a great output was still in progress. Over 800 howitzers and heavy
guns, with abundant ammunition for them, had also by that time been
despatched to Russia from the United Kingdom and France, and nearly
6,000,000 rounds of field-gun ammunition from France. Such statistics
could be multiplied. Suffice it to say that there was every reason to
assume that the Emperor Nicholas's legions would be adequately
supplied with most forms of munitions for the 1917 campaign, and that,
thanks to the great increase in the numbers of rifles, machine-guns
and pieces of artillery available, they would take the field in far
stronger force numerically than at any previous period of the war.

From the purely military point of view the position of affairs in the
winter of 1916-17 was, in fact, decidedly promising. A huge force was
under arms and was coming to be well equipped. General Brusiloff's
successes in the summer of 1916, even if they made no appreciable
alteration in the general strategical situation, had afforded most
satisfactory evidence that the stubborn fighting spirit of the Russian
troops had suffered no eclipse consequent upon disasters of the past.
Confidence reigned at the Stavka, and competent leaders had been
forced to the front. But the internal situation, on the other hand,
had become ominous in the extreme.

Some references were made in the last chapter to the discontent that
was manifesting itself throughout the country even early in 1916, and
to the attitude of marked indifference that was being displayed by the
officers in respect to the Sovereign to whom they owed allegiance. But
things had gone rapidly from bad to worse since that date. M.
Sazonoff, the eminent Foreign Minister, to whose efforts before the
war the satisfactory understanding between Great Britain and Russia
was largely due and whose policy was uncompromisingly anti-German, had
been got out of the way by the machinations of the Court clique. (The
Emperor, it may be mentioned, had been almost cringingly apologetic to
our representatives about this step, which he could not but realize
would create a very bad impression in London and Paris.) Successive
substitutions carried out amongst the personnel of the Executive had
all tended towards introducing elements that were reactionary from the
point of view of internal policy and were suspect from the point of
view of the Entente. Dissatisfaction and loss of confidence had been
growing apace amongst the p