much talk in the Press about the
"steam-roller" which was going to flatten the Central Powers out. We
at the War Office had received warnings from our very well-informed
Military Attache, it is true; but those warnings did not convey to us
the full gravity of the position, a gravity which was probably not
recognized even in high places in Russia for some time. Moreover, as
far as we could judge, Paris had no idea that anything was seriously
amiss beyond the Vistula, in spite of the Franco-Russian alliance
having been in force for some years.

The first really alarming tidings on this subject that we received
came to hand, oddly enough, from Japan; and it bears testimony to the
efficiency of our Far Eastern Ally's intelligence service that the
Island Empire should have been so intimately acquainted with the
military conditions in a State with which it had been at war only a
very few years before. This information reached us, I think, in
October 1914. But as far as I recollect, that warning, inexorable as
it was, only touched the question of ammunition. We were told plainly
that the Russians were likely to run out of this indispensable at an
early date; but the message did not mention rifles, although these
already began to run short within eight months of the commencement of
the struggle. How it came about [p.283] that there should have been so
deplorable a breakdown in respect to war material can only be a matter
of conjecture; but we may hazard a pretty shrewd guess that the
collapse which was to lead to such deplorable results in the early
summer of 1915, was attributable to graft on a Homeric scale. For the
Russian army budgets had for several years before the war been framed
on lavish lines; that for 1914, for instance, mounted up to
725,000,000 roubles, which re