ttered over an immense
territory. The methods by which, after Peter the Great, the old Duchy
of Muscovy had been transformed into an empire, still lived in the
administration; they survive to-day in the Bolshevist organization,
which represents less a revolution than a hieratic and brutal form of
violence placed at the service of a political organization.

The war between Russia and Japan had revealed all the perils of
a political organization exclusively based on central authority
represented by a few irresponsible men under the apparent rule of a
sovereign not gifted with the slightest trace of will power.

Those who exalt nationalist sentiments and pin their faith on
imperialistic systems fail to realize that while the greatest push
towards the War came from countries living under a less liberal
regime, those very countries gave proof of the least power of
resistance. Modern war means the full exploitation of all the human
and economic resources of each belligerent country. The greater a
nation's wealth the greater is the possibility to hold out, and the
perfection of arms and weapons is in direct ratio with the degree
of technical progress attained. Moreover, the combatants and the
possibility of using them are in relation with the number of persons
who possess sufficient skill and instruction to direct the war.
Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States of America,
were able without any appreciable effort to improvise an enormous
number of officers for the War, transforming professional men,
engineers and technicians into officers. Russia, who did not have a
real industrial bourgeoisie nor a sufficient development of the middle
classes, was only able to furnish an enormous number of combatants,
but an insufficient organization from a technical and military point
of view, and a very limited number of officers. While on a peace
footing her army was the most numerous in the world, over one million
three hundred thousand men; when her officers began to fail Russia was
unable to replace them so rapidly as the proportion of nine or ten
times more than normal required by the War.

Russia has always had a latent force of development; there is within
her a _vis inertiae_ equivalent to a mysterious energy of expansion.
Her birth-rate is higher than that of any other European country;
she does not progress, she increases. Her weight acts as a menace
to neighbouring countries, and as, by a mysterious historic