ublic, and what had been merely
indifference manifested amongst the officers towards the Autocrat at
the head of the State was giving place to openly expressed dislike and
even to contempt for a potentate who, however well-meaning he might
be, was constantly affording evidence that he was in the [p.287] hands of
mischievous counsellors and possessed no will of his own.

A special Mission had come over to England from Russia in August,
including amongst its numerous personnel the Finance Minister and the
Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of War. This Mission had
obtained from us promises of financial assistance running into scores
of millions sterling, to say nothing of an undertaking to furnish
substantial consignments of war material. But in the understanding
that was then arrived at, I never could detect any trace of conditions
designed to check the dangerous policy which all who were behind the
scenes realized the Emperor to be adopting. Who paid the piper never
called one note of the tune. There was an ingenuousness about the
proceedings on the part of our Government that was startling in its
Micawberism and improvidence.

Now, our Cabinet was extraordinarily fortunate in the British
representatives within the Russian Empire upon whom they depended or
ought to have depended. They were admirably served on the Neva, at the
Stavka and in the field. We had an ambassador who was trusted to an
unprecedented extent by all ranks and classes in the realm which he
was making his temporary home. The Head of our Military Mission,
Hanbury-Williams, was a _persona gratissima_ with the Emperor. Our
Military Attaches--Knox, Blair, and Marsh--were masters of the Russian
language, and, in common with several British officers especially
accredited to the different armies, ever had their fingers on the
pulse of military sentiment on the fighting fronts. How it came about
that our Government--or rather Governments, because Mr. Lloyd George
and his War Cabinet replaced Mr. Asquith and his sanhedrin of
twenty-three just when things were becoming highly critical--shambled
blindly along trusting to luck and did nothing, it is hard to say. But
among them they nearly lost us the war.

Towards the end of the year 1916 the situation was already becoming
almost desperate, even if the putting away of the horrible Rasputin
did seem for a moment to relieve the gloom. Officers high up in the
army were imploring our military representativ